Nothing matches the shrill accusation that an assertion is not “fair and balanced.” Make a claim. Someone hollers “not fair and balanced” from the wings, and an opposing, contradictory theory, and the evidence for it, spring into existence. Poof. The surest thing in the universe- a punched return ticket on the Faith Train.

This is how the argument seems to work. No statement, opinion or fact can be credible, unless it is accompanied by the “other side of the controversy-“ a contradictory “fact.” Any point of view can be summarily dismissed unless it is accompanied by its negation: the credential of a balancing, opposing point of view.

No simply stated assertion can be valid.

But let’s face it. Facts aren’t each packaged with a bonus self-contradiction. Opinions don’t come with symmetrical counter-arguments attached. The worst ones certainly don’t. The bizarre utterances of Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck and their ilk are inflammatory, irresponsible and unsupportable. They do not politely supply opposing views.

We know that this apparent nonsense derails sensible conversation. We cannot quite make out why. We fumble with the baffling power this “fair and balanced” thing has in the minds of those who use it. This does more sinister damage than first appears. With some analysis we can see how it works. We can resist and reclaim.

The accusation that opinions or assertions are not “fair and balanced” does nothing (really) to discredit them. It does not constitute a counterargument. It isn’t even an argument. It certainly isn’t evidence. It is a personal attack on the person making it  – ad hominem– for being unfair and unbalanced. It pretends to discredit their legitimacy or authority or integrity. It contemptuously dismisses their standing to make an assertion or have an opinion.

We hear a commonplace aphorism about what makes a claim or a theory “scientific:”

To be scientific, assertions or theories are subject in principle to the possibility of disproof: that there is conceivable evidence that would contradict them.

(Karl Popper and provenance of theory of Falsifiability: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability)

Sometimes we hear this as a definition of science itself. It does have the ring of a “theory.” This alone doesn’t appear to mean much or do much harm in our culture wars. Maybe it confers some vague middle-brow legitimacy. It does in some trivial sense help to give meaning to the term “science” within the narrow box-canyon of unprovable, faith based beliefs. But it is not clear that we need it.

We often hear this little trope –this “theory” – foreshortened: The scientific is disprovable. This foreshortening is an error. To say that the scientific is disprovable is utterly different from the theory we attribute to Popper and Kuhn. It has proved to be a very damaging linguistic mutilation. It seems like a harmless (if mindless) trope, until we examine how it engenders murky, destructive beliefs that do startling damage.

We invite slippage and imprecision in the usage of the term “disprovable.” Can “disprovable” here mean “can be disproved?” Can it mean “disproved?” Uh-oh. “Scientific” theories are disprovable. Science Philosophers say so.” That means there is evidence that disproves them.

Anti-science polemic relies on a popular vulnerability to the mistaken idea that anything considered scientific has evidence that contradicts it.  Incredible. A “thing” is only eligible to be true if it is equally, symmetrically, not true! Any “theory,” any “evidence-based” claim, automatically manifests an opposing “anti-claim.” This will be in the form of a belief. It will be undetectable, undisprovable and unprovable. Like anti-matter and anti-gravity, this is anti-science. Yet it will convey a veil of scientific validity. Think this is crazy? Go ask someone at the local evangelical church.

It isn’t enough that recruiting scientific validity for an assertion invents an opposing belief. In the popular imagination, it implies that there is –equally scientific–  evidence to support that belief, and that this fictive evidence disproves the original claim. Under the rubric of… science!

Parenthetically, we know that evidence that contradicts (or disproves) a proposition does not affirmatively prove anything. But there is a popular belief that disproving or discrediting a theory or proposition somehow proves that a contradictory or opposing explanation exists and is true. 

This series of (in)convolutions is a mutilated, logical horror. It is muddled and fallacious enough to be difficult to disentangle. We are temporarily stunned and baffled by tautological shock-and-awe. Suddenly the rubric of science seems to somehow validate blurry, unstated claims that are overtly anti-science. We are wordless. We wonder why those who intone the magic words – fair and balanced– look at us, wordlessly, with such triumphant defiance. It is because we haven’t imagined the magnitude of the logical blunders that fly before our eyes.

We do get a useful inversion or (commutative operation) from our little “definition,” though. This is of more value to genuine thoughtful inquiry. It seems to be the real point. It goes beyond identifying what are credible speculations and claims about the world, and significantly, helps us see what are not:

Assertions for which there is no conceivable evidence that might contradict them are not regarded as scientific.

We seem to allow, without questioning, the following distorting simplification:

There is no conceivable (“scientific”) evidence that might support them. And this seems to be accepted as amounting to the same thing: Assertions for which there is no imaginable evidence are not regarded as scientific. There isn’t, and can’t be, any such evidence. Hence, they are not “scientific.” They are beliefs, taken on faith, only.

We are vulnerable to another foreshortening, too. We truncate: “faith-based beliefs are not subject to evidence that might disprove them” becomes “faith-based beliefs are not subject to disproof.” Popular usage interprets this as “faith-based beliefs cannot be disproved.” Say that again. Faith-based beliefs can’t be disproved. What have we done? If this strains credulity, pose this question at tea-bagging soiree and see how people really unleash the hunt for coherence.

This (inadvertent?) series of fallacies and errors distracts us from reasoning. We have gotten this far without remarking the obvious fact that scientific “theories” (like evolution and human causation for climate change) regarded as credible- not to say “true-” just do not have meaningful evidence that contradicts them.

“Rules For Axioms: I. Not to omit any necessary principle without asking whether it is admitted, however clear and evident it may be. II. Not to demand, in axioms, any but things that are perfectly evident in themselves.”

Blaise Pascal: Thoughts, Letters and Minor Works: Part 48 Harvard Classics. Blaise Pascal and Charles W. Eliot. F.F.  Collier New York: 1910 pp. 413

“Then there’s the problem of “balance” – the idea that reporters must give roughly equal space to two different “sides” of a controversy. When applied to science, especially in politicized areas, this media norm becomes extremely problematic. Should journalists really grant equal time to the small band of scientists who deny the causal relationship between HIV and AIDS when the vast majority of researchers accept the connection between the two? Should they split column space between the few remaining global warming “skeptics” and the scientific experts who affirm the phenomenon’s human causation? Again, experienced science journalists will know best how to cover such stories and will be aware of the scientific community’s very justifiable abhorrence of unthinking “balance.””

Chris Mooney & Sheril Kirschenbaum: “Unpopular Science”. The Nation (August 17, 2009 ed.). (Our emphasis.) http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090817/mooney_kirshenbaum

We know from clinical observation that right-wing, conservative “faith” operatives are anti-science. And to what purpose? They are intolerant of the “evidence-based” pursuit of public policy. Who profits by this? They resist the admission and consideration of factual knowledge and critical analysis into our public conversations about how we are to conduct ourselves. The Faith Card.

We acknowledge that right-wing doctrine is anti-science. We predictably foreshorten this to “faith is anti-science.” Is faith per se anti-science? I have no idea. How could I, really? I don’t believe I am making claims based on faith. I guess your faiths are anti-science if you say they are. Faiths are specific, particular and not “per se.” There is no recognizable category of as-yet formed faiths for which we can apply logical operators like “anti-science.” Maybe we should discipline ourselves to make statements only about specific, articulable beliefs or “faiths.” Faith is a noun. Do you have faith? Do you have cheeses?

We allow another unthinking inversion (commutation), this time of the trope “faith is anti-science.” We inadvertently give birth to another unfortunate, bastard linguistic error: “science is anti-faith.” Allowing this illogical imposture into the right-wing play-book has invited all sorts of mental mayhem.

If we set aside uncertain arguments about scientific “methods,” the body of science is nothing more (or less) than the accumulation of sensibly agreeable observations about reality. The body of physical science isn’t anti-faith. The body of social science is clear:

It is overwhelmingly evident that organized faith does staggering harm. Not only because it opposes science in public policy.  Not only because it is instrumental in power and oppression. Organized religion produces wholesale injustice and violence.

Beliefs for which we cannot imagine any evidence are a very special, very particular class of claim. They differ fundamentally from observations of reality. We are tricked into mistaking that they merit recognition and equal footing with the reasoned, the rational, the scientific –with claims that are within the ambit of observable evidence and actual theories. They do not. We are fooled into giving them some kind of “legitimacy through association.” They do not have similar gravity, or moral weight, or intellectual standing.

Let’s tally the damage we have done to sensible discourse.

Science and the scientific are categorically maligned as inherently contradictory and self-disproving. This disdains and dismisses all rational, logical discourse, not to mention those zany philosophers, as ridiculous, naïve and stupidly self-contradictory. Reasoned dialogue is mangled and reduced to nonsensical rubble. We can dismiss science itself.

This kind of malicious dishonesty mocks intellectual and logical integrity. No wonder we are confused.

We are obliged to summarily reject right-wing claims to recourse to “logic” or “reason” or “evidence,” or “science,” or, for god’s sake, “truth. They gave up any such claims too long ago for us to brook that bullshit. A reasoned response is an undignified disservice to mental –and moral– integrity. If we analyze with this kind of care, we can rehabilitate for ourselves the proper usage of the word “theory” from those who would appropriate and contaminate it. We can reclaim for serious conversation the terms “proofs” and “proved.”

By all means. Take seriously all ideas that claim to truth, meaning, and mere usefulness. Examine them rationally and with reason. Subject them to skepticism, counter-evidence and to possible disproof. Feel free –intellectually free– to discredit them.

But dismiss, without evidence, apology or justification, that which is presented without evidence. (Provide citation.) Do not dignify as “controversy” the shrill assaults of bitter, acquisitive extremists who would discard what we know.

So many things are just… true. And so many things are just… uncontroversial. And so many things are just… preposterous. Give no credence to unfounded claims to controversy. The unfounded belief and the reasoned, supported and “evidence-based” argument do not have the same standing. Disregard refractory, schizoid and insane demands that you be “fair and balanced.”  As we have seen, they do more harm than immediately appears. Let’s not be insane.

(end)

“They Constantly See Coupling in Temples:” Herodotus

“It was the Egyptians who first made it an offence against propriety to have intercourse with women in temples, or to enter temples after intercourse without having previously washed. Hardly any nation except the Egyptians and the Greeks has any such scruple, but nearly all consider men and women to be, in this respect, no different from animals, which, whether they are beasts or birds, they constantly see coupling in temples and sacred places –and if the god concerned had any objection to this, he would not allow it to occur. Such is the theory, but, in spite of it, I must continue to disapprove the practice.”

Herodotus. The Histories. Translated by Aubrey de Selincourt, Revised and with Introductory Material by John Marincola. Penguin books: New York. 1954.pp. 109

“Lest Ye Think that Fundamentalist “Free Trade” Extremism is “New:”" John Cobden

Lest ye think that It is “modern,” or “rational,” or “innovative,” or divisible from religious fundamentalism-

Richard Cobden and John Bright were early leaders in the Free Trade Movement.

“Cobden in 1846 explained that the buy-cheap, sell-expensive principle was not about selfishness, but was a matter of “carrying out to the fullest extent the Christian doctrine of ‘Do ye to all men as ye would they should do unto you.’””

John Ralston Saul: The Collapse Of Globalism. Overlook Press. Woodstock, New York: 2005.  pp 40-41.

Cobden, in the House of Commons in 1845: “I believe we are at an era which in importance, socially, has not its equal for the last 1800 years.” “[We] have a principle established now which is eternal in its truth and universal in its application, and must be applied in all nations and throughout all times, and applied not simply to commerce, but to every item of the tariffs of the world.” Cobden, 1845.

Cobden, in 1843: [A law which prevents free trade is a] law which interferes with the wisdom of Divine Providence, and substitutes the law of wicked men for the law of nature.”

John Bright, speaking in the House of Commons: [I speak on behalf of those people] into whose hearts free trade principles have sunk, and become, verily, a religious question.”

“Our object is to make you conform to the truth.” Cobden, in the House, 1843.

Citations from Saul, John Ralston: The Collapse Of Globalism. Overlook Press. Woodstock, New York: 2005.

Is Milton Friedman interred in Salt Lake City? Can we exhume him and check his butt for rolls of cash?

“To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect,” Jones [Judge making ruling] concluded. “However, the fact that scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.”

Susan Jacoby: The Age of American Unreason. Random House: New York, 2008. Pp. 29. (In reference to Court Finding Re. creationism in public education.)

We offer the following. Copernicus’ theory was a complete and sufficient explanation of the observable astronomical phenomena of the time, given his contemporary tools of observation and analytic methods. The cosmologies of pre-christian cultures in the Fertile Crescent found flaming chariots arcing through the sky to be complete and sufficient explanations for their observed experience. Today’s religious extremists would use the apparent incompleteness(?) of Darwin’s thought to reject the entire body of evidence proving that evolution takes place. They would not only reject it themselves, but would expel it from our teaching curriculum. They might settle for using it to “wedge” (remember Darwin’s “wedge” analogy?) creation “science” into our schools.

Copernicus’ theory, and those of, say, Newton and Einstein, have proved to be incomplete and insufficient explanations of our entire, observable reality, partly in light of the scientific “progress” they engendered. They are still valid. Needless to say, creationism provides a coherent, credible, complete and sufficient explanation for nothing –precisely nothing- in our observed reality. It is faith; as such, it stands proudly, precisely and solely on the fact that it bears no connection –none- to observed reality.

The Roman Church painfully and reluctantly acknowledged the validity of Copernican science. They even permit it to be taught in Italian schools! Newtonian mechanics and Einstein’s observations of special and general relativity seem to be accepted and acceptable science. (Or maybe not; maybe that stuff isn’t taught in our dumbed-down public education system but only in those high-brow egg-head intellectual schools up East, and is not presently targeted by the creationists.)

Einstein’s observations demanded further development of the theories (and observations) of Copernicus. Thusly, the “incompleteness” of Copernican astronomy is proved. (What business do these people have trafficking in “proofs,” anyway? Why do we bother to endure this tripe?) Before long, will this be used to thrust the geocentric “theory” of astronomy into our classrooms, alongside the heliocentric astronomical “theory?”

“Instead, I write in my notebook, Faith is belief in something you have absolutely no reason or right to believe in. Mentally, I list: faith in God, faith in the church, faith in your spouse, faith in the next sunrise, faith in motions of the stars themselves. Then I write: Faith is beyond thought. Faith is an absolute certainty of something that is so patently absurd you could never justify it to anyone who didn’t already have the same faith.”

Gerald N. Callahan, Ph.D: Faith, Madness and Spontaneous Human Combustion: What Immunology Can Teach Us About Self-Perception. New York: Berkeley Books, 2002. Pp 162

A Certainty of Something So Patently Absurd: Gerald Callahan

“Instead, I write in my notebook, Faith is belief in something you have absolutely no reason or right to believe in. Mentally, I list: faith in God, faith in the church, faith in your spouse, faith in the next sunrise, faith in motions of the stars themselves. Then I write: Faith is beyond thought. Faith is an absolute certainty of something that is so patently absurd you could never justify it to anyone who didn’t already have the same faith.”

Gerald N. Callahan, Ph.D: Faith, Madness and Spontaneous Human Combustion: What Immunology Can Teach Us About Self-Perception. New York: Berkeley Books, 2002. Pp 162

A Species of Evil: Sam Harris.

“It is time we realized that to presume knowledge where one has only pious hope is a species of evil.”

Harris, Sam: The End Of Faith. 2004: W.W. Norton, New York. pp. 225

EXTREMISM IS SAFE: How Is Radical Extremism Reassuring?

The word “conservatism” has been stolen from us. By “Conservatives.”

Large numbers of people who seemingly have fairly moderate beliefs will support demagogues and power-seekers whose beliefs are far more extreme than their own.

Perversely, “conservatives” choose to be represented by persons whose agendas and policies are extreme, imprudent, reckless and dangerous. They are often people whose beliefs differ radically from their own, and whom they may frequently… just not believe.

We crudely call “conservative” those beliefs, ideologies and politics that tend to be self-interested. We are tricked into associating the gooey, burdensome term “conservative” with risk aversion, reflection, deliberation, prudence, and precaution.

The beliefs, and policies, of self-identified “conservatives” in the United States today are anything but prudent, cautious, precautionary or risk-averse. They are emphatically not “conservative” in this sense. They are dangerous. They are extremist. Especially the millenarian, apocalyptic and raptuary ones, and the radical free-market crusaders. We think you might be interested in a quote of Samir Amin posted here as an Irreproachable Quote. Here’s another:

“People who harbor strong convictions without evidence belong at the margins of our societies, not in our halls of power.”

Sam Harris: The End Of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. W.W. Norton, New York: 2004. pp. 225

But these are the people who portray “liberal” policies as reckless, ill considered and precipitate. Dangerous. Threatening. Self-jeopardizing. The advantage in this definition reversal is more than tactical. It amounts to the blurring, debilitation, emasculation, and eventual erasure of words like “conservative” and “extreme” –and “liberal.” And “dangerous.” Could we take back these words, please?

Yet somehow we continue to be confused and deluded.

Popular “conservatism” is resoundingly selfish. It is the preservation of political power and material opportunism for the advantaged. It conserves only the existing privilege and security of the powerful and the rich. And it’s mission is not really conservation, but aggressive acquisitiveness of power and money.

This is the ideology of the rugged individual, red in tooth, resolutely and stoically accepting –even somehow honoring, in the name of all that is Natural about Theft by the Fittest– the sacrifice of those who simply fail at fending for themselves. It accepts no shared common cause in the occasional predatory obliteration of a fellow. This rugged individual is probably a bit of a Marlboroish chap, his jet parked not far from his gentleman’s ranch.

Yet these are the individuals whose politics are most closely concerned with racial, ethnic, religious and linguistic homogeneity- with the identity politics of inclusion and exclusion.

It is especially easy to identify –and identify with– these communities of identity when they are extreme, odd, glaring, ridiculous, perverse, stupid or generally obviously indefensible. The more embarrassingly and self-evidently wrong they are, the more easily their members are able to spot each-other by their stripe. By example I offer religious extremist groups, violent so-called right-to-lifers, opposers of fundamental rights to those who differ from them, economic extremists, and those who are obviously anti-democratic in their bullying perversion of the public dialogue.

Many animals display a behavior that may be understood as a social behavior. (Not, we hope, by any superficial resemblance to our human folly.) They herd. Large numbers of them will move centripetally toward the center of the social group, especially when there is some threat from without. This expresses an evolutionarily adaptive behavior. It is “conservative” inasmuch as it is self-preserving- it confers relative reproductive advantage on these individuals. They are less likely, for the moment, to be mangled and eaten. This is, precisely – social.

Let us impose a bit of egregious linguistic anthropomorphism. Suppose that social animals feel some “comfort” when they are at the center of the herd, and that conversely when they are not, they may feel “insecure,” or “threatened,” or “angry,” or how about “wronged,” or “aggrieved.” They might oppose Antelope Affirmative Action, say. They might feel a kind of Antelope gemeinscheift, say.

By the way, I intend this analogy to be without judgment. I don’t mean to derogate the ungulates by comparing them to people or asses. There is so more to the gracious and dignified social behaviors of these animals than the vicious deception, deliberate lying and craven betrayal of the cowardly human. (Please note, by the way, the predictable frequency with which the conservative will suddenly and savagely eat their own. This noble –though involuntary– sacrifice, I think, reinforces our argument. Steaming flesh left at the edge of a herd is a proven distraction.)

Herds are homogeneous, uniform, undifferentiated, indistinguishable, anonymous. It is hard to pluck out an individual from a mass (though a useful endeavor on the part of a predator). There is no individual, no true identity, until one is cut out from the herd. Excised neatly, with a lunging, paralyzing crush of the neck.

There is a Center of a herd. It is a dominant zone or site of commonality of belief, of shared ideology, a community of sentiment, of identity, a herd of beliefs, ideologies and representations. It has an enormous gravitational pull. The Center is continually contested, shifted, redefined and colonized in its relentless conventionality, as the fearful crowd upon and evict the fearful. The Center is a place of fear, continual insecurity and shifting redefinition.

Does it feel secure to be in the center of the herd? Are we constantly listening, feeling, judging where the edge of the herd is, and adjusting our beliefs to its discomforts?

Do we centripetally push ourselves away from the edge, the identifiable, the vulnerability of the visibly independent individual, the committed, the daring, the risk-taking?

Are the edges of the herd defined by extremism- by “conservative” and “radical” beliefs and ideologies that are farther from perceived norms than one’s own? Does it seem, at some pre-cortical level, that those “conservative” extremists are more likely to be shredded by predators than we are? Do we embrace them and anoint them because they are a danger to themselves? The “conservatives,” not the risk-takers, are like us, yet they are not like us; they are extremists.

Is it desirable, or natural, or self-preserving –conservative– to impress lower moral expectations on those around us– to identify and mark them as a bit closer to (deserved) social-darwinian annihilation at the edge of the herd? To judge the different –the Other- with contempt because they are doomed– for to judge them is to doom them instead of ourselves.

Does human social behavior –the politics of power and identity– look like a swirling, rotating vortex, like a threatened herd or flock or school, like a galactic whorl? Methinks it so. Is there a black hole of infinitely compressed homogeneity and conventionality at the Center of the human herd?

Could it be that this is where the (ontological) power of identity comes from? From a real and true evolutionarily-conferred calculus of survival advantage in elbowing one’s way to blustering, knee-jerk conformity? Erasing one’s self: Disappearing as an individual, de-individuating through bluster and posture? Do we need a term for de-individuating? Could it be “voting?”

Let’s refer to the periodic convulsion of our electoral choosing of sacrificial heroes – “representatives” – as a “Whorl.” We could we call elections “Whorling.” You could call a candidate a “fucking Whorl.”

I suspect that whatever their thoughts, claims or intentions, many more voters than we might expect cast their votes, in the final fear-frozen moment of choosing an organism, an individual, a hero, a sacrificial carcass to “represent” them, for the candidate who is most evidently sure to win. And this may be the True Center that we are somehow always “moving to.”

“I voted for the winner.” The winner represents me. The winner owes me. The winner must stand between me and the lions. Don’t vote for the loser. The loser is already a sacrificial hero. He has already been eaten by the lions.

Be sure to “whorl” for the carcass of your choice this November, and thank you.