Why Are Engineers The Most Religious (& Radical) Academics?

[Alyrium Denryle]

Do not underestimate the strange ways of intellectual compartmentalization. There is no inconsistency at all in building a mental box called "Religion" in which you put your claims that you know are either unprovable or incapable of disproof and then building a mental box called "Science" in which you put your claims that can be tested

Yes. There is. What valuable information do you get from these untestable claims? How do you differentiate between competing truth claims? It is like believing that there are little men inside your television that make it work despite having science tell you how it works. They make the electrons flow or something. There are an infinite number of said intellectual-merit-free propositions that one could make.

I imagine that it must be quite easy because numerous scientists, engineers, and mathematicians ranging from Copernicus to Newton to Planck seemed to have no trouble generating valid and valuable science while believing in God.

That does not mean they are correct. Just that they have few problems being inconsistent. Belief in God actually stifled Newton in the end because when he came upon a problem he could not solve (stability of planets and moons in their orbits in a multibody system) he just threw up his hands and started basking in the glory of god. It took an atheist named LaPlace to say "I have no need of that hypothesis[god]" and fully apply calculus to the problem.

[Serafine666]

Yes. There is. What valuable information do you get from these untestable claims? How do you differentiate between competing truth claims? It is like believing that there are little men inside your television that make it work despite having science tell you how it works. They make the electrons flow or something.

The "valuable information" you get from these untestable claims never rises beyond moral or ethical guidance. You differentiate between competing truth claims first by testability and then by weight of evidence. You ask that as if you're unfamiliar with the scientific method.

There are an infinite number of said intellectual-merit-free propositions that one could make.

While true, I'm not seeing how there is any inconsistency in holding both scientific and non-scientific claims. Clearly, the "little men" aren't scientific because it is an unprovable (or non-disprovable) claim and go into the "Religion" box.

That does not mean they are correct. Just that they have few problems being inconsistent. Belief in God actually stifled Newton in the end because when he came upon a problem he could not solve (stability of planets and moons in their orbits in a multibody system) he just threw up his hands and started basking in the glory of god. It took an atheist named LaPlace to say "I have no need of that hypothesis[god]" and fully apply calculus to the problem.

Not correct? I'll have to tell the history books and others to discard mention of the scientific veracity of Copernicus, Newton, Planck, and others because if you say that their scientific validity doesn't prove they are correct, then it must be the case.

By the by... what does Newton (and Leonhard Euler and Joseph Louis Lagrange) being unable to solve the problem have to do with his belief in God? I'm sure that you have a point but your phrased it so awkwardly that it sounded as if the two had nothing to do with one another.

[Alyrium Denryle]

The "valuable information" you get from these untestable claims never rises beyond moral or ethical guidance.

Because they are untestable your acceptance of them is arbitrary(because you have no way of evaluating their truth of falsehood). If your acceptance of them is arbitrary, then they do not provide meaningful guidance.

You differentiate between competing truth claims first by testability and then by weight of evidence. You ask that as if you're unfamiliar with the scientific method.

And you make that statement as if you failed remedial English. I was referring to differentiating between competing untestable truth claims such as "God exists and wishes us to fuck goats" and "Xenu exists and wishes us to fuck chickens".

As for my being unfamiliar with the scientific method, I am forced to chuckle at the suggestion as I am in fact intimately familiar with it. My social life has been sacrificed on its altar for the better part of a decade.

While true, I'm not seeing how there is any inconsistency in holding both scientific and non-scientific claims. Clearly, the "little men" aren't scientific because it is an unprovable (or non-disprovable) claim and go into the "Religion" box.

You miss the point. Having two boxes is the inconsistent part. Requiring a standard of evidence for one set of truth claims, but not for another for reasons which are entirely arbitrary.

There is only one proper box for claims that are so devoid of intellectual merit that their truth value cannot even be evaluated. The Bullshit Box.

Not correct? I'll have to tell the history books and others to discard mention of the scientific veracity of Copernicus, Newton, Planck, and others because if you say that their scientific validity doesn't prove they are correct, then it must be the case.

Do you actively try to build strawmen and set them on fire, or are you just incompetent? I have always held the position that it is more parsimonious to never attribute to malice what can equally be attributed to stupidity so I will assume that until you prove otherwise.

I was referring to the correctness of their compartmentalization. That they were being consistent in having two boxes. Simply stating that "X did it, therefore it works!" is invalid. Why? People hold mutually exclusive positions all the time. It is the entire reason why cognitive dissonance exists and can be used to manipulate people.

I'm sure that you have a point but your phrased it so awkwardly that it sounded as if the two had nothing to do with one another.

No. You just missed the point because your ability to comprehend written english is substandard. It stifled him because he came across a problem that was difficult for him and rather than fully applying the discipline of math he invented to the problem, he attributed causation to God and stopped trying.

[Serafine666]

And you make that statement as if you failed remedial English. I was referring to differentiating between competing untestable truth claims such as "God exists and wishes us to fuck goats" and "Xenu exists and wishes us to fuck chickens".

That is arbitrary as well but has no real effect on your ability to separate such claims from scientific thinking

As for my being unfamiliar with the scientific method, I am forced to chuckle at the suggestion as I am in fact intimately familiar with it. My social life has been sacrificed on its altar for the better part of a decade.

Well, then appearances were deceiving. I apologize.

You miss the point. Having two boxes is the inconsistent part. Requiring a standard of evidence for one set of truth claims, but not for another for reasons which are entirely arbitrary.

There is only one proper box for claims that are so devoid of intellectual merit that their truth value cannot even be evaluated. The Bullshit Box.

Then call it the bullshit box. It's still the same box and distinct from the "Science" box.

Do you actively try to build strawmen and set them on fire, or are you just incompetent? I have always held the position that it is more parsimonious to never attribute to malice what can equally be attributed to stupidity so I will assume that until you prove otherwise.

I was trying to be facetious; I sort of assumed the naked absurdity of the statement would give it away as being too silly to be serious.

I was referring to the correctness of their compartmentalization. That they were being consistent in having two boxes. Simply stating that "X did it, therefore it works!" is invalid. Why? People hold mutually exclusive positions all the time. It is the entire reason why cognitive dissonance exists and can be used to manipulate people.

We're using different terminology for the same phenomenon: in some manner, their holding of bullshit beliefs did not prevent them from holding scientific beliefs and, in fact, holding valid ones. I perhaps incorrectly called this compartmentalizing but no matter what it is called, it certainly did exist.

No. You just missed the point because your ability to comprehend written english is substandard. It stifled him because he came across a problem that was difficult for him and rather than fully applying the discipline of math he invented to the problem, he attributed causation to God and stopped trying.

See, that is what I thought you were trying to say but that statement assumes that it was fully within his ability to apply algebra in this way. Neither Euler nor Lagrange, neither of them lightweights in any fashion where mathematics was concerned, were able to solve the problem either and both had full access to Newton's work. It wasn't until LaPlace came along with access to the work of all three that the problem was solved and it seems highly unlikely that being an atheist was instrumental in his ability to think about the problem in a different manner.

[Simon_Jester]

Do not underestimate the strange ways of intellectual compartmentalization. There is no inconsistency at all in building a mental box called "Religion" in which you put your claims that you know are either unprovable or incapable of disproof and then building a mental box called "Science" in which you put your claims that can be tested

Yes. There is. What valuable information do you get from these untestable claims? How do you differentiate between competing truth claims?

Either something functionally identical to amusement, or a varying degree of ethical guidance which may or may not be useful. For people who don't like some of the premises of the nontheist moral philosophies*, this can be worthwhile, though it need not be. At any rate, when embedded in a sane society this kind of thing is harmless and therefore irrelevant at worst. It is only harmful when combined with general stupidity that leads the user to try and force the stuff in their Religion box on the rest of the world... which, you may note, Serafine666 is not proposing to do.

*such as utilitarianism or Kantian categorical imperatives

It is like believing that there are little men inside your television that make it work despite having science tell you how it works. They make the electrons flow or something. There are an infinite number of said intellectual-merit-free propositions that one could make.

Not quite; Serafine is restricting the argument to what may be called the "god of the gaps." This is very different from proposing that there are little men inside a television, because we can actually crack a television open to see how it works. We cannot crack metaphysics open to see how it works. Positing little men (or big bearded patriarchs) inside the uncrackable black box is at worst a harmless complication, so long as it is not combined with general stupidity.

That does not mean they are correct. Just that they have few problems being inconsistent. Belief in God actually stifled Newton in the end because when he came upon a problem he could not solve (stability of planets and moons in their orbits in a multibody system) he just threw up his hands and started basking in the glory of god. It took an atheist named LaPlace to say "I have no need of that hypothesis[god]" and fully apply calculus to the problem.

Laplace had a few other notable advantages; he was operating a century later, with the benefit of other people's work, after calculus had been formally proven by the generations of mathematicians after Newton.

In Newton's day, calculus was the kooky notation he whipped together in his basement, not something that he could confidently use as the basis of a physical argument. There's a reason why Newton's published works use geometric proofs and not calculus-based ones; calculus was a bleeding-edge piece of mathematics at the time, and using it in his publications would have left him open to (not unwarranted) attacks against the calculus as well as attacks against his physics results.

[Alyrium Denryle]

That is arbitrary as well but has no real effect on your ability to separate such claims from scientific thinking

You seem to make a career out of missing points. I have never claimed that someone cannot hold two epistemological positions at once. People certainly do. I am saying that they are mutually exclusive propositions and that people who do so are being intellectually dishonest, either intentionally or unintentionally.

If you are going to argue for a position or against one, at least get a decent picture what said position is.

Then call it the bullshit box. It's still the same box and distinct from the "Science" box.

No. In order to be consistent, one needs to hold all truth claims to the same standard. What I meant by the Bullshit Box is probably more analogous to a trash can. If you are going to hold one set of truth claims to a standard of evidence, a "way of knowing" or an epistemological system you need to apply that to all truth claims. This means that if you are a scientist all truth claims need to be subjected to empirical scrutiny and evaluated by comparing them to what we can observe in the universe. It is not consistent to say "Truth Claim X requires a certain amount of evidence in order for me to accept it, but I am going to give Truth Claim Y a free pass"

What one should do, is casually discard truth claim Y unless it can be held to that same standard.

Now, does everyone do this? No. There is nothing stopping them from doing so, and their failure to do so does not invalidate their conclusion regarding Truth Claim X. However they are not being intellectually honest when they do so.

their holding of bullshit beliefs did not prevent them from holding scientific beliefs and, in fact, holding valid ones.

No. It did not. However that does not mean that they did so in a way that was intellectually consistent. People hold two mutually exclusive positions all the time. It causes something called cognitive dissonance, and the more clever a person is the better they are able to rationalize holding those mutually exclusive positions at the same time.

Take Kenneth Miller as an example. The man is a good cellular biologist. He holds the position that human cognition is rooted in brain structure and that human behavior evolved through the laws of natural selection. He also believes in an immaterial soul that controls and is cosmically responsible for your actions. It does not take rocket science to note that these two beliefs are mutually exclusive. However he has written an entire book called Finding Darwin's God where he lays out how he rationalizes holding these two fundamentally contradictory positions.

Similar situation with Francis Collins, though he is even nuttier, having seen a frozen waterfall in the mountains and literally knelt down on the spot to accept Jesus.

It wasn't until LaPlace came along with access to the work of all three that the problem was solved and it seems highly unlikely that being an atheist was instrumental in his ability to think about the problem in a different manner.

He was the first to not give up and attribute causation to God. Even if the others had no capability of finding some semblance of the answer, they still threw up their hands and said "god did it"

It is only harmful when combined with general stupidity that leads the user to try and force the stuff in their Religion box on the rest of the world... which, you may note, Serafine666 is not proposing to do.

And at no point did I say it was harmful. Only stupid. Religious people are evaluating the ethical truth claims of religion based upon the premises of secular philosophies anyway, whether they know it or not. For example, the bible tells them to stone homosexuals but you dont often see them do it now do you? They have concluded despite biblical command that doing so is wrong, but then give a contradictory portion of the bible the credit.

There's a reason why Newton's published works use geometric proofs and not calculus-based ones; calculus was a bleeding-edge piece of mathematics at the time, and using it in his publications would have left him open to (not unwarranted) attacks against the calculus as well as attacks against his physics results.

Granted. And it was an attic if I recall, not a basement. As a general rule physicists isolate themselves in attics, computer scientists in basements, and biologists in some form of hermitage.

[Simon_Jester]

It wasn't until LaPlace came along with access to the work of all three that the problem was solved and it seems highly unlikely that being an atheist was instrumental in his ability to think about the problem in a different manner.

He was the first to not give up and attribute causation to God. Even if the others had no capability of finding some semblance of the answer, they still threw up their hands and said "god did it"

I find this explanation inadequate; do you have a citation?

Seriously, solving the many-body problem in a way that could demonstrate the stability of the solar system is a nontrivial physics problem. It's not a case where Newton simply came to the question "is the solar system stable?" and automatically answered "of course not, it's all held together by divine intervention!"

It's a case where Newton came to the question, thought about it hard for an extended time, bringing to bear a kind of mathematical genius that you or I can barely imagine... and couldn't come up with a proof that gravity alone would stabilize the solar system. Thus, at some point, he decided to get on with his life. Which required him to say "Fuck it, I don't know if the solar system is stable! Maybe it's all held together by divine intervention!" and move on to some other experiment where he might actually accomplish something instead of bashing his brains out on this one intractable problem for the rest of his life.

Replacing Newton with atheist-Newton would not necessarily improve matters, because atheist-Newton would still reach the point of "Fuck it, I don't know if the solar system is stable!" The only thing that would improve matters would be to make Newton vastly more stubborn and obsessed with this one problem, so that he would dedicate the man-hours necessary to think of a way to solve it. Note that being a theist did not prevent Newton from proposing that the planets orbited the Sun due to gravity, rather than being held in their orbits by invisible angels or something.

So I think you're grossly oversimplifying the nature of work on the stability of the solar system for the sake of scoring a debating point by claiming that it took an atheist to "see behind" the theists' handwave. The problem was not one of mere handwaving; the problem was that figuring out a method to prove the stability of the solar system was so hard that even a mathematical genius would have to devote a significant chunk of their professional life to finding a proof.

There's a reason why Newton's published works use geometric proofs and not calculus-based ones; calculus was a bleeding-edge piece of mathematics at the time, and using it in his publications would have left him open to (not unwarranted) attacks against the calculus as well as attacks against his physics results.

Granted. And it was an attic if I recall, not a basement. As a general rule physicists isolate themselves in attics, computer scientists in basements, and biologists in some form of hermitage.

It depends. Nowadays we mostly use basements, because it's easier for us to build large ominous pieces of equipment underground than aboveground.

[Serafine666]

You seem to make a career out of missing points. I have never claimed that someone cannot hold two epistemological positions at once. People certainly do. I am saying that they are mutually exclusive propositions and that people who do so are being intellectually dishonest, either intentionally or unintentionally.

If you are going to argue for a position or against one, at least get a decent picture what said position is.

I'm certain of what my own position is: that there is no intellectual dishonesty, whether inadvertent or not, in applying different standards to different matters. There is no intellectual dishonesty in the fact that the medical profession of psychology does not (and usually, can not) rely on the normal array of tests to identify illness as many illnesses, while having consistent characteristics, are based solely on the things that can be outwardly observed. It is generally impossible to fake having cancer because one can conclusively test such a thing but as long as someone is saying and doing the things in the standard manual, they are indistinguishable from someone who is genuinely mentally ill. This is only possible through the different means by which mental and physical illness is diagnosed and the standards that are applied to those means.

No. In order to be consistent, one needs to hold all truth claims to the same standard.

There is certainly the consistency of actions but there is also the consistency of direction. A person who is consistent in action applies the same standards and responds in the same way to the same circumstances. A person who is consistent in direction may respond differently to identical circumstances depending upon the goal they're trying to achieve. Both, however, are examples of a person being both consistent and inconsistent.

What I meant by the Bullshit Box is probably more analogous to a trash can. If you are going to hold one set of truth claims to a standard of evidence, a "way of knowing" or an epistemological system you need to apply that to all truth claims. This means that if you are a scientist all truth claims need to be subjected to empirical scrutiny and evaluated by comparing them to what we can observe in the universe. It is not consistent to say "Truth Claim X requires a certain amount of evidence in order for me to accept it, but I am going to give Truth Claim Y a free pass."

What one should do, is casually discard truth claim Y unless it can be held to that same standard.

It all depends upon what Truth Claim X and Truth Claim Y are. It is consistent and intellectually honest to apply Standard 1 to all truth claims like X and Standard 2 to all truth claims like Y because you are consistently applying the same standard to the same type of claim. A claim that God exists, which is inherently impossible to test, is one type of claim and a claim that light is affected by gravity, which can be empirically tested, is another type of claim. As long as you apply one standard to the "inherently impossible to test" and another standard to the "can be empirically tested", you are being consistent.

Now, does everyone do this? No. There is nothing stopping them from doing so, and their failure to do so does not invalidate their conclusion regarding Truth Claim X. However they are not being intellectually honest when they do so.

No. It did not. However that does not mean that they did so in a way that was intellectually consistent. People hold two mutually exclusive positions all the time. It causes something called cognitive dissonance, and the more clever a person is the better they are able to rationalize holding those mutually exclusive positions at the same time.

Take Kenneth Miller as an example. The man is a good cellular biologist. He holds the position that human cognition is rooted in brain structure and that human behavior evolved through the laws of natural selection. He also believes in an immaterial soul that controls and is cosmically responsible for your actions. It does not take rocket science to note that these two beliefs are mutually exclusive. However he has written an entire book called Finding Darwin's God where he lays out how he rationalizes holding these two fundamentally contradictory positions.

Similar situation with Francis Collins, though he is even nuttier, having seen a frozen waterfall in the mountains and literally knelt down on the spot to accept Jesus.

While true, it is rare to have two types of claims overlap; so long as they are not mutually exclusive, it requires no cognitive dissonance, intellectual dishonesty, or inconsistency to hold both at the same time. Thus the lack of challenge for scientists.

He was the first to not give up and attribute causation to God. Even if the others had no capability of finding some semblance of the answer, they still threw up their hands and said "God did it"

Which really has no bearing at all. If you do not know, attributing something to an untestable cause you pulled out of your ass is just the same as admitting that you have no idea. If I have no idea how to address a question asking me to calculate the square root of -9.67, "magical space unicorn Frank" is equivalent to "I have no clue."

And at no point did I say it was harmful. Only stupid. Religious people are evaluating the ethical truth claims of religion based upon the premises of secular philosophies anyway, whether they know it or not. For example, the Bible tells them to stone homosexuals but you dont often see them do it now do you? They have concluded despite Biblical command that doing so is wrong, but then give a contradictory portion of the Bible the credit.

Or, and this is just a thought, they regard something that the Bible called "the highest commandment under the law" as being a higher commandment than "stone gay people." Then there's the folks that arbitrarily decide that one command is better than another because it's more socially acceptable. The two groups are not the same.

[Darth Wong]

The simplest explanation is that there is a certain percentage of religious people which has the necessary skills to do some kind of math, science, or engineering work. Of those three categories, engineering probably offers what they see as the best combination of career opportunities and inoffensive nature. Hence, that is where they flow.

Too many people look at this as if it is some inherent failing of engineering, rather than looking at the fact that there is a population bloc here which has scientific/engineering aptitude so they will be drawn to something in that area, and when they look at that area, they will choose that which is least offensive to them.

It's not as if engineering is intrinsically friendly to religion. If anything, the overriding principle of engineering is pragmatism, which is hardly a religious philosophy. It's just that engineering is the least likely of the related disciplines to tread on a religious person's beliefs, because it more easily lends itself to intellectual compartmentalization.

[Terralthra]

Neil deGrasse Tyson gave a brief lecture on this topic:

[Serafine666]

Neil deGrasse Tyson gave a brief lecture on this topic:

Thanks for the vid, Terralthra. The lecturer did a fantastic job of discussing this topic.

[FSTargetDrone]

Thanks for the vid, Terralthra. The lecturer did a fantastic job of discussing this topic.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, for those who do not know, is an astrophysicist and also is the Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

[Surlethe]

It's not as if engineering is intrinsically friendly to religion. If anything, the overriding principle of engineering is pragmatism, which is hardly a religious philosophy. It's just that engineering is the least likely of the related disciplines to tread on a religious person's beliefs, because it more easily lends itself to intellectual compartmentalization.

It may also be that engineering, favoring pragmatism, lends itself to a pragmatic approach to religion: this belief works for me, so I'll just assume it. It seems to me there's also an element of taking assumptions for granted in engineering - once you've verified a principle, you don't have to (or want to) go back and question it, so you just take it for granted.

[Mayabird]

It's not as if engineering is intrinsically friendly to religion. If anything, the overriding principle of engineering is pragmatism, which is hardly a religious philosophy. It's just that engineering is the least likely of the related disciplines to tread on a religious person's beliefs, because it more easily lends itself to intellectual compartmentalization.

It may also be that engineering, favoring pragmatism, lends itself to a pragmatic approach to religion: this belief works for me, so I'll just assume it. It seems to me there's also an element of taking assumptions for granted in engineering - once you've verified a principle, you don't have to (or want to) go back and question it, so you just take it for granted.

Eh, that's putting too much thought into it. Most people never analyze their own beliefs unless they're challenged from outside (and even then most of the time still don't), and, say, designing a more streamlined car isn't going to force the issue the same way as "holy shit, look at all these fossils."