In response to my earlier post on Dualism, I was directed to Bloom & Weisberg's analysis (academic version) of how college students reject Materialism despite the best efforts of all their teachers. (There was a time, not too long ago, when such rebellion was lauded as "critical thinking" and "don't trust anyone over 30". Alas, all such slogans depend on which side of the divide one slings.) After much analysis, the authors come to the surprising conclusion that upbringing matters. That was a great relief--unless it is prologue to taking my children away by force, as is happening in Germany.

But it is the conclusions of the piece that are so refreshing. As Al Mohler explains:

Bloom and Weisberg have written a truly fascinating essay.  One of the most interesting aspects of their argument is the absolute dichotomy it affirms on the issue of design -- you either believe in design and purpose or not.  This is exceedingly clarifying.
   In other words, this essay leads to the inevitable conclusion that you must indeed choose between Sunday School and modern science.  If modern science insists that lions and clouds are purely accidental products of purely natural causes, this sets modern science in direct and unavoidable conflict with the claim that God made lions and clouds for a purpose -- and ultimately for His own glory.

Despite the "soft science" psychology background of the authors, a field founded by Freud 100 years ago that is still bickering over the subject of their investigation, (some claiming it lacks the precision of science, and should be classified as art), yet Bloom and Weisberg still argue for the necessity, nay, for the undeniable perspecuity of Materialism.

This is a perfect example of what I have been calling the monomania of Modernism. That is, when it re-entered the Christian West, Materialism was cordonned off, allowed to explain only unimportant parts of life: falling rocks, chemical reactions, etc. Kant developed a noumenal / phenomenal categorical wall with an extensive metaphysical minefield to separate church and science, and this dualism was routinely taught in schools and science classes from the Enlightenment to the present.  Yet immediately after this 15-minute introduction on the first day of class, it was obvious to every budding scientist that no one doubted the eventual victory of materialism over all the noumenal fields of art and politics. So for example, we were recently told that a gene for brain size would explain Oriental superiority, uh, whoops, make that non-Oriental atonality.  And the blitzkrieg went on and on against the Maginot Line of Kantian noumena.

So Mohler is relieved to see scientists finally saying in print what they have always whispered in private: "Modern science is antithetical to faith". Like the French generals on the eve of WWII, he proudly lifts his chin and says:
I envy his bravery, but I do not envy his position, if he is still fighting the Modernist wars of the 1920's.  For while I find the Modernist argument flawed in many respects, it won those wars, and Fundamentalism retreated to the safety of seclusion. When Falwell brought the troops back to the war, it was not to refight those battles, as Napolean was said to have endlessly refought Waterloo. Nor are Bloom and Weisberg coming out of the closet to combat the hollow specter of a Monist Fundamentalism, but rather to fight the rising tide of PostModernism, both Derrida's flavor of atheist PoMo and ICR's flavor of theist PoMo. For ironically enough, today's Fundies, perhaps Mohler himself, employ the same PoMo tactics in their attack on science as we saw in the previous post from Josie Appleton.

Therefore to understand the debate, let us review a more innocent time when Kant still reigned supreme in the ivy-covered halls of higher learning. With the huge success of physics in defeating the Axis powers in WWII, federal largesse for the sciences grew by leaps and bounds. Quickly the university faculties realized that this was disproportionately empowering the sciences over the arts, and universities carefully segregated their colleges of liberal arts from the natural sciences. Thus began the intricate academic 3-step dance, the required liberal arts core courses nagging that the vitally important noumenal aspects of life cannot be found in the sciences, and the science core courses stressing the practicality and renumerative benefits of the phenomenal aspects. Back then the philosophy department didn't say that the sciences were bad or evil, only incomplete without the "critical thinking" acquired in the arts. But the engineering departments openly scorned the philosophers, deriding their useless theorizing. Dualism versus Monism, the need for two approaches versus the need for only one. (Two steps forward, one step back, can you do the academic 3-step?) Post Modernism is the response of the students, who say they are both right, everyone is special, can't we just focus on the process instead of the product?

Well in a story too long to tell here, PoMo destroyed the Kantian dualism of the liberal arts, and began threatening the sciences. The story that alerted me was the 1996 Sokal hoax, wherein a physicist resolves to prove PoMo is pure rubbish by writing a jargon-filled paper and getting it published in the peer-reviewed PoMo journal "Social Text", and then publishing the rebuttal elsewhere. Immediately a Nobel laureate in physics  takes him to task, evidently because the laureate's daughter is heavily involved in PoMo research, and the battle sides are drawn.

But by-and-large, the academic friction is below the public radar when both Monist and Dualist are atheists, as Kant himself was, but the debate flares into the public eye whenever a theist pops in, be he Monist or not. (Old Fundies are Monist, Liberals and many Catholics Dualist, while neo-whatever are invariably PoMo). Likewise, the sciences are finding that after years of sapping the walls, the Kantian dualism that shielded them from the masses is no longer providing cover.  So neither from wisdom nor from malice but from necessity comes this full-throated defense of monomaniacal Modernism, made by the likes of Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and now Bloom & Weisberg, all addressing the problem of Dualist / PoMo Fundies. Here's B&W:

The main source of resistance to scientific ideas concerns what children know prior to their exposure to science. The last several decades of developmental psychology has made it abundantly clear that humans do not start off as  "blank slates."Rather, even one year-olds possess a rich understanding of both the physical world (a "naïve physics") and the social world (a "naïve psychology"). Babies know that objects are solid, that they persist over time even when they are out of sight, that they fall to the ground if unsupported, and that they do not move unless acted upon. They also understand that people move autonomously in response to social and physical events, that they act and react in accord with their goals, and that they respond with appropriate emotions to different situations.

What they observe but fail to recognize is that it goes beyond child-raising, but to child-creating. Teleology isn't just bad upbringing,  it is an inherent human trait, like the discovery of Chomsky's "deep grammar", or language centers in the brain. There is nothing more teleological than language, and we have known for decades that it is built in. And if it is genetically determined, then there is a purpose to it, as every evolutionary biologist will tell you about their favorite adaptation. Except in this case, where B&W are busy denying the purpose of the "intuition" for purpose. Why? So children can be sufficiently purified for performing purposeless science! 

Our intuitive psychology also contributes to resistance to science. One significant bias is that children naturally see the world in terms of design and purpose. For instance, four year-olds insist that everything has a purpose, including lions ("to go in the zoo") and clouds ("for raining"), a propensity that Deborah Kelemen has dubbed "promiscuous teleology." Additionally, when asked about the origin of animals and people, children spontaneously tend to provide and to prefer creationist explanations.

Just as children's intuitions about the physical world make it difficult for them to accept that the Earth is a sphere, their psychological intuitions about agency and design make it difficult for them to accept the processes of evolution.

So Bloom should not be amazed at promiscuous teleology, the real question is the cause of promiscuous anti-teleology! How can we possibly tell everyone that there is no purpose to the life they have purposefully lived? Actually, we've already answered it, and a long time ago. In 50 BC Titus Lucretius Carus writes in his primer on materialism, "De Natura":

. "Do not be seduced by the delights of Venus... but lance the wound with promiscuous attachments."

 In a word, promiscuity. If faculty can get the freshmen to behave like bonobos, they will believe they're bonobos. (I speak from experience both as a father of three collegiate coeds and a former university professor.)  But Bloom is more discrete, and focusses on the barrier to Monist Materialism--Dualism (which in his description may include PoMo as well).

One of the most interesting aspects of our common-sense psychology is dualism, the belief that minds are fundamentally different from brains. This belief comes naturally to children.... The strong intuitive pull of dualism makes it difficult for people to accept what Francis Crick called "the astonishing hypothesis." Dualism is mistaken — mental life emerges from physical processes.

His certainty does not come from his field of psychology, which is wracked with argument over the meaning and origin of mind, it comes from the same atheism and promiscuity that defined Francis Crick. So what does Bloom see as the cure? His conclusion is as revealing as it is humble:
This paragraph is remarkable in its humility. It is not often that one finds a scientist willing to admit his bias, or refusing to label his opponents as ignorant. And If he were honest, he would apply this new-found humility to his own cherished theories. But alas, it is not to be, he only wanted to appear humble. B&W continue:

But this rejection of science would be mistaken in the end. The community of scientists has a legitimate claim to trustworthiness that other social institutions, such as religions and political movements, lack. The structure of scientific inquiry involves procedures, such as experiments and open debate, that are strikingly successful at revealing truths about the world. All other things being equal, a rational person is wise to defer to a geologist about the age of the earth rather than to a priest or to a politician.

B&W argue that the reason science doesn't have to be humble is that it is True. And what makes it True? The process.

Now mind you, this is the self-same process that Hume said would separate science from truth. This is why Hume "awakened [Kant] from his dogmatic slumbers" because he realized inductive, scientific experimentation would never lead to truth. And yet this is the reason B&W give: Science is better at finding truth than religion because it is empirical.  If several centuries of the best minds have come to very opposite conclusion, how can B&W be so sure that their views are correct, how did they come to this opinion? They explain:

Given the role of trust in social learning, it is particularly worrying that national surveys reflect a general decline in the extent to which people trust scientists. To end on a practical note, then, one way to combat resistance to science is to persuade children and adults that the institute of science is, for the most part, worthy of trust.

Persuading young children by argument from authority. In a word, upbringing.

So after explaining that upbringing can't explain away inbred teleleology, he bases his entire faith in the Truth of Science on upbringing!? That is, truth is not based on experience, nor on logic, but on "trust", on a societal dynamic, on a process, which might be propaganda or brain-washing, we can't tell since we have no absolute standard. This is exactly the characteristic of PoMo. Note especially that this recursion that signals PoMo also leads to self-contradiction, to a logical dead-end, to a "argument is over" mental suicide.

Now you can see why PoMo undermines science. For even in the defense of Monist Materialism, we end at pluralist PoMo,. And far from shoring up our position, we empower the student who hears that "trust" is the most important validation of Science, to go out and promote "trust" as validation of all manner of contradictions, of Ponzi retirement schemes, of UN world government and global warming.

But now suppose for brief moment that we know nothing of the Enlightenment, nothing of Materialism. Would it be self-consistent if the built-in tendency of children, the inherent intuition for teleology be proof that there is a purpose for purpose? What do we make of that hypothesis, does that recursion lead us into the same convoluted knots as Materialism? On the contrary, it strengthens teleology. Then observational Science can defend purpose, and Science is not opposed to faith, rather it is Materialism that is opposed to faith, as it always has been. What B&W show us instead is that Science is opposed to Materialism.  But best of all, Science reveals faith. As Mohler puts it:

The hard-wiring for design these psychologists identify as the problem may well be yet another sign of the imago Dei -- the image of God that distinguishes humanity from all other creatures.