Reducationism: Scientific Methodology, Atheist Philosohy, Rhetorical Ploy

            Reductionism is a major methodological aspect of science; it also lends itself to atheist thought as a major world view, and to atheist apologetics as a rhetorical ploy. Reduction is a valid scientific methodology, but like all science it is also infused with notions of an ideological nature. When atheists use reductionism as a tool of ideology it has the fervor of scientific dedication and is cast with the aura of the sacred. It is both a valid methodological tool and an ideological propaganda device at the same time.

DEFINITION OF REDUCTIONISM

1

: explanation of complex life-science processes and phenomena in terms of the laws of physics and chemistry; also : a theory or doctrine that complete reductionism is possible

2

: a procedure or theory that reduces complex data and phenomena to simple terms [1]

Philosophical roots of reductionism

             “Methodological reductionism” is the process of reducing phenomena to its smallest constituent parts to understand what makes it function as a method for dealing with complexities that need to broken down.[2] Then there is “philosophical reductionism” which maintains as its goal a philosophical and/or ideological tenet that science can explain everything:

One form of scientific reductionism follows the belief that every single process in nature can be broken down into its constituent parts and can be described scientifically. The broadest sense of the term upholds the idea that science can be used to explain everything, and that nothing is unknowable. By looking at the individual constituent processes, scientists can gain an understanding of the whole process. For example, a reductionist believes that the complexity of the human brain is a result of complex and interacting physical processes. If scientists research and understand these underlying chemical reactions, then they can explain intelligence, emotion and all of the other human conditions. The only way to comprehend fully the sheer complexity of the human brain is to look at the individual pieces.[3]

 Here we can definitely see the ideological aspects of science at work. These advocates of this certain type of reductionism believe that “everything can be explained through science.” Obviously for this to be true science has to be the most valid from of knowledge if not the only form of knowledge. Materialists, who tend to philosophical reductionists, and this includes phyisicalists, go step further and just refuse to accept as knowledge anything that can’t be quantified and pinned down by their methods. God can’t be apprehended by their methods so there must not be a God. This notion of science as the most or only valid form of knowledge is clearly ideological and stems form philosophical concerns. In the issue of reductionism we can see one of the most obvious junctures at which philosophy has clung to scientific development and is still being infused with science. Reductionism is inherently infused with philosophy.

Reductionism encompasses a set of ontological, epistemological, and methodological claims about the relation of different scientific domains. The basic question of reduction is whether the properties, concepts, explanations, or methods from one scientific domain (typically at higher levels of organization) can be deduced from or explained by the properties, concepts, explanations, or methods from another domain of science (typically one about lower levels of organization). Reduction is germane to a variety of issues in philosophy of science, including the structure of scientific theories, the relations between different scientific disciplines, the nature of explanation, the diversity of methodology, and the very idea of theoretical progress, as well as to numerous topics in metaphysics and philosophy of mind, such as emergence, mereology, and supervenience.[4]

            Reductionism goes back to the Greeks and tied to philosophy up to the development of early modern science and beyond. The Greek atomists were reductionists. They wanted to cut up reality in order to get at the basic elements. The idea of positing basic building blocks doesn’t require that one abolish other aspects of reality. Yet certain of the pre-Socratics, such as Leucpp and Democritus, began doing this.[5] The term “reductiosm” is not very old. The modern issues enter science from philosophy. Ontological reductionism was part of the dispute between nominalists and realists in the middles.[6]  The major alternative to reductionism is holism. Holism also goes back to the Greeks with Aristotle. The Atomists had atoms in the void as the final explanation and Aristotle had final cause of an unmoved mover as the final cause and explanation of all harmony and unity in the world.[7] Modern science abhors teleology, the idea that everything is directed toward a goal or an end point. The teleological is the hall mark of Aristotle’s’ unmoved mover. Atoms in the void don’t require a goal; they are the end of the process. Thus science has had this atheistic bias literally since the Greeks. Likewise, theistic thinking takes on a holistic bias form the Greeks as well. Science was slow to completely turn over to the atomists and did so in stages. The bias against teleology was not adopted into biology until the middle of the nineteenth century (with Darwin and Wallace). Natural mutation and random selection have come to dominate in biology and replace any idea of purposefulness.[8]  The distinction between appearance and reality is a carry over from Democritus’ claim that binary oppositions in experience, such cold and hot, sweet and sour, are really just atoms moving in void.[9] We take this as empirically proved because we dismiss experience as subjective and go with the ‘objective measurement,’ never really considering how we are conditioned by philosophical hold over to think this way.

In this way, a conception of the world and our place in it evolved in the scientific revolution and the latter Enlightenment in Europe that was conducive to the development of the idea of reducing reality to only what scientists analyze out of the “buzzing, blooming confusion” we experience. Reductionist tendencies remained central to the epistemologies and metaphysics that developed in light of reflections on the modern natural scientific search for simplicity and unity. Such philosophies set the stage for explicit reductionist disputes in twentieth-century philosophy. But, contrary to many scholars’ perspective, the scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment were not the only sources of modern reductionist thinking. Another source can also be traced back to ancient thought—the quest for a viable monism.[10]

It may seem that monism is the child of mystical concerns, a refugee from a religious past, something more akin to Hinduism or Buddhism than modern science. In fact materialism/phyiscalism is heir to Greek monism.

           In terms of ontology three major approaches. Pluralists, of which Leibniz is an example) accept either plurality of fundamentally irreducible realities or plurality of real material objects. Dualists typified by Descartes two basic realities that can’t be reduced to one. Monists reduce it all to one fundamental type of reality or apparent multiplicity as a manifestation of one fundamental type of reality. Positing one reality in place of apparent multiplicity is reductive. Jones thus argues that the first type of monist is a weaker version of the second.[11] He sees Thales and the pre-Socratics and their attempt to understand the world in terms of one basic element as the orign of the reductive impulse in Western thought..[12] One might wonder, however, if that’s not just an appearance that results from following the atomists. There is a link to modern through that’s a lot more direct than a secret winding path through 2000 years of history. The skeptics and dissenters of the English enlightenment were influenced by the Greek atomists. In the restoration period the English churchmen, the Latitudinarians began arguing against a philosophical bugbear. At that time Greek thinking, especially that of the atomists, was being rediscovered. The Latitudinarians put up an apologetical front against the Greeks even though skepticism was virtually invisible to the public. Dissenters, Socinians (Latter to become Unitarians) and skeptics picked up these ideas.

            Jones understands materialism as the only form of monism produced in modern times. He does discuss Berkeley’s form of idealism known as  “immaterialism”
 which postulates that that “all reality is reduced to a collection of mental substances…merely perceptions in the mind of God.”[13] We tend to think of monism as either eastern or atheist but not Christian. Yet Berkeley was a Christian Bishop. The Bible never pronounces upon the truth of philosophical schools. That wasn’t part of the conceptual universe of the people who write the bible. It’s left up to theologians to argue for one version or another. Hume argued for a monism that was neither mental nor physical.[14] Modern materialists are not strong monists as they allow for plurality of material objects.

Types of Reductionism.

            It seems that there is no set list of types. Each author has his/her own version of the different types. John Polkinghorne, formerly professor of mathematical physics as University of Cambridge, lists constituent, conceptual (or epistemological) and causal. “Constituent” means that when a complex system is reduced or taken apart what remains is a set of fragments that correspond to the expected constituents and nothing more. The example he gives is that of a living organism, when decomposed, doesn’t leave behind any part pertaining to a “spark of life” as was once claimed by the philosophy of “vitalism.” [15] Of course that seems self defeating because the organism is dead so one would not expect to find a spark of life. Nevertheless, Polkinghorne denies that this form of reductionism implies that living beings are nothing but collections of molecules. “This kind is closely related to methodological reductionism, the widely practiced scientific strategy of studying wholes through breaking them up into their constituent parts. Again, the success of the strategy does not imply that everything relevant to the whole can be studied in this way.”[16] “Conceptual” refers to means that concepts applying to the whole can be totally expressed in terms of concepts applying to the parts. “An example of a successful reduction of this kind is afforded by the use of the kinetic theory of gases to reduce the concept of temperature (originating in the thermodynamics of bulk matter) to exact equivalence to the average kinetic energy of the molecules of the gas.”[17] Polkinghorne also sites counter examples to this second kind of reduction. Individual water molecules are not wet, for example. The third type, “causal” will probably be more important for our purposes.

            Causal reductionism:

…implies that the causes acting on the whole are simply the sum of the effects of the individual causalities of the parts. In the case of wetness such a reduction appears successful, on the reasonable supposition that surface tension is generated entirely by the action of inter-molecular forces. Since at both levels one is concerned with purely energetic properties, a translation between the two seems plausible. On the other hand, it is not at all clear that sums of firings of neural synapses can add up to produce mental qualia (feels), as there appears to be a clear qualitative difference between the two ( MIND-BODY RELATIONSHIP). Causal reductionism is closely allied to ontological reductionism, the assertion that the whole is the sum of its parts. It is quite possible to hold to constituent reductionism and to deny causal reductionism as, in fact, many do. One strategy for this is to embracecontextualism, the belief that the behaviour of constituents depends upon the nature of the whole that they constitute.[18]

This type of reduction seems to correspond to what was said above about philosophical reductionism, where the concept is not so much used as only a method in science but the basis of a philosophy.

            As we saw above there is a kind of reductionist who believes that science can explain everything, and nothing is “unknowable.”

Reductionism in Action

            Reductionism is a tool of atheist apologetics. It’s used as a major tactic because it support the materialist assumption of the world as only matter, or the physicalist assumption as the world as only physical objects. Thus any alternative to these ideologies can be ignored, and the mystique of a scientific procedure can be applied. The Reductionist is merely ignoring the possibility of spirit or of some alternative but doing it under the assumption that there can only be physical things anyway. Certain “tricks’ are employed to pull off this connection, spreading the aura of science over a purely ideological move.  Before look at those moves, however it’s important to note some of the major issues where these moves are used. Although reductionism is a standard procedure for atheist thinking so almost any issue is vulnerable, yet there are certain issues that draw more fire in the reductionist camp. The major issue on which the ploys of reductionism are used is the brain/mind issue. The idea that consciousness is not reducible to brain chemistry is a major challenge for materialists. The counter position is that of the reductionists who believe that the qualities of consciousness must be reduced to the basic physical complement that they feel produce brain function. Of course they are almost certainly arbitrarily refusing to accept a possibly of something more than brain function as the nature of consciousness. To hold their position at all is to do some form of reductionism as a founding assumption. Any issue involving free will, which includes the problem of pain and attempts to disprove god based upon Theodicy, employs a reductions approach to ignore the basis of free will as rooted in something other than brain chemistry. Thus reductionism sort of mandates determinism.

            I will look at three issues, as stated; almost any issue can include a reductionst approach. These issues are: (1) Religious experience (2) Brain/mind, (3) Free will/determinism. By “religious experience” I mean primarily of the “mystical kind.” This includes both exterrvertive and interovertive, as well as esoteric and exoteric. In other words, this includes both mystics as well as charismatics. This includes the sense of the numinous, which the feeling of prescience or meaning of overwhelming love that mystics try describe. It is not about visions and voices it is about a form of consciousness where one seems to see through he world illusion and recognizes the undifferentiated unity of all things. It can also be experienced in terms of the sense of the numinous, love and presence of divine. On a popular level atheist apologists have learned some tricks form reductionism. They meet claims of empirical studies demonstrating the transfoarmtive power of religious experience by reducing transformation to “getting happy.” They reduce the effects to brain chemistry and ideologically ignore the possibly of any form of consciousness not a side effect of brain chemistry.

Long-Term Effects

Wuthnow study:

*Say their lives are more meaningful,
*think about meaning and purpose
*Know what purpose of life is
Meditate more
*Score higher on self-rated personal talents and capabilities
*Less likely to value material possessions, high pay, job security, fame, and having lots of friends
*Greater value on work for social change, solving social problems, helping needy
*Reflective, inner-directed, self-aware, self-confident life style

Noble study: 

*Experience more productive of psychological health than illness
*Less authoritarian and dogmatic
*More assertive, imaginative, self-sufficient
*intelligent, relaxed
*High ego strength,
*relationships, symbolization, values,
*integration, allocentrism,
*psychological maturity,
*self-acceptance, self-worth,
*autonomy, authenticity, need for solitude,
*increased love and compassion

These are long term characteristics that the mystical experiencing subject exhibited.[19]So then to say that all just amounts to “getting happy” is losing the actual aspects that make the experience what it is and totally changes the outcome. The standard tricks of the reductionist can be understood as follows:

Lose the Phenomena

All the complexity of relationships to self and others, self image, autonomy, social responsibility and so on are reduced to one simplistic undefined feeling of “happy.” It’s counted in such a country cornpone way that it’s clear derogatory.

Re-label

The as aspect of changing “self actualization” to “happy” not only loses a lot in translation but it is also changing the label from one that connotes a complex psychological theory of personality to one that connotes little thought and simplistic motives (“gett’n happy”).

Re-Describe

This will be illustrated in forthcoming material. It involves a way of losing phenomena by leaving out curcial aspect in re-describing what is to be recued.

Bait and Switch

This is seen in a major way on the brain/mind issue. One of the major proponents of mind (David Chalmers) argues that the reductionsits are pulling a bait and switch. They are not examining consciousness but bran function put over as consciousness. Bait “we are going to examine consciousness,” the switch, it’s really brain function they examine. This biat and switch tactic is one of the chief ways that reductionists lose the phenomena, by diverting our attention to other phenomena.

            These same tricks are used by professionals. One of the major practitioners is philosopher Wayne Proudfoot who teaches at Columbia University. Proudfoot’sReligious Experience, is a practically a blue print to the use of use of reductionism as a rhetorical device to blunt the effects of empirical research.[20] The issue comes in where skeptics try to offer counter causal explanations for the experience. Mainly the materialist/physicalist tries to explain it in term of brain chemistry since this is the order of the day, all consciousness must be reduced to brain chemistry. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (The Gilford Lectures):

Medical materialism seems indeed a good appellation for the too simple-minded system of thought which we are considering. Medical materialism finishes up Saint Paul by calling his vision on the road to Damascus a discharging lesion of the occipital cortex, he being an epileptic. It snuffs out Saint Teresa as an hysteric, Saint Francis of Assisi as an hereditary degenerate. George Fox's discontent with the shams of his age, and his pining for spiritual veracity, it treats as a symptom of a disordered colon. Carlyle's organ-tones of misery it accounts for by a gastro-duodenal catarrh. All such mental over-tensions, it says, are, when you come to the bottom of the matter, mere affairs of diathesis (auto-intoxications most probably), due to the perverted action of various glands which physiology will yet discover. And medical materialism then thinks that the spiritual authority of all such personages is successfully undermined.[21]

---

[1 Merriam-Webser’s  Dicitonary online version URL: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/reductionism  visited 3/16/2012

[2] “Scientific Recutionsm,” website: Experiment-Resources.com. URL:http://www.experiment-resources.com/scientific-reductionism.html  visited 3/13/2012

Experiemnt-reserouces.com is a site ran for educational purposes by a psychologist and other unnamed authors who work in the seicnes.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Brigandt, Ingo and Love, Alan, "Reductionism in Biology", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .

[5] Richard H. Jones, Reductionism: Analysis and the Fullness of Reality. Danvers, Massachusetts: Associated University Press.2000, 37.online copy, Google books, URL:http://books.google.com/books?id=sUgnio874NUC&pg=PA39&lpg=PA39&dq=revolution+against+reductionism&source=bl&ots=RfQNUal7yQ&sig=Wputdv-lWVTdRJ0lJem2hrXHKZI&hl=en&ei=rWusTp3zG4risQLZzKXdDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCQQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=true  visited 3/13/2012

[6] ibid.

[7] ibid.

[8] ibid, 38

[9] ibid.

[10] ibid.

[11] ibid, 40

[12] ibid

[13] ibid

[14] ibid

[15] John Polkinghorne, “Reductionism.” Inters Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science.  p.zza sant'Apollinare, 49 - 00186 Rome: Centro di Documentazione Interdisciplinare di Scienza e Fede operating at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross. Edited by Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti, Philip Larrey andAlberto Strumìa  On line resource, URL http://www.disf.org/en/voci/104.asp  visited 3/16/2012

[16] ibid

[17] ibid

[18] ibid

[19] Council on Spiritual Practices listsBoth of these lists are distilled by another writer from the two different studies by Wuthnow and Nobel. This list is found on a webstie hosted by the Council on Spiritual Pracices. “State of Unitive Consciousness Research Summary.” URL: http://csp.org/experience/docs/unitive_consciousness.html visitied 4/5/2012.

About Council on Spiritual Pracitices: (from the site) “The Council on Spiritual Practices is a collaboration among spiritual guides, experts in the behavioral and biomedical sciences, and scholars of religion, dedicated to making direct experience of the sacred more available to more people. There is evidence that such encounters can have profound benefits for those who experience them, for their neighbors, and for the world.”http://csp.org/about.html

[20] Wayne Proudfoot, Religious Experince. Berkeley: University of California Press,

[21] William James, Varieties of Religious Experience. New York: Modern Library, 1994, 16.

finaly, after years of work MY BOOK IS OUT! introducing The Trace of God by Joeseph Hinman

 

Arguments for God from religious experience have always been considered a secondary level of argument. It's always been assumed that their subjective nature makes them weak arguments. The atheist scared to death of subjectivity. This work, compiling empirical scientific studies that show that religious experience is not the result of emotional instability but are actually good for psychologically, constitutes a ground breaking work that places religious experiences on a higher level.

The Trace of God is an exposition (445 pages) employing both philosophical investigation and social science research. The book analyzes and discusses a huge body of empirical research that has up to this point been primarily known only in circles of psychology of religion, and has been over looked by theology, apologetics, Philosophy of religion and more general discipline of psychology. This body of work needs to be known in each of these interested groups because it demonstrates through hundreds of studies over a 50 year period, the positive and vital nature of the kind of religious experience known as “mystical.” Even though most of the studies deal with “mystical” experience, linking studies also apply it to the “born again experience” as well as “the material end of Christian experience.”

            The book opens with a discussion as to why arguments for the existence of God need not “prove” God exists, but merely offer a “warrant for belief.” It discusses why there can’t be direct empirical evidence for God and why that is not necessary. It also lays out criteria for rational warrant. In Chapter two it presents two arguments that are based upon religious experience and then shows how the various studies back them up. This is not an attempt to present directly empirical evidence for God but to show that religious experiences of a certain kind can be taken as “the co-determinate” or God correlate. It’s not a direct empirical view of God that is presented but the “God correlate” that indicates God,  just as a fingerprint or tacks in the snow indicate the presence of some person or animal. Religious experiences of this kind are the “trace of God.”

            These studies demonstrate that the result of such experiences is life transforming. This term is understood and used to indicate long term positive and dramatic changes in the life of the one who experiences them. People are released form bondage to alcohol and drugs, they tend to have less propensity toward depression or mental illness, they are self actualized, self assured, have greater sense of meaning and purpose, generally tend to be better educated and more successful than those who don’t have such experiences. These studies prove that religious experience is not the result of mental illness or emotional instability. The methodology of the studies (which includes every major kind of study methodology in the social sciences) is discussed at length.

            One of the major aspects of the book is the discussion of the “Mysticism scale” (aka “M scale”) developed by Dr. Ralph Hood Jr. at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. The importance of this “M scale” (that is a test made up of 32 questions) is that it serves as a control on the valid religious experience. One can know through the score on the test if one’s experience is truly “Mystical” or just “wool gathering.” Without a control we can’t know if one has had a true experience and thus we can’t measure their effects. Being able to establish that one has had true “mystical experience” one can determine that the effects of that experience are positive and long term. Thus that sets up the rationally warranted arguments for God.

            It is also vital to know if the experience is valid because those who seek to discredit religious belief and claim to have produced such experiences by stimulating the brain don’t use controls to determine if the experience is valid or not. They must make assumptions that anything to do with God talk is a religious experience then claim to have produced it by stimulating the brain. The M scale works by comparing theories of British philosopher W.T. Stace with current modern mystics (research began in the 1970s on American campuses and went international in the 80s). It is statistically extremely remote that they would be able to accidentally hit upon the right combination of questions to reflect validation of Stace’s theory. They have to agree with Stace’s theory on all 32 points. It’s even harder to imagine they might lie. In the international studies Iranian, Indian, and Japanese peasants were questioned. Most of them did not read English it’s absurd to think they could tell what Stace’s theory was much less what they had to lie about. Most of them would know nothing about W.T. Stace or his theories. The Studies showed that modern mystics in Iran, India, Japan, Sweden, the UK all experience exactly what Stace said they would experience. Thus that creates the ground for comparison. It gives us a control for the experience.

            The book also discusses the theories of Wayne Proudfoot a philosopher who tried to disprove mystical experience by reductionism, re-labeling and losing the phenomena. Studies of brain chemistry are analyzed as well as the Placebo effect. The question all comes down to a tie between naturalistic brain chemicals vs. the idea that the naturalistic neurological route is just the way God created for us to communicate with him, and that stimulation of those chemicals is just opening the receptors that also receive God’s presence. The problem is resolved by eight tie breakers that are presented at the end of the next to the last chapter. The last chapter deals with philosophical and theological problems surrounding language and faith.

            The book provides a ground breaking chunk of fiber fortifying the arguments for God from religious experience that has been lacking since the days of FatherFrederick C. Copleston and his debate with Bertrand Russell. Copleston didn’t have these studies to back his argument. This body of work has been growing for 50 years and it’s time it was known to the theological world. These studies, especially the M scale, establish that religious experiences are the same the world over. There may be other kinds but of those kind know as “mystical” when we control for the names being different, and doctrines of various faiths use dot explain the situation, we look at the experience itself they are all the same. That implies that all of these people around the world in different faiths are experiencing a reality external to their own minds. It also implies that God is working in all faiths. The Author, Joseph Hinman, is a Christian and he does believe in the exclusivity of Jesus Christ but he also recognizes God’s prevenient grace to all people.

 "A great contribution to discussions of the rationality of belief in God"

William S. Babcock, Professor Emeritus of Church History, Southern Methodist University

Ralph Hood says:

"A fine exploration of the meaningfulness of arguments from human experience to the reality of God."

(Ralph Hood Jr. inventor of the M scale and professor of psychology of religion University of Tennessee Chattanooga.)

Wordgazer, a prominent blogger on Women's issues says:

"Why should  I mistrust my own experiences of God's presence?" Joe Hinman taught me to ask. After all, we don't mistrust other things we experience.  We don't doubt that the chair we're sitting in will hold us, unless we have some good reason to think something has gone wrong with our senses.  We don't have to accept the self-proclaimed expert in science as an expert in metaphysics.  Nor need we accept the standard of "absolute proof" in terms of scientific categories that may be inadequate for the phenomenon in the first place.  We can have good, reasonable reasons -- what Hinman calls a "rational warrant" to believe.  His newer website, The Religious A Priori, explores belief and rational warrant from a number of different angles.

And now Joe Hinman has encapsulated some of his best thinking into a new book: The Trace of God: A Rational Warrant for Belief.

The Trace of God is a scholarly work, but written in a style that a layperson can follow.  Its main point is that experiences like the one I describe above (called "religious experiences" or "peak experiences"*) do constitute good evidence, even from a scientific point of view, of the existence of God.

This is a ground breaking work. These studies have never been put together in this context and analyzed and argued for in this way before. The God arguments form religious experience have always been considered weak but no more. This body of work puts them up on a higher level, it's put fiber into their diet.

            
See Word Gazer's Review of my book on her blog 

Order the book from Aamzon

Reducationism (part 2): Scientific Methodology, Atheist Philosohy, Rhetorical Ploy.

 

 I resume my three part discussion of reductionism as a philosophy and a rhetorical strategy of atheism. Scientific reductionism may, at times, be a valid scientific method, but as a philosophy applied broadly to the whole world reductionism only serves to impose ideological view point of scientism. (see part 1). In this segment I show reductionism as a rhetorical strategy of atheists. I show philosopher Wyne Proudfoot using it to dismiss religious experience as a valid option. I also deal with other issues.

(see also ideology of Scientism part 1)

Reducing Religious Experience:

            Proudfoot makes a certain amount of valid criticism of mystical experience so I wont bother with discussing everything. I want to focus on those aspects where he uses re-labeling, re-describing and losing the phenomena. Losing the Phenomena is a particular tactic of reductionism. It means some behavior or experience will be taken apart and so reduced to the point that it will no reflect the phenomena that makes it what it is. Then the reductionist is able to say “see there’s nothing there.” This essentially what they are doing when they reduce “self actualization” to “getting happy.” They lose the phenomena involved in transformation. A simple version of this is seen above where some reduce a long list of transformative characteristics to “getting happy.” Proudfoot does a much ore complex version of the same thing.  He goes beyond methodological reduction to ideological redicutionism. He begins this by correction of Schleiermacher’s language. This is also an example of re-labeling. One of the aspects of mystical experience is that it is said to be beyond word, thought or image. This is said to be a pure moment where the experience proceeds any attempt to describe it. Of course this must be understood in a particular sense and is probably a misstatement because to say hat one has a sense of the numinous or an all pervasive sense of love, a sense of the divine, one must use words, thoughts and images.  Obviously then the experience is not so entirely beyond such our understanding in once sense, that we can label it in certain ways. But Proudfoot exploits that seeming contradiction then uses the inaccuracy of the original experiencer’s label to pull off a bait and switch. He essentially argues that what we believe about an experience determines the nature of the experience. We can see this in his statement “The belief that a particular moment of consciousness is immediate and prior to all concepts and beliefs may well be constitutive of the experience..”[1] Constitutive would mean that it is made up of more simple concepts tht are used tu build the construct like an edifice, then in tern becomes another building blog in a more complex edifice. That means its’ not just a pure moment of experience but what is being experience is conditioned by prior understanding.

            There is probably some extent to which that is true. Yet we see a bit of a bait and switch here. He didn’t say if the moment is immediate he said if we believe the moment is immediate. He’s changing the idea form the actuality of a pure moment that really be experienced to ideas about experience that we might hold. Perhaps we can’t have a puree movement that is not conditioned in some way, that doesn’t mean that the experience itself can’t contain this aspect that is not expected and that in some way exceeds understanding. He’s not concerned with the actual experience but with losing the phenomena and re-labeling. In other words what we believe about an experience may determine that experience. That may sound valid and probably is in some ways. If we believe going to the Dentist is no big thing we may not amplify the pain in our minds and we may find it less painful than if we dread it and worry and think it a very painful experience. The problem is this gives the impression (and excuse) that any time we experience something of the divine it must be conditioned by expectation and it ignores experiences when they are new, when they are totally unexpected and it ignore reflection upon the past. If all ideas of experience are read back into the memory then there is no memory that is unconditioned by belief. This is not necessarily the case. If we look for ti to be the case or dogmatically assert that it always is then we lose the phenomena because ignore the aspects of those times when it is not. By Proudfoot’s logic we have no experience. We never did love we never did enjoy, we don’t really miss our parents, this is all back reading into a moment that never was. The tactic becomes a means of knocking down the experience of being human and replacing it with an ideology about someone else’s ideas of what being human means. Proudfoot is going to use this bait and switch to wipe out the concept of religious experience completely. In fact he actually will wipe out all experience.

            Proudfoot  re-labels Schleiermacher’s view of emotions and feelings from an honest appraisal to “apologetics.” By re-labeling it in this way he moves it out of the category of an empirical approach to something of which we must be suspicious. He observes that religious experience has come to be associated with a set of experiences that transcend the verbal, according to “some quarters.” He finds that there are two reasons why this is so. One is descriptive, the other apologetic. The descriptive is the need to find commonality among “different experiences we call religious.”  The second reason is to distinguish “religious” experience from other kinds of experience. This latter reason (2) he dubs “apologetic.” Now Schleiermacher believed that religion is more deeply entrenched in the lives and communities of people than are doctrines. Feelings are more basic and more entrenched in life than words on paper. This probably seems pretty reasonable to most people but to Proudfoot it is an apologetic ploy. In calling one reason “descriptive” and the other “apologetic” he is trying to cast a pall on the whole process of attempting to make a distinction between religious and other kinds of experiences. This is important for his strategy because it will enable the switch from religious experience feelings to all feelings.[2] If we can describe commonalities between religions does that not automatically imply that we can distinguish between religious and non-religious feelings? If not then how can we find commonalities? If so, then why is no. (2) apologetic? It seems that both are equally necessary to one another, and that both are equally apologetic and equally descriptive. Of course even if there is an apologetic going on that does not mean there are no religious experiences. But setting that up is part of the hermeneutic of suspicion and losing the phenomena. After page 78 he slides in to a critique of all feelings in general.

            Proudfoot uses the example of Stephen Bradley, an example of a dramatic religious experienced found in William James Verities of Religious Experience.[3] The example Proudfoot selects seems to be that of a man who is having a heart attack and takes it for religious conversion. He is in fact converted by the experience. The experience was brought on while at a revival meeting. Proudfoot centers on the physical phenomena, the man’s heart speeding up very fast and beating like a trip hammer, but says nothing about any other aspects, such as any special feelings or anything that might have put Bradley in a mood to repent. The assessment is entirely in terms of physiological phenomena then of course analyzed as the recipient labeling physiological phenomena so he would know what to think. Then that is taken as proof proof that internal states are nothing more than labeling physiological phenomena. Of course all he’s done is mine the data. He ignores other aspects. Of course most mystical experiences do not contain such overt physical phenomena. The subject does speak of being filled with “the joy and grace of the Lord.” These aspects are ignored he doesn’t think about them at all. These are obviously the feelings that produced the idea that he was being saved. So it’s clear Proudfoot ignores the aspects that count against his view. He only pays attention to the aspects that confirm the labeling theory. Proudfoot says of this instance:  “Bradley, like so many prospective devotees before and since, could not understand his feelings in naturalistic terms. Religious symbols offer him an explanation that was compatible both with his experience and with his antecedent beliefs.”[4] One problem with this is that his antecedent beliefs were not religious. He even says “had any person told me prior to this that I could have experienced the power of the Holy Spirit in the manner in which I did I could not have believed it.”[5] This actually disproves the labeling hypothesis. Moreover, since this was a conversion experience it’s important because it disputes the “placebo” argument. Religious experience is said to be a placebo, but placebos requires expectations and Bradely had none. Many such religious experiences are conversion experience with no prior expectation.

            We see reductionism at work here in a major way. The reductionist is just reading the situation in terms favorable to his theory, even at the experience of losing phenomena by ignoring aspects that don’t fit the theory. The classic sense of the phrase “losing phenomena” means when the reductive process is finished the phenomena has been explained away and lost rather than experienced. We might suspect, however, that a great of reductionism is helping along the process of losing the phenomena by ignoring part of it. There’s another case where Proudfoot does very similar things. [6]

Other reductionist arguments

            When atheists make the general assumption that there is no God, as a matter of  course, they are reducing the God belief phenomena to naturalistic proportions as a consequence of this assumption, weather they have proof or not. Thus they are employing techniques of reduction to make this move. The old atheist saw that religion was invented by priests and leaders for social control and that after life is just a reward and punishment system designed to enforce the social control is an ancient form of atheist reductionism.[7] This approach evolved into a psychological reductionism in the ninetieth century with Freud and Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity. [8] In more recent times these tactics have developed into an attempt at evolutionary reductionism. That is the nature of evolution is used to account for the evolution of religious belief in humans, thus the sense of the numinous that has guided religious experience is reduce to evolutionary biology. Of course this is based entirely upon assumption. Dawkins argues that the “deeper” explanation will be the one that explains why people are susceptible to the allure of religion. He contends that this more fundamental than the social control argument (also assumed) because it explains the basis upon which people are vulnerable to social control and upon which people hit upon such approaches to social control. [9] Of course all of this is assumed prior to any sort of proof and without ever obtaining any. Both Dawkins and Dennett, major contributors to the New Atheist arsenal, draw upon evolutionary psychology to offer a biologically reductionst account of religious origins.[10]

            Both Dawkins and Dennett are working from a prior assumption by Pascal Boyer[11] The theory says that religion is a by product, not directed selected for but a “misfiring by product,” whatever that means. Presumably they are thought to be the result of some dysfunction of brain chemistry, since all of human thought is reduced to that. Moreover, “Drawing upon evolutionary psychology, Dawkins suggests that if the brain is an aggregate of organs or 'modules' for dealing with particular sets of data, religion can be regarded as a by-product of the mis- or over-firing of one or more of these modules..”[12]

According to this explanation of religion, religion has a survival advantage insofar as it is a product of the human tendency to 'overshoot' in attributing agency - since from an evolutionary perspective it is better to be wrong in attributing too much agency to things in the environment than another agent's dinner due to a failure to attribute enough agency (e.g., to predators), the religious probably had a survival advantage: 'At the root of human belief in gods lies an instinct on a hair trigger: the disposition to attribute agency - beliefs and desires and other mental states - to anything complicated that moves. The false alarms generated by our overactive disposition to look for agents wherever the action is are the irritants around which the pearls of religion grow.’ Dawkins concurs with Dennett that the 'intentional stance' has survival value, pointing for example to experimental studies showing that children are especially likely to adopt the intentional stance towards inanimate (but moving) objects.[13]

The main problem so far is that this really doesn’t tell us why belief should count for survival. So people are more likely to attribute consciousness and intention to something if it moves. But how dose that enable survival? Such a view might explain why humans moved in the direction of belief in a god like their father, but it doesn’t explain religion overall. We will deal more extensively with the nature of religion in the final chapter. The main point is that religion is not based upon explaining things. This is the assumption that scientists make because it enables them to do their reductionist techniques and also because that is their main concern. That doesn’t mean it’s the main concern of religious people. It seems it might be more helpful to survival if we weren’t even conscious. Attributing intuition to innate moving things might just get a whole tribe killed. What if they think volcano god just won’t be satisfied until they are all dead? This seems to be an assumption necessitated to legitimize the reductionist assumptions but based upon no proof or logic. It also seems to ignore the basic motivations of religious belief. Of course it does this because it has to in order to justify reduction. They can’t accept the idea that there is a sense of the numinous because that would mean there’s something more there, an added dimension besides the material. Moreover, religious experiences are a complex, diverse, and rich in both nuance and texture. They are not surfaces level aspects of human being but indicative of the existential depth of human being. They cannot be reduced to mere physical workings of brain chemistry without losing the phenomena.

            The sense of the numinous is correlated with mystical experience. The sense that there some special aspect of reality, perhaps vested in an object or an activity (prayer); a sense of truth and all pervasive love, or the sense of meaning or ones in all things. This is the basis of religious experience. Rudolf Otto called this the “sense of the Holy.” Holiness is a part of this special aspect. Otto used Latin term to show the extremely special quality of the sense. The numinous is  wholly other, entirely different from anything we experience. It provokes a reaction of silence, sometimes terror. Otto used the mysterium tremendum et fascinans. Tremendus mystery and fascination. He used the Latin terms to emphasize the unique nature of the experience. The experience is both terrifying and fascinating that is merciful and gracious. The term numinous is from the Latin noumen meaning the power implicit in a sacred object.[14]

            The sense of the numinous is part of mystical consciousness and saying that it is correlated with mystical experience is to say that empirically it has been found in connection with it. The scientific basis for understanding mystical expense is provided b the “mysticism scale” (Or “M-scale”) develop by Ralph Hood Jr. and validated by him and others in specific research.[15] I have dealt with Hood and M-scale and the scientific basis for the study of mystical consciousness at length in The Trace of God.[`16] The corroboration of Hood’s studies demonstrates a universal nature to mystical experience.[17] Hood’s work on the M-scale is designed to validate the theory of W.T. Stace, and was able to do so with corroboration from several studies done in many cultures. Instead of dealing with the nature of the experience itself, with its nuances and it’s texture, the reducitonists lose the phenomena by focus upon assertions involving causes. They assert that the cause must be chemical since the nature of the experience can only be epiphenomenal and illusory. This is the same trick we see above, although a more sophisticated version, where by the atheist reduces the complex set of results to one concept of “getting happy.” There are two aspects of the research on mystical experience that the reductionisms are overlooking and that really make the case against reductionism: (1) The effects of having had the experience; (2) the universal nature of the experience.

            These two major points form the basis of the apologetic arguments that can be made based upon religious experience, and they also form the basis of the defense that the studies provide the believer against charges of religion as a coercive source of mental illness, derangement, or pathology. The studies that indicate that religious experience results in a healthy psychological state such as the studies of Nobel and Wuthnow on self actualization listed above make up a huge body of empirical scientific work. This body of work stretches back 60 years to the 1960s, and culminates in Hood’s M-scale research which brings all the findings into focus with the means of scientific control on mystical experience.

The Wuthnow study was an example of a study using questionnaires. Wuthnow collected questionnaires from a systematic, random sample of 1000 people in the San Francisco-Oakland area. He asked them about transcendent experiences, revealing contact with the sacred, beauty of nature, harmony with the universe, whether it was within the last year or before, and if it made a lasting difference in their lives. For those who said they had had contact with the sacred: 68% of those experiencing within one year said life is very meaningful, while 46% of those (contact with sacred) not within one year answered this way. Forty-six percent of those (contact with sacred not in the last year) said yes but it was not lasting, and 39% and 36% respectively said they had not had such an experience or they did not want to have such an experience. "Knowing the purpose of life" applied to 82% of those experiencing within one year and 72% of those whose experiences were further back than that, compared with 18% and 21% for those who had not had or did not want an experience. The figures for the other categories (sensing beauty of nature, harmony with the universe, etc.) were similar. One of the more compelling findings was that 41% of past-year experiencers and 39% of those whose experiences were further back than one year felt greater self-assurance, compared with just 22% and 31% of the no-experience groups.[18]

In Macnamara’s ground breaking collection of essays, Where God and science meet, Ralph Hood Jr. links psychologists convinced of the falsehood of religious belief with the reductive impulse.[19] In comparing mystics who either accept religious interpretations and traditions or who reject religion in the name of a deeper “spirituality” Hood finds that the experiences are the same when the specific terms identifying tradition are controlled for.[20] This means that the experiences are universal as other studies have found commonalities transcending specific traditions and that all religions have mystics.[21] The specific arguments these studies are used to back up are not important here. Just to be clear about the issues, however, I ague that because the dramatic positive effects, such as self actualization, are identified consistently with religious experiences there’s a valid reason to understand these experiences as “the trace of God,” like the track or footprint in the snow they are indicative of divine presence and experience because the long term positive nature of the effects can’t accounted for in naturalistic terms. The second argument is that due to the navigational abilities offered (emotional stability and strength to get through the trails of life) as well as regular consistent and inter-subjective nature of them, they fit the criteria we habitually use to understand the real nature of experiences anyway. They studies do show that these experience are regular, consistent and inter-subjective, at least in the sense that they are found in all times and cultures and shared by all faiths.

            The point here is not to argue for the validity or benefit of religion but to show what reductionism misses and how it loses phenomena. As we have seen already Dawkins and Dennett both make abductive claims about the origin of religion: they argue that reductionism enables them to best explain why people are susceptible to religious claims. They begin with the assumption that there is no valid basis to effects which would tip us off as to origin. In approaching the issue abductively they claim to demonstrate an explanation that answers the conditions we find empirically existing. Not to say that abduction is necessarily reductionistic, yet no attempt is made account for the full texture of the experiences. Instead the experiences are assumed illusory, reduced to “happy” and the cause is put over as the only way to determine truth. Why assume people are “susceptible” to religion as though it’s some sort of false claim that hoodwinks people? The fact that the effects are transformative is enough to indicate that it’s valuable and positive. If it is such then it’s not likely to be a lie or a false claim. Seldom does it work out that lies and false claims are very good for us. At this point the atheist will assert that an advantage is not a valid argument for the truth of a hypothesis. That’s not true in science because it is assumed always that working is an indication of truth content. If we ask the scientist “how do you know science is giving us truth?” they will “it works.” Workability is one of the major assertions about truth content. Barabra Forrest in the academic journal Philo states:

I conclude that the relationship between methodological and philosophical naturalism, while not one of logical entailment, is the only reasonable metaphysical conclusion given (1) the demonstrated success of methodological naturalism, combined with (2) the massive amount of knowledge gained by it, (3) the lack of a method or epistemology for knowing the supernatural, and (4) the subsequent lack of evidence for the supernatural. The above factors together provide solid grounding for philosophical naturalism, while supernaturalism remains little more than a logical possibility.[22]

That’s a fancy way of saying science works so we can trust it to be true. The point is that she is equating working with truth content. The attack that science must rely upon philosophy and naturalism is a philology that must draw upon metaphysics is given a happy faced and turned into an assault upon Supernaturalism on the grounds that naturalism works to supply the fortress of facts while Supernaturalism doesn’t. In other words, science works so we know it’s true. We just saw that religious experience works to do what religion is supposed to do, make life better. That workability is reduced to “happy” and to other fleeting issue that are easy to ignore, and causality is put over as the only important aspect because reductionists can actually correlate that with naturalistic processes through their methods without challenging their own assumptions.

            There are our old friends the popular level new atheists such as the blogger for “why evolution is true.” In “refuting” the works of a literary critic (Stanley fish) who argues that science can’t furnish a priroi reasoning as justification for it’s theories he responds:

Fish’s big mistake: the reasons undergirding that belief are not that we can engage in a lot of philosophical pilpul to justify using reason and evidence to find out stuff about the universe. Rather, the reasons are that it works: we actually can understand the universe using reason and evidence, and we know that because that method has helped us build computers and airplanes, go to the moon, cure diseases, improve crops, and so on.  All of us agree on these results.  We simply don’t need a philosophical justification, and I scorn philosophers who equate religion and science because we don’t produce one.  Religion doesn’t lead to any greater understanding of reality. Indeed, they can’t even demonstrate to everyone’s satisfaction that a deity exists at all!  The unanimity around evidence that antibiotics curse infections, that the earth goes around the sun, and that water has two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, is not matched by any unamity of the faithful about what kind of deity there is, what he/she/it is like, or how he/she/it operates.  In what way has religion, which indeed aims to give us “understanding” has really produced any understanding?[23]

He says it pretty explicitly, science works to provide the knowledge and religion doesn’t. Except the studies I’ve been discussing prove that it does. Atheists assume providing the goods is a sign of truth content, thus they should consider the truth content of religion. Yet the reductionstic approach rules out the possibility before the data is even presented. Look for example at the way the blogger reduces the issue to physical evidence because that’s the kind his method can procure. Other kinds of working such as making one a better person are not important because atheists don’t’ truth feelings and accept the thesis that we can be better people through religion. No need to observe that religion works for the things it sets out to do. They are not the things we want to accept as valid anyway, so we can lose the phenomena. The way science really works and they way it’s fans think it works aer often two different things. As shown in the chapter on fortress of facts, with Popper, science doesn’t prove theories but furnishes explanations. The debunking ability of science clears away competing explaining and we take the one’s fit best, not the one’s that “prove truth.” Yet according to the studies of Hood the common core theory of mysticism is the explanation that best explains the results of mysticism. Hood is actually a social scientist (psychology) and his works is scientific. It’s the “new atheists” ideologues who reject as not scientific because it doesn’t back their fortress of facts but threatens to offer explanations that are not negative toward religion.

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[1]  Proudfoot, ibid, 13.

[2] Ibid 75,76

[3] Proudfoot, Ibid, 103, quoting from William James, the Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nautre, being the Gifford Lectures Delivered at Edinburgh, 1901-1902. New York and Bombay, Longmans Green and Company 1905. 190-193.  

[4] Ibid, 104

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] “Investigating Atheism.” Online resource, Researchers at Faculty of Divinity at Cambrige and Oxtord Universites,URL:  http://www.investigatingatheism.info/religionnatural.html  visited 4/17/2012.

This sight is the product of a group of academics from the faculty of Divinity at both Cambridge and Oxford, it takes no stand either way on the topic. On this point they site Winfried Schroeder, Ursprunge des Atheismus: Untersuchungen zur Metaphysik- und Religionskritik des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts (Tubingen: Frommann-Holzboog, 1998), 213.

[8] Furerbach referenced in ibid.

[9] Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (London: Bantam Press, 2006), 169. sited in “Investigating Atheism,” ibid.

[10] Dawkins, ibid, and Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (New York: Penguin, 2006), 115. both sited in “Investigating Atheism.”

[11] Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained: The Human Instincts That Fashion Gods, Spirits and Ancestors (London: Vintage, 2002). Sited in “Investigating Atheism,” no page reference made.

[12] Investigating Atheism sitting Dawkins, ibid, 179.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Bernard Spilka, Ralph Hood Jr., Bruce Hunsberger, Richard Gorsuch. The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach. New York, London: The Guilford Press, 2003. 292

[15] Ibid.

[16] Hinman, Trace…, ibid. (see chapter four, “Studies”).

[17] ibid

[18] Wuthnow, Robert (1978). "Peak Experiences: Some Empirical Tests." Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 18 (3), 59-75.

[19] Ralph Hood Jr. “The Common Core Thesis in the Study of Mysticism,” Where God and science meet, P, Westport, CT: Praeger,. McNamar (Ed.), Vol. 3,. 119-138.

[20] Ibid, 134-35

[21] D. Lukoff,. The diagnosis of mystical experiences with psychotic features. The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, (1985). 17(2), 155-181.

[22] Barbara Forrest, Methodological Naturalism and Philosophical Naturism, Clarifying the Connection,” Philo, Vol. 3 no 2 (Fall-Winter 2000) 7-29, Abstract.

[23] “Why Evolution Is True, “ Blog, online resource, March 31, 2012. URL: http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/stanley-fish-misunderstands-science-makes-it-a-faith-equivalent-to-religion/ visited 4/24/2012.