Do atheists or theists have a more accurate world-view?
Having seen the bizarre abuse of Christianity by right-wingers in the
US and the equally bizarre abuse of Islam by right-wingers in the
stans, I've been
occupied by atheism, theism, and placing my own belief structures in
the space of possible belief structures.
My first tangible result is a larval set of 3 hypotheses that I
believe are falsifiable by the following test.
First the "theoretical" setup. And please bear with my pretentious
misuse of prior works. My goal is to formulate the hypotheses and
test so that they are informative regardless of the weakness of my
"theory", but still with enough hooks to flesh out an actual theory.
- Shannon's Theorem 10 goes something like this:
Given a system, S, and a "good" controller, C, for S, the variability
of C (V_c) must be greater than or equal to the variability of S.
I.e.
V_c >= V_s.
This is common sense, actually. E.g. the competent manager of a
complex enterprise must be flexible enough to handle all the wacko
things that a complex enterprise might do. Or, a competent parent
must be flexible enough to counter all the wacko things their teenager
might do. (Of course, the theorem doesn't, at all apply to managing
businesses or raising teenagers... but as I said, bear with me.)
- If a controller is part of the system it's trying to control, then
the variability of the part is likely to be less than the variability
of the whole. I.e.
V_c < V_s.
My point being that any human (theist or not) is a part of the world;
so the human (the controller, "good" or not) is part of the system
she's trying to control.
- Defn: Let's say we have two distinct (but perhaps not disjoint)
controllers in the system: A, T in S. Define M(A,T) as "A is a better
controller than T of system S".
- Premise:
V_a > V_t => M(A,T).
OK. Now all we have to do is devise a measure for V_c, i.e. the
variability of any given human. My first idea for this abuses the
research that provides evidence that liberals are more "open to new
experiences". I'm not claiming that conclusion is true (in fact, I
think true conservatives -- the people who focus on conserving
resources -- are much more capable of handling variability in the
environment than liberals -- the people who generously lather
resources where they are needed). But the sense of the rhetoric is
what I'm after.
- Defn: My proposal is that the variability of a human is correlated
with the intensity of the emotions they exhibit when placed in
unfamiliar and high variance contexts. For example, we pluck your
average Iowan and toss her into the audience of a cage fight in
Thailand and measure her physiological response. If that response is
generally positive, then that person has a high variability ... a high
capability for handling unfamiliar and exciting situations. That
(admittedly vague setup) constitutes my measure for V_c.
Now we also need a measure for "theism" and "atheism". I don't like
the idea of relying on self-reporting, because nobody I talk to has a
clear description of what it means to be an "atheist". So, I suspect
people are just "group identifying". They choose to call themselves
"atheist" if and only if they identify with the people they've seen
calling themselves "atheist". And most "theists" I talk to don't even
know what the word "theist" means. 8^O
- Defn: So my proposal for measuring whether someone is an "atheist"
or a "theist" would consist of a dialectic survey designed to tease
out a person's spiritual views while trying to factor away group
identification. I don't know how to do this. I'm just a damned
programmer, after all. ;-)
Hypotheses:
V_a ~= V_t
-- I.e. there is no statistically
significant difference between the reactions of atheists and theists
to unfamiliar and exciting contexts.
V_a >= V_t
-- I.e. Atheists show more postive or
neutral reactions than theists.
V_t >= V_a
-- I.e. Theists show more positive or
neutral reactions than atheists.
The interpretation of the results would be relatively open, I think.
But my "theoretical" setup above would probably lead me to believe
that whoever showed the greater variability has the more accurate
and/or more useful world-view.
And just to get it out of the way, my
bias is toward theists.
I tend to believe that theism inherently handles ignorance.
I.e. theists tend to accept that they are very flawed and ignorant.
At least that's part of the metaphysics ... that "God works in
mysterious ways". As such, they are trained to navigate despite such
flaws and aren't particularly upset when wacky things happen
(e.g. miracles).
Atheists, in contrast, often admit that some things are unknown; but
they rarely seem to admit that some things are
unknowable.
The "atheists" who admit that some (or most) things are unknowable
tend to call themselves "agnostic". This inference of mine makes me
think that atheists are less tolerant of ambiguity, mystery,
ignorance, etc. Hence, wacky, anomalous events don't necessarily
evoke competent navigation in the midst of uncertainty. In fact, if
we read too much into the idea that many scientists are atheists, we
could jump to the conclusion that wacky events ("miracles") cause
atheists to become extremely curious and obsessive ... burrowing away
in dead-end rat holes for decades, wasting their lives trying to know
the unknowable. (Thank God for these ahteists because without them,
we'd still be hacking each other to bits so we can own the Oh Great
and Powerful Tim's carcass or plant our flag on some sacred rock in
the middle of a desert.)
So, my bet is that the theists would show greater variability than the
atheists. But I've been wrong before. ;-)