On Education, Faith, Wisdom, and an Agenda (Column 328)

I have just read an article by Avigdor Feldman about Prof. Ruth Gavison, of blessed memory, who passed away yesterday.

I found myself agreeing with almost all of her moves and positions that were disparaged in his piece.

I think what is most remembered about her is Aharon Barak’s remark rejecting her candidacy to the Supreme Court on the grounds that she had an agenda.[1]

I dedicate this column to her memory, and at the end I will try to examine the question of an agenda from another angle.

Several times in the past (I think the last time was here) I was asked about the meaning of findings from various surveys showing that people with higher education and/or higher intelligence tend to believe in God less, or to hold left-wing positions. I was asked what that means, and whether it carries real weight.

Of course one can deny the facts themselves. For example, one can question the reliability of such surveys due to lack of professionalism or due to bias and agenda (a very common phenomenon in surveys of this kind). One can also question the criteria by which levels of education (although here it is a bit more clear-cut) and intelligence (which is indeed an elusive, culture-dependent concept) were determined. Sometimes these two claims point to related issues (in many cases the agenda drives a biased definition of the criteria). But here I wish to touch on the question of whether this is even a relevant argument. That is, even if we accept, at least for the sake of discussion, that these findings are correct—what does that say? Is this a relevant claim against faith (or against right-wing positions)?

The Connection to Peer Disagreement

In Columns 247–248 I dealt with questions adjacent to this one. There I spoke about situations of disagreement between peers (peer disagreement), and the question was: why assume that I am right and not my colleague who disputes me? I tried there to offer different arguments that explain why I should go with the position that seems right to me and give it priority despite the parity. It’s important to understand that the discussion here is different. There the assumption was that the disputants are evenly matched, whereas here the claim is that my opponent is superior to me, or at least that there is a majority superior to me (wiser than I am). Beyond that, there I am one of the sides in the debate, whereas here I am looking at a dispute between people and groups from a “UN vantage point” and asking myself how I should form my own position in light of this picture. So although there is some connection, these are different questions.

Ad Hominem

I think I once told here about a book I began writing many years ago with two friends, whose aim was to improve discourse, weed out fallacies, and the like. At some point we gave up, among other things because we went through the list of “fallacies” that appears at the start of every logic book and saw that many of them are not really fallacies. For example, the so-called “ad hominem” fallacy (addressing the person rather than the issue) is not necessarily a fallacy. Sometimes an argument that refers to the person and not to the content is on point. Thus, for example, when I say that Einstein believed in God (or did not believe), that carries some weight. It is not decisive weight, of course, since even a wise person like Einstein can err (and indeed he made use of that capacity more than once), and it’s also not clear whether scientific intelligence is the relevant kind for the question of belief in God (in my view, to some extent, yes). Still, such a statement has weight. Support from a wise person does mean something.

In logic textbooks, such arguments are presented as fallacies mainly because logic concerns itself with the validity of arguments (necessary entailment of the conclusion from the premises), and in arguments of this sort there is of course no necessary entailment of the conclusion. The fact that Einstein believed (or did not) in God is not enough to prove His existence, and so at the logical level it is not surprising that this is considered a fallacy. But at the level of common sense it is not necessarily a fallacy. True, one cannot infer from this a necessary conclusion that God exists, but do you really think Einstein’s stance gives no support, however slight, to that conclusion? If so, at least at the level of common sense such an argument appears to carry weight. So it is with many other so-called fallacies.

Is the Majority Right?

I touched on similar questions in several columns in the past. For example, in Column 69 I presented a model according to which, if we focus on the top of the wisdom/education ladder, it is precisely the minority that is right, whereas in the lower part the minority is wrong. At the end of the column I later added a correct note I received from Arik that greatly qualifies that conclusion (though it too rests on assumptions worthy of discussion).

I won’t repeat that here; I’ll only say that we still need to examine the top percentile of the public, and perhaps it is precisely the distribution there that serves as an indication (and not the distribution in the top decile or quintile). Perhaps only if that distribution holds consistently as we climb all the way up the ladder does it carry weight. See more on this in the discussion of deGrasse’s video at the end of the column.

Social Pressure

Beyond that, what about all the generations of the past? After all, the finest sages across all generations (not only Jews, of course) did believe in God (and sometimes believed in other nonsense as well). Why not include them in our equation? You will surely say that back then everyone believed because it was the fashion or the default assumption. One can reply that to the same extent, at least in certain societies today (mainly in the upper echelons of academic education), the fashion and bon ton are not to believe in God. Part of this is a reaction to religious persecutions of free thinkers, which created a sense that those with free thought are obliged to oppose religiosity and be atheists. In many cases atheism reveals itself as a kind of religion. Therefore there are groups where even if someone believes in God he cannot say so loudly (so too with right-wing politics, although in recent years the situation has improved in both contexts). It is interesting to note that even today, in more traditional societies (such as Muslim societies), most sages still believe in God and do not leave those groups. Is that good evidence? I do not see a significant difference between such a society and a typical academic one. In both there are articles of faith that it is hard for members of these societies to deny.

It is important to stress that I do not mean to claim that such people necessarily lie out of fear or anxiety (though I assume that too exists at times), but rather that sometimes they do not allow themselves to examine the question straightforwardly and to form an independent position—“the heart does not reveal to the mouth.” Just as a person raised in a religious education often cannot allow himself to raise—even inwardly—doubts or positions that run against his environment, let alone present them outwardly, so too for one raised in a secular society. The pressure there is not necessarily less than in religious society. And certainly that is the case in not a few academic cultures. In academia you may pay a professional and economic price for holding such positions, since your colleagues’ esteem for you may plummet if it turns out you are one of those “primitives” who believe in God (or in right-wing politics). In such a situation, at least subconsciously, your advancement can stall and your chances of being accepted and certainly of progressing professionally can drop dramatically.

Incidentally, this phenomenon is also known in halakhah. In capital cases one begins with the youngest judge; that is, the younger and less seasoned judge states his opinion first, so that he not be tempted to adopt the views of his more senior colleagues. So too when counting halakhic positions or following the majority: we do not count derivative elements. For example, when checking a reading in one of the biblical books, or in a Talmudic manuscript, even if we follow the majority (the halakhic rule), manuscripts copied from one another are not counted separately. In a court, the student’s opinion is not counted together with his teacher’s. Thus, if there is a dominant person in a certain academic field, his influence may be quite large, and it is therefore not correct to count those who adopt his position independently of him. The question of how the majority described here was formed is very relevant to our discussion.[2]

On Wisdom and Education

An important question for our discussion is whether education is indeed a good measure of wisdom. In discussions about faith there are arguments for which education does add value (for example, knowledge in evolution and physics), but in many cases (in my opinion, ultimately, in all cases) education as such does not add value in these debates, and the important parameter is wisdom (not education). That is, even if we accept the assumption that a wise person reaches more correct conclusions, it is still not clear that someone more educated is therefore wiser. I am not even sure there is a significant positive correlation between these two variables.

But even the assumption that a wise person (not necessarily educated) indeed reaches more correct conclusions is not so simple. As is known, there are foolish stupidities one can hear only from wise people. A wise person can play with the logic and rhetoric of arguments and reach almost any conclusion. Again, I do not mean a deliberate plot. He himself is convinced by this nonsense, since after all he has good arguments that support it. Incidentally, here education sometimes has negative added value. An educated person is willing to consider positions that at first glance seem odd (he is not captive to common sense), and not for nothing many of them arrive at the postmodern conclusion that consistency is everything. If some thesis is consistent, then for them it stands all tests and is equivalent to any other thesis. With consistency as the yardstick, one can justify almost any position. Hence you will hear strange arguments that lead to preposterous conclusions, and people say them with deep inner conviction, since their logic stands the test of consistency. Only common sense teaches that these are absurdities. But educated and wise people often tend to disdain common sense and intuitions. For them, science decides.

Incidentally, reliance on science sometimes leads to the worst nonsense, since science gives people a pretext to say baseless things and support them with scientific findings or with men of science (ad hominem, did I say?). In my books I brought quite a few such examples, and here, for example, you can see a particularly prominent one from recent times. In parentheses I will say that in my judgment both especially clever arguments and especially foolish ones are said mainly by clever people (particularly if they are educated). A simple person can of course err, but generally he will not say very foolish things. Sheer foolishness is a privilege reserved mainly for the clever, and if we are dealing with educated people then it may be that they will say great foolishness even if they are not wise.

A Systematic Way to Form a Position: A Further Look at “Ad Hominem”

Let us now assume for the sake of discussion that all the arguments I have raised so far are incorrect. Let us further assume that we have truly found that most wise and educated people are not believers, and let us also assume that the chance that they are right is greater than the chance that they are wrong. Even under all these assumptions, must I necessarily adopt the conclusion that there is no God? In my view, the answer is no.

At most, this is one consideration among several that I should take into account when forming my own position. If we suppose that I have arguments that seem to me very good in favor of God’s existence, the fact that most wise/educated people think otherwise does not necessarily change my stance. First, because as I showed in Columns 247–248 there are good reasons to go with what I myself think (for example, in situations where, in my assessment, there are arguments many of the dissenters have not encountered or have not considered seriously enough). Beyond that, not only is this consideration just one among several—it is no less important that it is not a consideration that goes to the heart of the matter.

Take for example the common claim that because of Occam’s razor we should adopt a theory due to its simplicity. Seemingly, by that we should adopt Newtonian mechanics and not quantum and relativistic theories, which are far more complex. So what is the problem here? Simply, the Newtonian theory does not answer several difficulties and does not fit certain observational facts. The razor is a criterion I use to decide between theories that have, in my eyes, the same probability and that have all resolved the difficulties and fit all the relevant facts. When I am in such a situation, the razor tells me to adopt the simplest of them. But if one theory is more correct, plausible, or convincing than its competitor, then I must choose it even if it is more complex.

So too here: the consideration of the majority view, or the view of most sages, can come at most after I have weighed the arguments on the merits. If I remain in doubt, more or less evenly balanced between a few options, X or Y, then—and only then—there may be room to consider the criterion that most sages hold X. But if X is much more plausible to me than Y, there is no reason to adopt Y because of that majority. Here I can bring my favorite story, attributed (how not?!) to R. Yonatan Eybeschütz. One day the priest came to him and asked why Jews do not convert to Christianity—after all, the Christians are the majority and the Torah says “follow the majority.” R. Yonatan replied that the rule to follow the majority applies to cases of doubt. But if I have no doubt, why should I follow the majority?! Consider a case where you find a piece of meat lying in the street, wrapped and sealed with a kosher plomba. Most shops in the area sell non-kosher meat. Is this piece kosher or not? According to halakhah, when one finds a piece of meat in the market its status is determined by the majority of shops in the relevant area. But in our case it is clear we will treat the meat as kosher, since it bears a closed kosher seal. The rule to follow the majority applies only to cases where we are in doubt and know nothing about the piece. In such a case we follow the local majority of shops. But if we know, we are not in doubt, and then there is no reason to follow the majority. So too here: if I have good arguments in favor of belief in God, I do not see why I should invoke the rule of following the majority. All the more so when even among the sages it is only a majority, not unanimity. When I have good arguments for X, I do not choose Y because of the majority.

In a different formulation, taken from R. Shimon Shkop’s explanation of the rule that we do not follow the majority in monetary law (see Columns 226 and 237): R. Shkop explains that this rule applies to situations where the claim that I belong to the minority is entirely reasonable. For example, there is a person in a closed room and I do not see him. My friend tells me it is unlikely that this person’s height exceeds 1.90 m, since the overwhelming majority of the population is shorter. But the person calls out to me from the room that his height is 1.95 m. Is it correct to dismiss his words as unlikely because they run against the majority? That would be nonsense. It is obvious to all that there are tall people in the world. If that person tells me he belongs to that minority, why should I doubt him?! The majority rule is relevant only to situations where I have no further information about the options. But when I do have additional information, it is not necessarily right to follow the majority. So too here: I have good arguments in favor of belief in God—why should I dismiss them because of the majority? Formally, in such a case the prior probability that the majority is right should be multiplied by the prior probability that my good arguments are wrong. Is the probability given by that product greater than 50%? That depends, of course, on the quality of my arguments (and also on whether the majority of sages who reached a different conclusion from mine have seriously considered them. If in my assessment the arguments are good, then the very fact that they reached a different conclusion is itself some indication that they have not).

You can see that what I have described here is merely a certain, more cautious version of an “ad hominem”-type fallacy, that is, reliance on the person (and not on the argument on its merits). Arguments that lean on decisions by virtue of technical considerations, like following the majority, generally express helplessness. One who lacks substantive arguments (especially if there are good arguments against him) pulls out of the hat the technocratic rabbit, i.e., various versions of ad hominem. Ironically, atheists are accustomed to accusing believers of reliance on authoritative figures (rabbis, tradition), yet at the same time they themselves often use ad hominem arguments when they rely on the majority of sages/educated people, and the like. But this is forgivable, since their arguments on the merits are indeed rather weak, and therefore they have little choice. The problem is that not a few believers (some of whom raise these questions here on the site) find themselves embarrassed by these arguments. My words in this column are directed to them.

Critical Viewing

In the thread I linked at the beginning of the column there is a video in which a pleasant fellow named Neil deGrasse Tyson presents the claim about atheism among most educated and wise people. The video is translated courtesy of some atheist institute, as part of their characteristic ad hominem effort. I can imagine that such a video may embarrass quite a few believing viewers (like the questioner in that thread). So, as a dessert, I invite you to join me in critically watching this video.

• DeGrasse begins by noting that 90% of U.S. residents report themselves as religious. He precedes this with a fairly strict definition of that label (people who pray to a God involved in their lives). That is quite a stunning figure, especially compared with the (somewhat mistaken) image many of us have of the U.S. as the land of freedom and permissiveness. No wonder the atheists there are in distress and resort to fancy ad hominem arguments (“most wise/educated people are atheists”).
• Next he presents statistics about holders of a PhD. I already addressed the connection between education and wisdom. Moreover, a doctorate is a guarantee of education in a very specific field, which further clouds the connection between a PhD and general education. DeGrasse, of course, does not spare us the remark that there are those without a PhD who nevertheless claim to be educated, though they are not. Behold a cheap piece of “scientific” demagoguery. Relying on degrees as a formal measure of education has some logic to it—if only because it is hard to propose other metrics—but I would not build too tall a structure on it. If I were to ask how many books—non-fiction outside your field, or literature—you read in a year, that would be a much better measure in my view. And still, among those with a PhD, 60% are religious even by his strict definition.
• At this point he also claims that a doctorate is a good metric because it represents the capacity for independent thought. I think he is quite mistaken here, with a mistake typical precisely of those who do not hold a doctorate. In my view, the connection between a PhD and free thought is rather weak—sometimes even inverse. To get ahead, certainly in fields that are not exact sciences (but also in those), you need a good measure of conformity. Try publishing a paper that denies a core dogma in some scientific field and see what obstacles are placed in your path (consider the case of Dan Shechtman, Nobel laureate in Chemistry from the Technion, and the opposition he faced regarding the structure of a fivefold quasicrystal, among many similar examples).
• But beyond this question, even if we assume that population indeed possesses independent thought, does independent thought necessarily yield a more correct answer? I am not sure, and in any case it seems reasonable that not in every field. There is something in accumulated wisdom, and a tendency to jettison it can even lower your chances of being right. I indeed oppose conservatism (see Columns 249 and 263), but also anti-conservatism. I favor substantive thinking, examining everything on its merits. One might argue that this is itself independent thinking, but then I do not accept the assumption that academics are indeed such independent thinkers. Free thinkers have a drive to say something new (if they are academics, that is how they make a living). Does that drive not lead away from truth? You can see, for example, in archaeology and biblical studies how, every so often, papers and claims appear with some silly sensation or other—some at the level of a wedding-speech witticism. The more extreme and bold you are, the more prominent your headlines in the popular press, of course. Only then can you publish a paper (and afterwards, of course, there will be another paper by someone else who finds the error in the previous one). In short, it is doubtful to what extent we should ascribe free thought to academics—and even if so, free thought is not a sufficient guarantee of correct results. I would say it is perhaps a (nearly) necessary condition, but certainly not sufficient—and sometimes it even interferes.
• The next stage of DeGrasse’s talk concerns the percentage of believers among scientists (I presume he means mathematics and the natural sciences). Here the result is 40%. He adds that among mathematicians and engineers the number is 60%, and among biologists and physicists 20%, so the average is 40%. That in itself already says something. Why should your scientific field affect your religious worldview? Assuming there is no difference in talent between a mathematician and a physicist, it is very interesting that the mathematicians are together with PhD holders in general (where most are religious even by DeGrasse’s strict definition!!), and the physicists and biologists are far below. Is it not more reasonable to interpret that one’s field dictates certain modes of thinking that are unrelated to education and scientific skill? To a simple believer like me, that is at least a possible interpretation, and in a straight discussion it is definitely worth considering.
• The next stage of the talk concerns the percentage of believers among senior scientists (those appointed to the National Academy of Sciences). Here the percentage is 7%. I ask myself: are these people more broadly educated or do they possess higher intelligence? In his remarks DeGrasse does not distinguish between these two, but in my preface I showed that this distinction is very important for the discussion. Even if we accept that a PhD indicates broader education, membership in the Academy may indicate intelligence but not necessarily broader education. So what is the relevant parameter that accompanies the entire axis DeGrasse sketches for us? He slips, insidiously, between the two axes—either because he does not notice, or because he mistakenly identifies them. In addition, I rather doubt his claim itself. True, there is a correlation between being elected to the Academy and scientific achievements and abilities, but I would not accept that connection across the board.
• DeGrasse himself honestly raises here the claim that there may be bias (against believers) in appointments to these institutions, but counters that bias could only mean that someone worthy is not appointed; those who were appointed are undoubtedly of indisputable scientific achievement. This asymmetry is taken by him as a rebuttal that neutralizes counter-arguments, but in truth this learned distinction, even if correct, has no logical significance in our discussion. To see this, let us assume, for the sake of discussion, that all those appointed indeed have exceptional achievements, but there is bias that prevents the appointment of believers who have similar achievements. Would such asymmetry not show that the share of believers there does not accurately represent the true share of believers among senior scientists in general? Why should this asymmetry undermine objections to his claims?

Incidentally, does the same bias he tacitly acknowledges regarding the Academy not exist in academic appointments in general? For some reason he does not resort to that argument there at all.

• Further on he notes that the headline of the article reporting this survey in the prestigious journal Nature was: 93% of senior scientists deny the existence of God. He argues that the more interesting headline should have been: 7% do not deny His existence (even though that is so absurd). At this point, the veneer of substantive discussion is stripped away at once, and the fellow moves from the façade of substantive, quantitative arguments (merely apparent, as we have seen) to open propaganda on the table.
• In the propagandistic finale of the video he asks: how can it be? How can people with indisputable scientific achievements believe in God? (I would add another difficulty: how is it that those seven percent do not understand his argument—that is, are not impressed by the fact that most of their equally smart colleagues do not believe in God). Fear not: he has a persuasive explanation for this fascinating phenomenon. In the future they will probably discover a brain structure or a gene responsible for that strange feeling (=faith), and thus, instead of arguing, we will learn something new and interesting about our brain.

For some reason he does not consider the possibility that they will discover a different brain structure or gene among the 93% who do not believe in God that is responsible for their atheism (and thus we will learn something no less new about the brain). I will add that because, in my opinion, the arguments for the existence of God are very good, I would look for the relevant brain structure or gene precisely among those 93% and not among their colleagues—otherwise it is hard to understand their ignoring good arguments. Here we return to the questions of whether the majority decides, what the majority means, and whether the existence of a majority replaces arguments and substantive discussion.

• Finally we come to the cherry on top. DeGrasse concludes by stating that among philosophers only one percent (!!) believe in God. Seemingly this datum truly calls for interpretation. But before we interpret it I would ask: whom exactly does he define as a philosopher? I assume he did not count the ramim (lecturers) in faith at Har HaMor, the mashgichim of the yeshivot, Chabad mashpi’im, etc. Why are all these not philosophers? And I have not even spoken about the failure to distinguish between professors of philosophy (academics) and philosophers (most of whom are not academics—check whose thought the philosophy departments actually research). And of course I have not addressed how he filters out all the purveyors of worthless rubbish in philosophy departments across the universe.

But above all, I ask again: what follows from this datum? Why indeed are philosophers so exceptional in holding the pure, unalloyed truth? Seemingly, by his claim they are at the peak of the monotonic axis he describes. By his lights it follows that philosophers (even without filtering out all the rubbish) are the discipline of the wisest people in the universe, even more than the scientists who are Academy members, and therefore they arrive at the truth at such a high rate. I very much doubt such a claim would withstand tests of measured intelligence against mathematicians or physicists. I would add that this does not seem correct to me in light of my acquaintance with the dramatis personae in these fields. Another option is to acknowledge what I argued earlier—namely, that in the data he brings one can clearly see the influence of discipline and environment on our modes of thinking and theological conclusions. That, of course, places a big question mark (caution: understatement!!) on the significance of the entire video.

I would also add the phenomenon I described above: that there are kinds of nonsense that can emerge only from the bellies of intellectuals. People accustomed to testing hypothetical possibilities by the tools of consistency without regard to common sense will indeed tend to adopt odd conclusions just because they seem interesting and consistent. In my view, that—and not intelligence—is what most characterizes philosophers as opposed to scientists. Now go and see what this datum means for the discussion about belief in God.

Asymmetric Thinking About Religious Faith

I will conclude with this: people (religious and not) tend to ascribe ulterior motives to religious faith, or at least to seek such motives, while lack of faith is always perceived as a balanced and rational conclusion. Thus, for example, many people are troubled by the question of whether faith is the product of religious upbringing, environment, and home, and they even adduce in support the correlation between being raised in a religious home and living with a religious worldview. But for some reason only a few are troubled by the question of whether lack of faith is the product of non-religious upbringing, environment, and home—a question supported, of course, by strikingly similar statistics. I discussed this in Column 294 and also in Columns 265 and 36.

As in what we saw there, so too in DeGrasse’s words we see a search for genes responsible for faith—but for some reason there is no search in him for genes responsible for lack of faith. Are not these very searches and difficulties themselves cognitive biases? He does not even put on the table the premise that faith is unreasonable; he simply assumes it as obvious, and then looks for what could explain how intelligent people hold such odd positions. What worries me is that in most cases we are not dealing with intentional demagoguery but with an innocent mistake. Many people are not even aware that they are biased, and they present these arguments as if they were crushing arguments against religious faith, whereas they apply in similar fashion against atheism.

DeGrasse presents data telling us that most PhD holders believe in God, and that this is likewise the case among engineers and mathematicians. But he chooses to focus on physicists and biologists, because it is more convenient. For some reason the viewer leaves with the impression that the findings portray faith as a foolish matter stemming from lack of education: the believer is uneducated, the educated does not believe.

It seems to me that DeGrasse—who, as far as I have seen, is himself a scientist of respectable achievements—in this talk gives us a paradigmatic example of free, agenda-less thinking (without an agenda—apropos Ruth Gavison, of blessed memory) by men of science. I think that if you read my words here carefully you will see that his lecture refutes itself.

[1] Incidentally, this is indeed a common quotation, but it is tendentious and imprecise (there is an agenda at its base), and this is not the place to elaborate.

[2] If you examine speeches by important people at various conferences, you will see that they allow themselves to speak more nonsense than ordinary people. A Supreme Court justice or a minister allows himself to utter valueless clichés and baseless nonsense, to tell stories about his grandmother or about the taxi driver who drove him—something no one else could allow himself. Such a person is invited to speak because of who he is and not because he has something to say. Usually you will not find any novelty in their tedious words, which does not prevent every self-respecting forum from continuing to invite them again and again. Ordinary people who speak at such conferences must say sensible things to receive a platform and attentive ears. Status in the academic world is quite defined (they spend no small amount of time ranking people and achievements), and one’s influence on colleagues is indeed a function of that status. Again, this is quite similar to what happens in religious society (there too important rabbis generally say tedious things and introduce no novelty. Novelties you will mostly hear from rank-and-file avrechim).

Keep this rule of thumb: if you are planning to attend a conference featuring some important person—a Supreme Court justice, a famous rabbi, a minister, a president, a prime minister, or even a very senior academic—it is worth arriving only after he has finished speaking (unless you are among the celebrity-worshippers who come merely to watch the movement of their lips and admire their handsome appearance). Tried and tested.