Stephen Law

Here is the final bit of my book Believing Bullshit . What follows is a cautionary bit of fiction, inspired by C.S. Lewis's fiction The Screwtape Letters , Letters from a Senior to a Junior Devil , which are entertaining and often very insightful. I don't claim my mirror letters are as good as Lewis's, but they are offered in the same cautionary spirit. I refer in places to specific mechanisms explained in the book, such as "I Just Know!" and Going Nuclear (follow these links if you are interested, or better still buy the book!) The Tapescrew Letters Letters from a Senior to a Junior Guru (Inspired by C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters ) Preface I have no intention of explaining how the correspondence which I now offer to the public fell into my hands. One or two details have been changed to save reputations, but the letters are substantially unrevised and intact.    Bear in mind that the author—an eminent guru within some minor, recently...

Here is a new version of first part of the intro, for comments please. Too "academic" (remember - this has to become a best-seller and make me a fortune)? How could I make it more snappy and appealing? INTRODUCTION Intellectual black holes Wacky and ridiculous belief systems abound. The Heaven’s Gate suicide cult promised members a ride to heaven on board a UFO. Advanced students of scientology are taught that 75 million years ago, Xenu, alien ruler of a “Galactic Confederacy”, brought billions of people to Earth in spacecraft shaped like Douglas DC-10 airplanes and stacked them around volcanoes which he then blew up with hydrogen bombs. Even mainstream religions have people believing absurdities. Preachers have promised 72 heavenly virgins to suicide bombers. Others insist the entire universe is just 6,000 years old (extraordinarily, polls consistently indicate this belief is currently held by about 45% of US citizens – that’s around 130 million individuals). And of course i...

Here's the most of the introduction the new book on Intellectual Black Holes. Comments please. INTRODUCTION Intellectual black holes Wacky and ridiculous belief systems abound. One cult promises members a ride to heaven on board a UFO. Another insists the Earth is ruled by lizard-like aliens. Even mainstream religions have people believing absurdities. Preachers have promised 46 heavenly virgins to suicide bombers. Others insist the entire universe is just 6,000 years old (extraordinarily, polls consistently indicate this belief is currently held by about 45% of US citizens – that’s around 130 million individuals). And of course its not only cults and religions that promote bizarre beliefs. Significant numbers of people believe in astrology, the amazing powers of TV psychics, astrology, crystal divination, the healing powers of magnets, the prophecies of Nostradamus, and that the Word Trade Centre was brought down by the US Government. There is even a handful who continue to belie...

Apologies for the infrequent posts - having work meltdown situation re new book. I will post bits here for your comments shortly... The book is on Intellectual Black Holes (an analogy I came up with back in Feb 2008, if anyone remembers?). I will be giving a talk on intellectual black holes at the Oxford Humanists: Fri. 21st May, 7.45 for 8.00pm, Restore Centre off Manzil Way, East Oxford OX4 1YH. Details from John White jdwhite (AT) talk21.com (nb this address has been spamproofed - you need to fix it) post script it may now be 8.30 as the room cannot be dimmed for my powerpoint,

Great article here from Edmund Standing on the "new Atheists" and how they are shot down by sophisticated theologians. Seems to me Standing has caught Rowan Williams out in a flagrant use of what I call: "now you see it, now you don't" . P.S. "great" should not to be taken to indicate I agree with everything in said article - I don't. But the central point is good, and well made, I think.

Here is a website I just stumbled across. It sets out, in a few paragraphs, exactly what many millions of Evangelical Christians believe. Many of them are smart. Many are at least reasonably well-educated. Yet what they believe is, in truth, at least as insane as any of the beliefs you are likely to find down your local mental asylum. How are such utterly ridiculous beliefs able to install themselves so successfully in the heads of so many smart, educated people? Consider just how potent the mechanisms involved must be! Surely we should all acknowledge religion has this extraordinary power, and, once we've properly acknowledged it, shouldn't every religious person then be asking themselves: "Isn't it entirely possible that I too believe some pretty nutty things, and that the reason I struggle to recognize that they are nutty is that these same mechanisms are operating on me?" Or do you find this thought is one your mind seems strangely unwilling to entertain for ...

Hi Jamie You say that I make reason my religion and my God, despite my denying it and giving the example of compassion and morality which I think at least as important as reason. Here's a quote from you: Stephen: The examples you list (compassion, morality) would be subject to your continuum of reasonableness, correct? Therefore, reason is more important because it is the standard by which you judge. For ex., if you did not think a moral choice was reasonable you probably wouldn't make that choice. My reply. Yes morality is subject to reason, but that doesn't entail I think reason supreme. Unlike Kant, I don't think reason can ultimately underpin or justify morality. Reason can reveal e.g. contradictions in our moral beliefs etc. It can also reveal unacknowledged consequences of our moral beliefs. But it cannot conjure up our basic moral principles in the first place. They are primary. Reason necessarily plays a secondary role. So no, I don't consider reason of supr...

Jamie writes: [quoting Stephen] Many religions, cults, etc. are designed - or, more accurately, have evolved - to be intellectual black holes. They encourage self-sealing patterns of thought which effectively lock you inside. Get sucked in, it's almost impossible to reason your way out again. If what I'm saying is true -- that the worldview (intellectual humanism or whatever) in which you are operating is a religion/cult/philosophical-system -- then you, by your own definition, are in an intellectual black hole. You have a self-sealing pattern of thought which locks you in. You can't see that what I'm saying is true, just like I can't see that what you are saying is true. You are a true believer. To answer your question, religion can be defined as "a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance", which doesn't necessarily mean "worship" in the liturgical sense. And it seems to me that you ascribe supreme importance to logi...

Hi Jamie I am going to respond to just one thing here - which is your comment (in comments on previous post) that reason is a religion too. Hmm. What is a religion? I think it must involve worship, right? Well, I don't worship reason. It's just that reason and observation are the only tools we have for getting at what's true. So I use them. So do you, of course, constantly. Think of your head as a basket towards which many beliefs are tumbling. There are all sorts of nutty beliefs out there that you might adopt - from the the thought that the Antarctic is populated by crab people to the belief that the Earth's core is made of cheese. These beliefs will quickly fill up your head if you don't filter them. We apply reason as a filter, to try to keep as many of the false ones out as possible. Of course reason is not 100% reliable. But it is (and this is a key point) truth-sensitive. Subject beliefs to rational critical scrutiny and you are much less likely to end up wi...

Ibrahim has posted a poem to illustrate the mystical Islamic tradition that he admires. Ibrahim in italics. It's in response to my posting on intellectual black holes (which you should probably read first). My comments follow: IBRAHIM WRITES: I am posting the following as an example of a text from within the Islamic mystical tradition. The author is Muhammad ibn al-Habib, a Moroccan shaykh who died in 1972 (see Wikipedia). It offers a view onto a non-rationalist tradition, which is either nothing but fantasy and imagination (or simple insanity), or an internally coherent and viable worldview shared and practised by millions of adherents past and present – or both. Note the stanza which appears towards the end: “Strip yourselves of all knowledge and understanding”. This is a technique which is referred to in other mystical traditions: “Except that ye be as little children…” and “In pursuit of knowledge, every day something is acquired; in pursuit of the Tao, every day something is ...

[This is partly in response to some excellent comments on the preceding post: The Emperor's New Clothes . Commentators have suggested that appeals to God's mysteriousness and ineffability in order to deal with rational objections can be perfectly legitimate. Possibly, but read on...] Suppose I believe in an evil God. A supremely evil and powerful being. God is hate. Sometimes I even appear to sense this at some deep level of my being. The world seems to me infused with a ghastly, horrific pallor that reflects the infinitely depraved character of its maker (apparently, such horrific visions are not uncommon among some mentally deranged folk). So gripped am I by this vision of the world that I even write poetry about it in attempt to express what it seems to me I have glimpsed of the fundamental character of reality. You, of course, think I must be a borderline nutcase. You point out there’s a great deal of evidence against the existence of such an evil being. Why on earth would...