The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions by David Berlinski
April 14th, 2008
There are, as everybody knows, a recent number of books seeking to either demonstrate, scientifically, that God does not exist, or to show that the love of religion is the root of all evil. Some familiar names: Daniel Dennet, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Weinberg, Victor Stenger, Christopher Hitchens, and even John Allen Paulos. All proclaim that the weight of scientific evidence is either completely or heavily on the side of the non existence of God.
The question is, of course: Has the authority of eminent scientists enabled them to prove their case? Berlinski says, “Not even close.” Not only have they not come close, Berlinski goes further and shows how easily they are persuaded by weak or demonstrably false arguments, and the extraordinary lengths that some scientists will go, in the sense of believing bizarre theories, to avoid ceding any ground to the “religionists.” Their distaste of religion has also lead them to say some rather stupid things. For example, Berlinski quotes the eminent biologist Emile Zuckerkandl as saying that if God exists, He would represent “something like a pathology of the state of being.” An enjoyable, sputtering rant by that author published in the peer-reviewed journal Gene is summarized later in the book.
Incidentally, before we get too far, it is worth mentioning that like most (all?) books in this genre, Berlinski does not attempt a definition of who or what God is—and neither do those on the other side. I haven’t one to offer, either. This curiosity can very well mean that everybody is talking at cross purposes. But since nobody delineates or bounds God, I can’t say much more than this, except that it should be borne in mind when reading any of these books.
A non-Enlightened disease
Berlinski puts the claim that religion is bad for you in perspective. Some anti-religion authors won’t settle for anything less than damning religion in all its stripes, disallowing, even, the crumb of comfort given to people when their loved ones die. Even Carl Sagan, in his Demon-Haunted World allowed this kind of solace, without recognizing that since, I must point out, everybody dies, this is an enormous amount of comfort to go around that would be denied mankind if religion were absent. But you never hear of our authors breaking open Mill to assist in calculating the utility of comforts versus torments of religion.
Many scientists feel that religion, while still a cancerous growth, is benign and only mostly harmful, and not immediately deadly. Sort of like smoking, which the more Enlightened among us would like to ban. Presumably, those who would prohibit smoking are same people who would support legalizing assisted suicide. Which happened in Holland in 1984 (and where a partial smoking ban does exist). Since then, about three percent of all deaths in that country are assisted, of which the government admits that about one-fourth are “involuntary.” We call that involuntary method of exiting “murder” here in the States, but Europeans are often considered more Enlightened, so they might be one step ahead of us in legal definitions.
Arguments for assisted suicide are usually intentionally religion-free. Thus, the point of the Holland example, of course, is that the world would not necessarily become a more moral, or safer place, if religion were to disappear. More proof is given by Berlinski in the form of a table, ordered by number of “excess”, or untimely, twentieth-century deaths due to non- or even anti-religious behavior. Leading the pack are of course the two World Wars, but not far behind in the body count are mankind’s experiments with various communist utopias. Since one of the top arguments used by those who would wish to bar religion is that the religious can be cruel and have killed, the evidence that the non-religious can be cruel and have killed in equal or larger number only proves that there will always be a class of people who adore pain, misery, and bloodshed, irrespective of creed.
The disease religion is also seen as congenital, in the sense that people have religion on the brain, literally. Somehow, we are assured, the brain has genetically encoded religion into itself, and that if we’d just grow up and recognize this, we would become Enlightened (or brightened, these days). This is one of the sillier arguments put forth by scientists. If religion is genetically encoded, then it cannot be overcome, unless some of us, the superior ones naturally, have somehow managed to escape expressing those particular genes that activate, say, the praying response. Look for one of those fMRI studies that “proves” this, soon.
Berlinski shows that because some scientists cannot countenance religious arguments of any kind, they refuse to accept any evidence that is any way tainted by religion. This leads to the fallacy that one should not listen to arguments against, say, stem cell research or abortion because they are religious. You will surely certainly recognize this ploy when you meet it.
Scientific ontology
Everybody already knows that physics, and its offshoots, has done brilliantly at explaining more and more of the universe. But it cannot keep doing so forever. At some point, meta-physics must enter into the discussion. This is because, no matter what physical laws we have identified, we will never have explained through observation why these particular laws and not some other are in force, nor can we answer what the laws mean. It is obvious that it is here that God can slip in and offer the needed explanations. Some scientists are therefore anxious to fill in these gap with…something, anything but God. Or, if that cannot be accomplished, then to prove that God does not exist.
Dawkins, in his The God Delusion offers a particularly weak argument. His first premise is that the universe is improbable. And we can stop right there, because that is a nonsensical statement, so his argument fails. Any thing or statement cannot be improbable. A thing can only be improbable with respect to something else. Further, a thing can be improbable with respect to one set of evidence and entirely probable with respect to other evidence. So, in Dawkin’s case, the universe is improbable with respect to what?
Weak Anthropic evidence is sometimes offered, in the guise of certain physical constants having particular values, in the sense that if these constants did not have these values, then human life would be impossible (which is not the same as saying the universe is impossible, but let that pass). Now the burden is on those who tout this evidence to show that this is the best evidence with which to measure the improbability of the universe. And there are many hints that it is not the best evidence. It is, after all, by its very name, suspiciously self indulgent and human centered evidence. Why would the universe care if humans, or other sentient beings, evolved enough to notice that they might not have evolved had the universe been arranged differently anyway? Besides, to say that things might have been different and humans might not have evolved is just a tautology, and therefore of no interest.
Still, accept it if you like, so that we can move to Dawkins’s second premise, which is that God Himself is improbable. Again, the statement is nonsensical: improbable with respect to what? Dawkins suggests that God must be more improbable than the universe, which again makes no sense. Anyway, improbable is not impossible, as Dawkins often argues with respect to evolution by natural selection, arguments he has apparently forgotten. Still, Dawkins moves to his conclusion that God is so improbable that He doesn’t exist, and advises people to accept some recent conjectures in cosmology that seem to do away with the need to explain why the universe, or universes, are the way they are.
These are the Landscape and multiverse hypotheses, put forward by various authors to help them cope with the insolubilities of quantum mechanics and cosmology. These are attempts to shift the questions of “Why?” one step back. That they do not answer them, I would have thought obvious. Even pushing the grand questions a little deeper down is enough to please some people. Berlinski, a mathematical physicist, covers these speculations well, without any math, and gives pointers to books where we might learn more. See especially his very clever “Catechism of Quantum Cosmology.” Briefly, however, the solutions offered posit an uncountable number of alternate universes that are coming into and out of creation always. There are no mechanisms to observe these other universes directly or indirectly. Even if we could, these theories might answer some questions of quantum mechanics and gravity, but they never answer why it is infinities of universes instead of just one. The theories are also mind-boggling complex, and by no means are they consistent with one another. Nobody even knows what the full scope of these ideas are.
Berlinski quotes Dawkins, who is nevertheless satisfied, as saying, “The key difference between the radically extravagant God hypothesis and the apparently extravagant multiverse hypothesis, is one of statistical improbability.” Presumably, he means that God is more improbable. He never says how much more. Infinities, of universes or anything else, are a dangerous thing. More foolishness has been generated by jumping to infinity than by any other reason (see chapter 15 of Jaynes’s remarkable Probability Theory for appropriate words of admonition).
Argument from design
It has long been convincing to many that the wonderful biological complexity that is everywhere in evidence must have had a designer. How else, Darwin himself wondered, can one explain the human eye? This argument is less convincing than it once was, because of the success of modern biology and genetics, and the seeming success of evolution by natural selection.
(It is just as well to point out here that I accept that evolution accounts for some or most of the observed biological variation on Earth, and that the mechanism driving it is natural selection, or something like it.)
Wait a minute. Did he just say seeming success? He did. Which brings us back to Dawkins, the best-known anti-religion author. Was there ever a man who published so much nonsense that was taken so seriously by the scientific community? Nobody else even comes close. Just mentioning the word memes proves my point. Is not believing in God a meme? Berlinski doesn’t discuss memes, but does offer some well known criticisms of “selfish” genes—incidentally, the best are due to the philosopher’s Mary Midgley (Evolution as a Religion) and David Stove (Darwinian Fairytales; if you haven’t read either of these books, please do so, especially Stove’s, before you comment).
Not all biologists are satisfied with present-day theory. Berlinski writes
[Darwinian] theory is what is always was: It is unpersuasive. Among evolutionary biologists, these matters are well known. In the privacy of the Susan B. Anthony faculty lounge, they often tell one another with relief that it is a very good thing the public has no idea what the research literature really suggest.
“Darwin?” a Nobel laureate in biology once remarked to me over his bifocals. “That’s just the party line.”
There are still gaps in the evolutionary record. Nobody knows how life original arose, and nobody knows how species originate. Some fill these gaps with God. Scientists argue that the gaps will be filled in eventually. Berlinski says that this assumption is “both intellectually primitive and morally abhorrent—primitive because it reflects a phlegmatic absence of curiosity, and abhorrent because it assigns to intellectual future a degree of authority alien to human experience” because filling gaps “has created [new] gaps all over again.”
The answer
The best summation on the side of (non-apoplectic) scientists is probably from Richard Feynman, who said, “Today we cannot see whether Schrödinger’s equation [which describes the time evolution of physical systems] contains frogs, musical composers, or morality. We cannot say whether something beyond it like God is needed , or not. And so we can all hold strong opinions either way.”
To say whether or not God exists is the hardest question in the world; yet it is the one people find easiest to answer, and everybody seems delighted to meet an argument, however weak, that agrees with their desires. This leads very smart people to say exceptionally stupid things.
My own surmise is that any proof—for or against—is impossible. And so any belief you have is based entirely on faith.
Entry Filed under: Philosophy, Book review
85 Comments Add your own
1. Al Fin | April 14th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
If I could talk myself into believing in God or gods, I would. But I can’t convince myself, so when I pray it is to a fantasy being greater than myself, in whom I do not actually believe. Nothing close to a biblical God or mythical gods. Just a convenient fiction for my own ad hoc purposes.
2. lucia | April 14th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
I don’t believe in God. But, I agree with you, the existence or nonexistence of God is unprovable. Why people attempt either is beyond me.
I grew up Roman Catholic. There is something called Faith. You believe without proof.
3. Alan D. McIntire | April 14th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Like Lucia, I was raised Christian but am no longer a believer. Not only is attacking religious beliefs futile, but I agree with Eugen F. Ware that to do so would be
downright vicious:
http://www.kancoll.org/khq/1959/59_3_malin.htm
THE WASHERWOMAN’S SONG
In a very humble cot,
In a rather quiet spot,
In the suds and in the soap,
Worked a woman full of hope;
Working, singing, all alone,
In a sort of under tone:
“With a Savior for a friend,
He will keep me to the end.”
Sometimes happening along,
I had heard the semi-song,
And I often used to smile,
More in sympathy than guile;
But I never said a word
In regard to what I heard,
As she sang about her friend
Who would keep her to the end.
Not in sorrow nor in glee
Working all day long was she,
As her children, three or four;
Played around her on the floor;
But in monotones the song
She was humming all day long:
“With a Savior for a friend,
He will keep me to the end.”
It’s a song I do not sing,
For I scarce believe a thing
Of the stories that are told
Of the miracles of old;
But I know that her belief
Is the anodyne of grief,
And will always be a friend
That will keep her to the end.
Just a trifle lonesome she,
Just as poor as poor could be;
But her spirits always rose,
Like the bubbles in the clothes,
And, though widowed and alone,
Cheered her with the monotone,
Of a Savior and a friend
Who would keep her to the end.
I have seen her rub and rub, [1]
On the washboard in the tub,
While the baby, sopped in suds,
Rolled and tumbled in the duds;
Or was paddling in the pools,
With old scissors stuck in spools;
She still humming of her friend
Who would keep her to the end.
Human hopes and human creeds
Have their roots in human needs;
And I should not wish to strip
From that washerwoman’s lip
Any song that she can sing,
Any hope that songs can bring;
For the woman has a friend
That will keep her to the end.
4. Raven | April 14th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
If a belief in a god gives some people a more fullfilling life then all the power to them. The real issue is the human tendency to try to validate their own beliefs by pushing them on others - a problem that exists even if religion is removed from the picture.
5. noahpoah | April 14th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Interesting essay. It’s quite distant from uncertainty in climate models, though (im)probability does play a role. I was happy (since I find that I agree with you much of the time) to see you arrive at agnosticism at the end. It seems to me that this is the only philosophically defensible position to take.
I hadn’t heard of Stove before, but doing some cursory research on him has piqued my interest. Anyone who takes it upon himself to loudly criticize Popper, Lakatos, Kuhn, and Feyerabend can’t be all bad.
6. Mike D. | April 14th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Another excellent post on what is becoming the best blog in the Blogosphere!
Don’t forget E.O. Wilson on your non-believers list. Charles Darwin was apparently right about natural selection, judgments of success or failure aside. I think Darwin posited a largely non-interventionist God, but retained his faith. Whether the Anthony loungers have such, I don’t know. More Berlinsky nonsense, most likely.
I, too, was raised RC, but as I matured into a skeptical, questioning scientist my faith faded. Now, though, after years of careful observation, (and as I drift into impending dotage), I find myself closer to the believers’ camp again. There have been too many “improbable” coincidences in my life. Reality is reality, and I’m in touch with it. But there is something else going on, some deeper game behind the Illusion. Stuff appears to happen for a reason, and the reason, or motive, or modus operandi, seems to be Good versus Evil.
I lack proof and can only speak anecdotally. But I strongly suspect there is absolute Good, and absolute Evil, and find myself drawn to the one and repelled by the other.
7. Craig | April 14th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
I’d like to just mention that most of the scientists I know, including myself, are atheists or agnostic. However, I know a few excellent scientists with deep and sincere religious beliefs - the two are in no way incompatible. Almost all scientists I know agree with the basic point that the existence of God is probably unknowable either way. So, we have no problem with religion, except insofar as people believe it to the exclusion of rigorous science (e.g. 6000 year old Earth). Personally, I greatly dislike Dawkins and his ilk for giving the rest of us a bad name.
I’d also like to make a quick point about the bizarre cosmological theories you discussed. As an astrophysicist who works in areas involving cosmology, I’d like to reiterate the point that these theories of multiple universes and higher dimensions and whatnot currently have not a shred of evidence either for or against them. In fact, most currently make absolutely zero testable predictions. Some my hold out hope that these theories will be refined and give us a deeper understanding of our universe - and possibly even explain why our universe exists in the first place. But we’re nowhere near that point, and believing that these will somehow solve the God problem seems a bit like an act of desperate faith to me.
8. James | April 14th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
I’m a bit like Al Fin, in that I find it impossible to believe in any sort of higher power(s) and yet I will still invoke said power(s) in a time of need.
I guess it is a similar to sending out a message in a bottle in the hope that someone picks it up but in a metaphysical way rather than physical!
I also think that people should just let people be as the thing that annoys me the most about both sides of the religious debate is their incessant need to persuade you to have utter faith in their view. It is a little bit tiresome really!
9. John Schuh | April 14th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Those who say that religion is just a way to get through a cold, meaningless life, maybe should reflect on what it means to be human. Who do we need, and can we supply it ourselves? We are a paradox: finite thiings who demand to be eternal. We are the animals who do not fit into that circlle of life celebrated by the likes of Elton John.
10. PaddikJ | April 15th, 2008 at 1:50 am
I have a friend; a skeptic of long-standing. He also teaches statistics & calculus to Econ Majors (always quick to aver that he is not an economist). He says he has run the numbers several different ways, and always gets the same answer: The chances of Life arising spontaneously are, FAPP, nill.
My contribution to the discussion was to point out that while one may be forced to accept the existence of a Prime Mover, that is a very long way from a God who gives a shit. We completely agree that anti-religious zealots of the Dawkins variety are not skeptics, they are dogmatic materialists.
11. Tim James | April 15th, 2008 at 6:59 am
Having been brought up ‘in the church’ almost literally, as my dear old dad was a professional God-botherer, I made the transit via agnosticism to atheism in the last few years. I thought it disingenuous to remain seated on the fence for too long.
Although theism and atheism may seem inseparable to an agnostic, both being faith-based, belief in a ‘higher’ being is more infantile and allows greater latitude for extreme personal behaviour. I would assert that much more harm has been done in the name of ‘God’ than of atheism. After all, atheists have to bear the responsibility for their own actions.
I wouldn’t give the Pope very good odds versus Dawkins over 15 rounds even with His Holiness’ Hitler Youth history.
12. Martin Ringo | April 15th, 2008 at 11:42 am
For those of you who like Berlinski — and I used to be among his most fervent admirers — you might try his “On Systems Analysis,” an unmitigated attack on the Jay Forrester, and his kind, school of prognostication. It is the funniest book written about system of difference/differential equations, albeit that may be damnation by faint praise.
13. Wade | April 15th, 2008 at 11:50 am
As a follow to Tim James, I would argue that much more harm has been done in the mantra “Believe as I do” than belief in God.
Whether it’s belief in Allah, the Christian God, Communism, Climate Change, etc…. is immaterial. It’s that people exist who feel that if you do not believe as they, then you should be forced to comply, be sullied, muted, or even killed.
This behavior is where freedoms go to die and seems to be cropping up a lot in the Climate Change arena.
14. Bernie | April 15th, 2008 at 11:56 am
Tim’s comment deserves an “unsporting behavior” call.
This is always interesting question, one that I have not fully resolved and certainly have not thought about from a probability perspective, Voltaire notwithstanding.
Scientifically, religious belief is certainly a “phenomena” that is sufficiently pervasive across time and cultures to warrant careful thought as to its origins.
I grew up reading Teilhard de Chardin who seemed to have integrated a fairly traditional interpretation of Roman Catholicism with Evolution (See Aczel’s The Jesuit and the Skull for a quick and entertaining introduction.) As a result I have generally settled on the notion that some sense of greater purpose is needed by most human beings and Darwin’s standard survival mechanisms hardly suffice.
The washerwoman song is moving and intriguing especially if you try to juxtapose it to poems that encapsulate the obverse - ones of despair, anomie and alienation. It reminds me of the current phenomena surrounding Randy Pausch’s inspiring and transcending Last Lecture….
OK, Matt, now I get it: “Too many people are far to certain about too many things.”
15. dover_beach | April 15th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
“I would assert that much more harm has been done in the name of ‘God’ than of atheism.”
A strange comment considering the history ofthe twentieth century and movements like communism and nazism.
“After all, atheists have to bear the responsibility for their own actions.”
This is strange in two respects. Firstly, I’m not sure how atheists morally ‘bear’ responsibility for their actions. Secondly, what makes anyone think a religious believer is not called to account and thus to morally bear responsibilty for their actions. Forgiveness or grace, despite what Luther may have believed, does not releases the individual from morally bearing responsibility for their actions.
Speaking as an atheist, it is smug comments like those of Tim that have made me rather critical of atheists recently. It reminds me of the smugness of some religious believers.
16. The Chieftain of Seir | April 15th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
In such a learned company, I hardly dare open my mouth. But speaking purely as an ignorant hillbilly, I can’t but help think that most scientist fail to understand the basic limitations of reason. It is understandable that a group of people who use reason to such great effect would have blind spots as to its limitations, but I think that those blind spots help lead people like Dawkins into their errors.
An example of what I am talking about would be the attempts of physical theorists to come up with a grand unified theory. The people who are working on this are so smart they can practically bend spoons at a distance with their mind power alone. But they all seem to ignore Gödel’s incompleteness theorems.
This is curious, because the whole idea behind the attempts to create a grand unified theory is that math can provide us with a deeper understanding of reality. In that context, Gödel’s incompleteness theorems would seem pretty relevant.
Now I could be all washed up and Gödel’s incompleteness theorems could have no bearing at all on a grand unified theory. But I suspect they do and I suspect the reason that scientists are so reluctant to consider the implications of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems when they are constructing their grand theories says a lot about their reluctance to consider the limits of reason.
If anyone has the patience for a somewhat more involved argument along those lines you can read an essay I wrote on the subject here.
17. W J B | April 16th, 2008 at 4:58 am
“You cannot prove the nonexistance of god; you just have to base it on faith” –woody allen.
I avoid faith because i don’t trust myself just yet. It takes a lot of school, seminary or otherwise, to do so I imagine.
18. William McIlhagga | April 16th, 2008 at 5:56 am
I believe in AGW. No proof, just faith.
Hmmm, that sounds a bit dodgy on this blog, doesn’t it. Funny how that faith thing only works on God.
You can personally believe in God on faith alone. No problem with that - what goes on inside your head is yours and yours alone. Asking anyone else to believe in God on the basis of your faith is rather more dodgy. To convince others you need evidence. That’s what’s missing. That’s why we no longer believe in Odin, Thor, Zeus, or whatever.
19. Briggs | April 16th, 2008 at 6:40 am
McIlhagga’s comment reminded me of something Chesterton said.
20. mbabbitt | April 16th, 2008 at 9:39 am
I received my Masters about 10 years ago from the University of Washington in Comparative Religion, Religion and Culture ; this was an academic study of religion, not a curriculum centered around theology. It irks me to no end to hear very smart scientists talk about things they are not specialists in –like religion and theology — and profess such ignorance.
I saw David Berlinski last night at a book signing in Seattle and I found his message compelling: don’t hide behind science for advancing your own personal proclivities. He even stated that he was not advancing Intelligent Design (in response to an audience question); he was merely stating that it is an argument worth engaging and not dismissing because of its incongruities with certain portions of the Darwinian tradition (these last words are my addition). His overall position is one of humiliy: admit that which you do not know.
21. Al Fin | April 16th, 2008 at 11:19 am
mbabbitt: There are some specialties that are worth the cost of training, such as neurosurgery. Neurosurgeons have to perform at peak skill levels every day.
Specialists in ethnic studies, comparative religion, gender studies, and basket weaving are not required to exhibit any particular skills at all, as a matter of daily life performance. They just express opinions based upon their “special expertise.”
Their opinion plus $3.50 will buy you a latte at Starbucks.
22. mbabbitt | April 16th, 2008 at 11:28 am
I received my Masters about 10 years ago from the University of Washington in Comparative Religion, Religion and Culture ; this was an academic study of religion, not a curriculum centered around theology. It irks me to no end to hear very smart scientists talk about things they are not specialists in –like religion and theology — and profess such ignorance.
I saw David Berlinski last night at a book signing in Seattle and I found his message compelling: don’t hide behind science for advancing your own personal proclivities. He even stated that he was not advancing Intelligent Design (in response to an audience question); he was merely stating that it is an argument worth engaging and not dismissing because of its incongruities with certain portions of the Darwinian tradition (these last words are my addition). His overall position is one of humility: admit that which you do not know.
23. Wade | April 16th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Al Fin,
Your theory goes to ANY person. The “Appeal to Authority” is used all of the time, but in all reality, has no bearing on any argument.
If a PhD in Math says 1+1 =3, it doesn’t make it any more correct than if a 2nd grader said it.
If having some credential is the basis for allowing one’s opinion, then we would never have seen the Faradays, Ramanajans, etc… of the world.
It’s the science, not the scientist.
24. mbabbitt | April 16th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
AL Fin: Your ignorance and overgeneralizations say it all — besides the ad hominem attack. I am sorry you hold such such a superficial understanding of Comparative Religion and what if offers to the understanding of the human condition. Is there silliness today in the Humanites? Yes. But does that negate the value of all study? No.
25. Al Fin | April 16th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Right, Wade, I agree. I would make the further point that in some fields, everyday competence is critical. When a lot of people’s lives and livelihood depends upon their most routine decisions and opinions, their authority is implicit. They have no need to go around repeating all the degrees and credentials they have, or otherwise impress everyone with their “authority.”
If they make a mistake, people die or go broke or lose something very dear to them. They are pillars for communities both local and international. They are not pompous popinjays because they deliver on promises every minute of every day.
26. dover_beach | April 16th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Al Fin, the problem with “I would make the further point that in some fields, everyday competence is critical.” is that mbabbitt is making another point, namely, that some scientists are making comments in fields where they have neither the education nor the ‘everyday competence.’
I always find it amusing when scientists venture into philosophy in the same way that they would find it amusing if I ventured into science. Competence in one field does not necessarily follow into any other.
27. Al Fin | April 16th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Competence in one field does not necessarily follow into any other.
While that is certainly true, DB, what it overlooks is that in many fields, competence simply no longer exists.
Credentials do not make someone competent. In many fields, competence-testing occurs every day. A person knows if they made the right decision because the patient lived, the plane landed safely, the squad returned to base intact, the potential riot was defused peacefully, the industrial machinery breakdown was repaired promptly with no significant downtime, the project came in on time and under budget etc. etc.
In other fields–much of academics, government bureaucracies, and other areas you can probably think of–competence testing is not a part of the average day, month, or year.
Using the very word “competence” in the context of many academic fields is ironic.
28. Jonathan Sturm | April 16th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Another Great Post Matt! You been reading The Pompous Git?
There seem to be three sorts of people in the world:
1. Those who are all for religion
2. Those who are all against religion
3. Those who want to understand it
and back to recovering all the maths I’ve forgotten over the last 40 years
29. D Johnson | April 16th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Jonathon,
I believe there’s a fourth kind:
4. Those who don’t give a sh**!
30. dover_beach | April 16th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
Well, AL, other academics generally judge your competence in a field. You don’t last very long as a philosopher, historian or physicist if you display a degree of ignorance of the field in which you claim a speciality. And this compounds with time. Dead philosophers who still receive signification attention, or who receive a greater degree of attention once dead, usually do so because they were extremely competent philosophers and not merely of passing interest.
31. Bernie | April 17th, 2008 at 7:39 am
Matt:
I assume you must be a Father Brown fan as well? Now that I think about it, perhaps Father Brown was more than a way for GKC to make a few bucks. GKC used him as a model of a rational man of faith? I will have to dig out my copies and check that one out. It must be 40 years since I read those stories. Better still is there a biography of GKC you would suggest?
32. Bernie | April 17th, 2008 at 7:44 am
Interesting how discussing religion brings out the less gentle side of many.
33. Al Fin | April 17th, 2008 at 7:46 am
Well, AL, other academics generally judge your competence in a field.
Too true, DB, which is why so much of academia is viewed by those who are competent in the real world as inbred and irrelevant to any real world concerns. Think of these departments as welfare programs for academics who would otherwise be unemployable.
Being able to impress a fellow inbred incompetent enough for him to assert your competence is no substitute for genuine competence testing.
34. cookie | April 17th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
I’m not sure of the point of this article. It claims that Berlinski doesn’t define God, just like most or all of the ‘extreme atheists’ (for want of a better expression and in no way meant to be derogatory). Of course, it is not for the atheists to define God. It is for those who claim to believe in him/her/it/them. I have only one example of the extreme atheist genre to hand (Dawkins’ ‘The God Delusion’). He spends some time (most notably in Chapter 2) examining different definitions of God, presented by various creeds and to my mind Dawkins shows them all to be lacking in anything even approaching convincing evidence for their beliefs. Dawkins (and others) freely admit that they cannot prove that God does not exist. But so what?
Later in the article:
‘Dawkins, in his The God Delusion offers a particularly weak argument …(to fill in the gaps of knowledge within Science…). His first premise is that the universe is improbable. And we can stop right there, because that is a nonsensical statement, so his argument fails. Any thing or statement cannot be improbable. A thing can only be improbable with respect to something else. Further, a thing can be improbable with respect to one set of evidence and entirely probable with respect to other evidence. So, in Dawkin’s case, the universe is improbable with respect to what?’
I am not aware of Dawkins ever having made the claim that Science currently or will ever be able to explain everything. Also, he certainly does not use the argument that the Universe is improbable with relation to this claim. Therefore, the above is nothing more than a straw man.
I couldn’t be bothered to read the rest. I suspect the author of being at least agnostic with regards to (probably) Christianity, which is a disappointment to me. As a British atheist libertarian, sceptical of AGW (not a rare concurrence amongst people in the UK) I have often thought it surprising that such a combination is so very rarely held in North America.
35. Briggs | April 17th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Cookie,
In fact, I am of no religion.
You are wrong when you say my argument against Dawkins’s premise is a straw man. We do agree, however, that it is unknown whether we humans will be able to explain everything. I tend to think we will not. However, Dawkins does in fact say that the “universe is improbable”, regardless whether we can know everything or not, and which is a nonsensical statement on its face. It must be improbable to some thing. The burden is on Dawkins to say what that thing is.
The only empirical evidence we have is that, obviously, the universe exists. So given that we see a universe, it must be at least possible. The trick is deducing whether it necessarily exists, or it is contingent. Nobody, to my knowledge, knows how to do this.
Too bad you couldn’t read the rest of the post. Maybe you’ll find some more free time later.
Briggs
36. Briggs | April 17th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Bernie,
I read all the Father Browns many years ago and thought they were fair. I am sure there are many biographies of Chesterton, but I haven’t read any, so can’t recommend one.
I do recommend two of his books: Heretics (from which the quote above comes) and Orthodoxy. Should be able to find them used cheap.
You’re also right about talking about religion bringing out the worst in people. This has always be true, so it is rational to believe it always will be true. However, I think we can do better if people step back a moment and say to themselves, “I might be wrong, so I better think about what I’m going to say.”
Briggs
37. dover_beach | April 17th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
“Being able to impress a fellow inbred incompetent enough for him to assert your competence is no substitute for genuine competence testing.”
How is s/he a fellow inbred? Academics are constantly competing with their fellows nationally and internationally, for research grants, for publications, for students, etc. Academics are notoriously nasty in a polite manner. I recently read a review article of the legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin in an academic journal that was so scathing it curled my toes (I similarly have very little regard for Dworkin).
How do you competence test a philosopher? What are the appropriate critieria? What makes you think Jane Citizen is competent in assessing an academic philosopher performing his or her research/ teaching duties? As I said earlier time is usually the best assessor of academic competence.
How many house-bred incompetents do we find in the real world, running restaurants, preparing legal correspondence, making motor repairs, managing corporations, etc.? Lots. Courts are filled with the complaints that follow their failure to perform their duties. Incompetent, prospective philosophers, historians, physicists very rarely make it through undergraduate/ postgraduate education.
I really think you’re boxing at shadows. If your argument was against academic subjects that are only barely, if at all, academic disciplines, I would agree with you. But at the moment your argument would even class Briggs as an in-bred statistician whose competence is more or less confirmed by the respect he is accorded by his academic colleagues.
38. Luis Dias | April 18th, 2008 at 5:44 am
This is post is completely wrong. I’m gonna debunk it right now:
“Even Carl Sagan, in his Demon-Haunted World allowed this kind of solace, without recognizing that since, I must point out, everybody dies, this is an enormous amount of comfort to go around that would be denied mankind if religion were absent.”
The brilliant coward-defense of religion! It must be good because it’s such a comfort in the end of the peoples’ lives! Well, it fails to mention that it is not quite SO, as many people in the end of their lives also have anxiety problems considering if they are going to hell or to heaven! Or, worse of all, if all these things are all just a bunch of lies and there’s nothing after death! What a terrible thought! We must stop all the people that reaches these sad old people to tell them that there isn’t any God, the horror!
Problem is, that the only comfort that comes out of this religious “comforting” is perhaps the notion that the final judgement finally comes out to jury and decides for itself! A complete lifetime of anxiety over “hell”, and obsession on sins and guilty lives, comes finally to an end. Yes, I can see the comfort in that! Of course, the obvious is absent from this reasoning: if X is false, it doesn’t really matter at all if it “comforts”. It’s like telling a cancer patient that he will live through it, when he will not. And I still have to be proven if it really comforts people. I’ve known many atheists quite ready to die without any problems at all. This notion that without God, people will just freak out when dying is false, a complete hoax, perpetuated only by those who cling on to religion, because “look at the oldies!”. I am amazed to realise that it’s always for the others, ain’t it? It’s not because it’s good for us, but look, it’s good for others, so it must not be that wrong?
Well, in some countries people are killed because they try to think by themselves. Women are cut off of their intimate parts because of religious traditions. But, you know, it gives them comfort you see? It must be a good thing.
It’s preposterous. And a false argument for religion.
And I’m not exhagerating here. It was former president George H W Bush that considered atheists “non-american” because America is a nation “under God”. This is extremely dangerous stuff!
“Presumably, those who would prohibit smoking are same people who would support legalizing assisted suicide. Which happened in Holland in 1984….”
Ahh, the menace of the Dutch! Yes, that crazy people that smokes marijuana and have prostitutes legalized in some neighborhoods! Those are DEVILISH people, for sure! By the way, I don’t know how this points to the discussion of God or not, rather than being a lame attempt at an ad hominem attack, as in dutch are behaving like atheists (nevermind if the stats show otherwise), they are doing bad stuff (nevermind any rational discussion about what’s bad or not in that stuff), therefore DAWKINS is WRONG and ATHEISTS are BAD PEOPLE! BAD PEOPLE! (let’s punch them in the face already!) QED!
It’s simply painful to watch you write this stuff.
“Leading the pack are of course the two World Wars, but not far behind in the body count are mankinds experiments with various communist utopias.“
Ahhh, the communist freak attack! Nevermind if this was debunked several times… by Dawkins and co. in those same books you mention. It seems as you like to read rebukes of the books you criticize, rather than reading for yourself.
Yes, because it was an atheist movement, right? How ignorant. Communism is not an exotic thing of the ancient past that is somehow unclear to us. It happened in the 20th century and its movement was clear from the start: it was not an atheist movement, but a religion by itself that tried to substitute all other religions in the task of creating Heaven on Earth!. It should be obvious to everyone, but people simply don’t think about it. It had all the characteristics of religions: dogma, worshipping rituals, propaganda, totalitarianism, oppression, equalitarianism, division (non-ecumenism). Many communist leaders often claimed that their movement was even more christian than christianity itself! This is true. Check Alvaro Cunhal, impressive Communist European leader talking about it.
“But it cannot keep doing so forever.”
Who says so? You? Ah! We have a prophet, gentlemen! And may I ask you when this peak stagnation event will occur? After or before Peak Bacon? Or is it related to Peak Chicken? Seems more like Peak Arrogance.
“This is because, no matter what physical laws we have identified, we will never have explained through observation why these particular laws and not some other are in force, nor can we answer what the laws mean.”
The prophet continues. How on earth you can blissfully say such rubbish is beyond me. Science evolves and does explain things that once were considered unexplainable. One thing that we all learned is that to try to predict science “discoveries” is a total waste of time, therefore, we cannot say what science won’t discover, for that implied that you knew beforehand what all the future discoveries were! Where do I buy your Encyclopedia Galactica? Are you pretending to be God?
All is on the table. It only takes a non-scientist to defend such a false claim. And the notion that because we cannot answer what the laws mean, that we should believe or even take seriously the notion of the existence of an imaginary friend that somehow built all this is ludicrous. Just because you don’t know why it rains, it doesn’t necessarily mean we should take anyone seriously when claiming that it is the Rain God’s “Divine Plan”.
“And we can stop right there, because that is a nonsensical statement, so his argument fails. Any thing or statement cannot be improbable. A thing can only be improbable with respect to something else. “
Yes, with respect of non-existence. And yes, it seems to be improbable, but you are confusing here intuition with science. You can have your gut feelings, but you deny others of having theirs and defend them? So what’s your point? Let’s see…
“And there are many hints that it is not the best evidence. It is, after all, by its very name, suspiciously self indulgent and human centered evidence.”
,which is PRECISELY Dawkin’s and many other scientist’s point: the universe has those constants precisely because we are in it. It seems confusing and “self centered”, when it is precisely the contrary: it’s like life on Earth: the earth is perfect for life not because of a God, but because there are trillions of planets, and we sit on just one of them which happens to harbor the correct ingredients for it.
Multiverse is the expansion of this theory to universes. Of course, they aren’t even theories, only hypothesis. Atheists don’t “believe in them”, only claim that those are quite possible things, as Quantum’s Theory seems to suggest their existence. But there are ways to check them. And if it becomes possible to check if there are multiverses and the answer is yes, I’d love to see you comment on it. Until we do so, scientists are “agnostic” on it.
“God Himself is improbable. Again, the statement is nonsensical: improbable with respect to what?”
To his non-existence. Are you even for real?!? I mean, English is not even my first language…
“Wait a minute. Did he just say seeming success? He did. Which brings us back to Dawkins, the best-known anti-religion author. Was there ever a man who published so much nonsense that was taken so seriously by the scientific community? Nobody else even comes close. Just mentioning the word memes proves my point. Is not believing in God a meme?”
The only thing you prove is your arrogance. But, alas, you are not even taken seriously in the “community”, forget about “science” community!
“Darwin? - a Nobel laureate in biology once remarked to me over his bifocals. - That’s just the party line.”
WOW! So WHAT? You’re not trying to make a call to authority fallacy, now are you? All theories are subject to skepticism and work. That’s how science evolves. I think you are deeply confusing science with religious dogma. Of course the theory isn’t perfect. To claim that humans could produce perfect things would mean that we humans would be perfect!! Only religious nuts who believe that man was created in the likes of God’s image can think of that, not scientists! But alas, it is the BEST theory we have, even if some few scientists don’t believe in it. Einstein refused to accept Quantum’s Theory, despite the fact that it is by far the best work that Physics ever gave mankind. And you know what? Both work!, much for the dismay of creationists and ID’s cronies who can’t even peer-review any of their flawed regurgitations.
“To say whether or not God exists is the hardest question in the world; yet it is the one people find easiest to answer, and everybody seems delighted to meet an argument, however weak, that agrees with their desires. This leads very smart people to say exceptionally stupid things.”
You are definitely projecting here. Just because an answer is difficult we should not coward ourselves to agnosticism forever and ever without even thinking about it, and researching it deeper. By doing so, one discovers that Religions in the world contain such stupid silogisms and “factoids”, easily converting arbitrary historical misnamings and bad translations as “mystical mysteries of the Lord”, that even a theist that is rational has to denounce the sheer irrationality and falsehood of much of the Church’s claims, and Bhudist claims, and Islam claims, etc. At worse, one is left with a faint sense of pantheism. After that, it only takes the small impetus of a finger to make people jump the fence and just dust it off completely.
Worse, if it were for Religion, we would never discover anything about the real universe around us, for we had the Bible, and what more should we ambition than having the very words of god himself?
To respect this notion, to say that this attitude should be tolerable in the public space, is to commit ourselves to say that irrationality equals rationality, that we should respect the sun as much as the cookie monster. It is to deny responsibility of our paths and our futures, just because it was “god’s wish, what can I do?”. Somehow a part of Divine’s Plan. But if all is a part of Divine’s Plan, why should I do anything about it? Why should I move a finger? It’s inherently an ideology of defeat. No wonder it was (is!) so widely used around the earth to calm down the tax payers and war cannon fodders.
Religion is bad. And these are only a few of many, many reasons.
39. Briggs | April 18th, 2008 at 7:04 am
Luis,
You say several things that are false, and you misconstrue other points; however, you make at least one valid argument by recalling for us African female clitorectomies, performed under religious guidance. No doubt these operations are awful and an example of a religion causing harm—but on the other hand, as we are all good Multiculturalists now, who are we to complain about this?
By the comfort of the dying, I meant not just the one dying, but his family members as well. Here is David Stove in his essay “D’Holbach’s Dream” (as essay which I wish I could reproduce entirely):
The fact that the major communist governments were a- and even anti-religious, and actively persecuted or at least strongly discouraged religion, has never been “debunked.” Mao, Stalin, and so on, never claimed be good Christians or Buddhists; in fact, they claimed the opposite. In any case, pointing out communist bloodlust and the murderous Dutch assisted suicide physicians is to show that people will do evil in the absence of religion, just as they will do it in the name of religion. Removing religion does not miraculously make people less dangerous, and there is some evidence that removing religion premptorily makes them more dangerous.
Much of the science done up to and even into the twentieth century was done by men who were religious, usually Christians. This includes, of course, Newton and even Darwin. It is even true that some scientists today are religious. Thus, religion seems to be no great bar to the progress of science.
It is almost true that by quoting a eminent biologist as saying “Darwin’s just the party line” is an argument from authority. But I ask you, how are you defending it? Almost certainly, unless you are a biologist yourself, you are relying on authority. Now, I admit that this section is the weakest in my review, just as it was the weakest point of Berlinski’s book. I will try and do a better job of this when I review Stove’s book Darwinian Fairytales.
You have not satisfactorily answered my critique of Dawkins’s “proof” of the non-existence of God. I ask you to read a comment I made (#35). Dawkins’s statement is meaningless. This has absolutely nothing to do with intuition, this has to do with the fact that statements cannot be improbable, they can only be improbable with respect to some evidence. Dawkins never provides this evidence explicitly, so his argument not only fails, but is nonsense.
I was not prophesying when I said that, no matter what laws we have identified, we will not have answered why it is these laws and not some other. This, too, is a matter of philosophical fact. And I think my main conclusion that to know whether or not God exists is a matter of something you cannot prove, and therefore you have to take on faith, is eminently defensible. This is certainly not the first time an argument like this has been given.
Your post seems angry to the point of apoplexy, and I am not sure why. I certainly am not prostelyzing for any particular religion, nor am I claiming that some one who is now a-religious would be better off religious. I’ll leave off with again quoting Stove (from the same essay), where he was discussing Hume’s (certainly a better man than you or I) virulent attacks on religion. A man named James Beattie responded to Hume:
Neither do I.
40. steven mosher | April 18th, 2008 at 8:43 am
Briggs and Lucia you may like Alvin Plantinga.
I had the pleasure once of meeting him, studied his work on rational theology. I provide links if you cannot find him. Interesting
41. Al Fin | April 18th, 2008 at 9:00 am
I quite agree that Briggs is not to be classed with the inbred circle of incompetents that staffs so many faculty desks at universities. Statisticians, mathematicians, scientists, engineers, computer scientists–these fields contain their own competence testing. Briggs is tested every day, just as a neurosurgeon or a helicopter pilot is tested every day. The competence-testing for those fields is built into the job.
Perhaps you have never heard of the book “Fashionable Nonsense” by Al Sokal and Jean Bricmont? It reveals a side of modern (post-modern) academia that most members of the public would rather not think about. Another interesting look is “Higher Superstition” by Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt.
In many fields of academia outside the sciences and engineering disciplines, outside the professional fields like medicine and business–competence testing has been jettisoned and competence along with it.
Read the books, if you have not already.
Any parent who is contemplating sending her child to a university without checking the intellectual rigour beforehand, is apt to receive a sad surprise at the end of the experimental period of education. A very expensive, sad surprise.
42. Bernie | April 18th, 2008 at 9:12 am
Matt:
Luis clearly is taking exception to your “I am not sure” position. Logically therefore he is saying God does not exist, i.e., he is an atheist. Presumably he has a proof that God does not exist. Of course, there is the other position: Luis can simply behave as if God does not exist - eliminating the need for a proof of some kind. This seems an OK position but is different from the one Luis seems to be articulating. Just as someone who is proseltyzing for a religion needs to have a proof that God exists, someone who proseltyzes atheism needs to have a proof that God does not exist.
In the mean time I am still waiting for La Guita (joke!?). Did you find any.
Luis:
What is your proof that God does not exist?
43. steven mosher | April 18th, 2008 at 9:14 am
http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2007/002/1.21.html
plantinga on dawkins.
44. Briggs | April 18th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Bernie,
No, no joke. No joy so far with La Guita. A gentleman at Beekman Liquors (near Grand Central) says he hasn’t seen it for sale in over 10 years. He recommended as a close substitute La Guitana, which I have bought but not yet drank.
Al,
Sokal’s book is a good reference. His hoax should be known by everybody. The book only suffers from his and his co-author’s repeated and somewhat plaintive insistences that “We are of the Left so don’t hold it against us.” If Sokal was truly of the Left, he never would have submitted his “hermeneutical quantum mechanics” article in the first place.
Gross and Levitt’s book is also reasonable, but suffers from some of the same turgid, post-modernistic prose found in the books they criticize.
45. Luis Dias | April 18th, 2008 at 10:18 am
Mr Briggs:
Thanks for the repply. It has good points, and very bad ones. I’ll try to repply to them.
My post seems only angry, though surely not to the state of apoplexy, but thumbs up for rethorics, because I hate misunderstandings and misinterpretations being passed on as truth. Your post does not considers Dawkins’ point of view well, creates strawmans and denies arguments just because you want to. But worse than that, it is in your post that you’ll find the seeds of my anger, for when you just dismiss science works of biology out of hand as silly and then try on to disrupt evolution itself, it becomes clear where your ideologies come from, even if you are completely unaware of it.
“but on the other hand, as we are all good Multiculturalists now, who are we to complain about this?”
I was talking about Straw Mans, and there you go. Continuing your point, there would be no problem for nazis to be tolerated. Or the KKK. Things should be forbidden. Of course, banning religion is not my goal, any barrier to freedom of thought is tiranical, and thats why I don’t restrain myself from saying what I think, because I believe that education is the best weapon against Religion.
“But the fear of hell was never as vivid or constant or widespread as, according to the religious theory, it should have been: a fact which we know partly from the incessant complaints of the priests to that very effect. (…)
(…)The fact is, the Enlightened took religious beliefs far too literally and logically”
Well, let’s not talk about religion’s stance on “literal” or “logic”, ok? That people never took religion that seriously is not evidence of the lack of evilness on the people. I’ll give you a basic example: The nazis. It didn’t take a whole lot of germans to be nazis so Hitler could rise to power, only germans that somehow were slightly favorable to it. Add to that, if you show me that religion isn’t bad because people don’t really follow it, it’s the most stupid argument you can make for the most obvious of reasons! Perhaps, if people don’t follow it, it’s because it isn’t that good afterall, which bellies entirely your point about comfort, but I’ll get down to that later.
“The fact that the major communist governments were a- and even anti-religious, and actively persecuted or at least strongly discouraged religion, has never been “debunked.” Mao, Stalin, and so on, never claimed be good Christians or Buddhists; in fact, they claimed the opposite.”
Nor was their atheist stance their problem. They were also against freedom of thought, freedom of religion, persecuted people for ideological reasons, killed millions for only one reason: power. It wasn’t debunked either that they caught on many of religious traits: the worshipping of their leader images as if they were gods, dogmas, police of thought, behavior-control, a sense of total serfdom embebbed in the people.
They were, in a sense, the utopia dreams of the same kind of people that drove the Inquisition.
“In any case, pointing out communist bloodlust and the murderous Dutch assisted suicide physicians”
This is too much. You sir are an excellent teacher of statistics, and yet still dare to come up with this lame rethorical approach to link communist blood with euthanasia? The fallacies on that sentence are so many I can’t even start. Let’s try:
a) Where is the evidence of such crimes? Holland is a free country, I can’t see any revolt over this. Do you know different?
b) Where is the evidence that the Dutch are atheists?
c) Where is the evidence that there was evilness involved in euthanasia mistakes?
d) Are you confusing an atheist country with a non-theist government led country? Do you propose that countries should be theocracies?
“Removing religion does not miraculously make people less dangerous”
This can be attested. Strangely though, you will find to be wrong. You’ll find much less atheists in jail than you’ll find in society in general. Curiously though, whenever I see a man wearing a big cross in his chest, I walk to the other side of the street. I wonder if that’s because these people are just great and I’ve just got a lot of prejudices.
“Much of the science done up to and even into the twentieth century was done by men who were religious, usually Christians.”
This is hard to attest, since, you know, the Church used to have a lot of power, and scientists had to be faithful in order to not be damned by their society. Newton’s faith is a perfect example of this. Here is a man that even declined to have a priest in his dying bed.
But now that we are “free”, I dare you to take a look at the landscape. Only 4 Nobel Prize winners believe in a form of God, out of the hundreds. If anything, not believing in God is a sign of intelligence.
“It is almost true that by quoting a eminent biologist as saying “Darwin’s just the party line” is an argument from authority. But I ask you, how are you defending it? Almost certainly, unless you are a biologist yourself, you are relying on authority.”
You are discrediting yourself. Unless you are willing to accept that the science method is bogus, you will have to agree with me that evolution is the best theory of biology ever invented. It’s not “just” a theory, the evidence comes out of plenty of sides, from geneticism, mutations, fossils, computer evolution-based AIs, and so many others I simply don’t know because, as you said, I’m no biologist.
“You have not satisfactorily answered my critique of Dawkins’s “proof” of the non-existence of God.”
That’s because there isn’t any. Dawkins never claimed that he proved God’s non existance. These kinds of strawmans are the ones who lead me to the inevitable conclusion you have not read “God’s Delusion” at all, so you are just taking a luck shot at other people’s talking points.
You may have a shot by saying that he doesn’t give a full-proof statistician job on God’s existence. Nor do I care that he didn’t.
“I was not prophesying when I said that, no matter what laws we have identified, we will not have answered why it is these laws and not some other. This, too, is a matter of philosophical fact.”
No it isn’t, it’s Platonic. This notion that “thought” is able to foretell what can and what cannot be told by science on nature’s “nature” is not even on the scientific debate anymore. One has only to think about all the incredible stuff that Quantum Mechanics brings to our understanding to simply lure such philosophical diatribes to the corner of Socrates: “I only know that I know nothing”. I’m not advocating one occurrence or the other. I’m just saying this: whatever happens in the nature’s world is science subject, and the laws and perhaps the whys of the laws are part of such nature.
You don’t know otherwise, so to claim that is arrogance.
“Even when every deduction has been made for the over-eloquence of this passage, I do not see, much as I admire and love Hume, what satisfactory reply he could have made to it.”
The kittens!! Look at the poor kittens!! Mr Briggs, this is getting ridiculous. If you were completely in despair and your only salvation was a belief in the Cookie Monster, I wouldn’t call you on it, I would only pity you. To say though that a religion based on the Cookie Monster is good because this invented narrative out-of-the-magics-hat tells us that it is the only source of hope this man can ever cling on… reminds me of the worst kind of advertizing schemes.
“Neither do I.”
You have to work on that imagination. Clearly at fault there.
@Bernie:
What is your proof that the Cookie Monster does not exist? The simple truth is that despite the fact that I can not (and until today that is a fact) prove whether “God” exists or not, I deeply question your rationale that the burden of proof is on me. For extraordinary claims, one has to have extraordinary evidence, and historically speaking, whenever science evolved, miracles decreased in number and in testimony. If God does act in Nature, it should be easy to find him, scientifically. If God does not want to mess up with the world, then we are left with the pantheist God, who is useless at all.
Furthermore, I can have good proof that the Bible’s God didn’t exist. Nor Thor, nor Athens, nor Mars, nor the Cookie Monster. Starting with, they cannot all exist. Ending with, they are all self-contradictory in their history.
46. Luis Dias | April 18th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Correction: when I said “That people never took religion that seriously is not evidence of the lack of evilness on the people.”, it should be read:
That people never took religion that seriously is not evidence of the lack of evilness of the religion itself.
Sorry about that.
47. Bernie | April 18th, 2008 at 11:37 am
Luis:
I think you miss my point. Since I am agnostic and not trying to convince anyone to be agnostic about the existence of the Cookie Monster, I have no need and you should not expect me to come up with an argument to support my position.
If, however, I was to take a defined position and try to persuade you to accept my position then it becomes incumbent upon me to state an argument that you might possibly find persuasive.
If you merely want to assert that God does not exist, then fine …but you can’t assume that anyone is going to agree with you. If you decide to make an argument — as you do above, namely, God = miracles; science = no miracles; given science, therefore God = 0 — then you, Dawkins, Dennet, Hitchens, etc have to accept that others may find fault with your arguments. Matt’s essay simply points out that he agrees with Berlinski that most if not all of Dawkins et al arguments are flawed. It really isn’t that big of a deal - though I am sure that Dawkins is sending Berlinski any Christmas cards!!
I will be interested in what others think about this.
48. Bernie | April 18th, 2008 at 11:41 am
It really isn’t that big of a deal - though I am sure that Dawkins is sending Berlinski any Christmas cards!!
Should read
It really isn’t that big of a deal - though I am sure that Dawkins is NOT sending Berlinski any Christmas cards!!
49. Luis Dias | April 18th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
@steven mosher
Thanks for that link. It is freaking hillarious. What a comedy!!
50. Luis Dias | April 18th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Bernie:
The problem with your statement is this:
Suppose we live in a world where most people believe in Santa. But you don’t, or are agnostic about it. That’s fine by me. But if I go around and start telling everyone that there is no santa, wake up, I would go very mad if people tried to teach me a theology lesson on why “spirit is different than matter”, and that “you cannot prove that santa doesn’t exist” and therefore I should just shut up about it.
In the 16th century, the Church also permitted any “hypothesis” that the earth was orbiting the earth, but forbid any attempt to “prove it”. Evidently, it was proven, but that was easy.
Now the burden of evidence is only pegged unto atheists because there is this notion that christians are the “standard” correct “state” of mankind. It’s bollocks! Wake up!
51. Mike D. | April 18th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Luis,
Why the correction? Rejection of religion IS very often evidence of Evil.
Let us not quibble with definitions. Communism, Nazism, Islamo-fascism, and atheism can all be classed as religions. The RCC is not the only group that qualifies (poor RCC, still being punished for the Inquisition of 500+ years ago). Yet to reject these or other philosophies is not somehow inherently Good. Rejection, skepticism, cynicism, and denial are negative space; they leave a vacuum. Ultimately they lead to paralysis.
We must act because life is an active phenomenon. We must make choices. We must interact with each other. No man is an island. Etc.
Something then must guide our actions. We are not chaotic actors, randomly banging into each other and reacting spontaneously and anew to every situation. Whether logical positivism or illogical negativism, we act with some philosophic underpinning and preconceived, even organized, patterns.
I maintain we are each of us imbued at birth with some knowledge and awareness of Good and Evil. Maybe it comes from Darwinian selection and is hardwired into our genes. Or maybe it comes from the nurturing strokes of our mothers or the punishing strokes of our fathers. But whatever the source of that intelligence, we know Good from Evil.
We wouldn’t be having this conversation if we didn’t, each of us, care about Good and Evil, and even more telling, choose Good. Right? Why try to convince Briggs, or me, or anyone of anything philosophic if not to further some deep drive within you? If you didn’t care, it wouldn’t matter to you what anyone else thinks.
So I think we can all agree, MUST all agree, that Good and Evil exist, and are not the same things, and that we choose the one over the other. Else why bother with the discourse?
So then we must ask, what is the nature of Good, and of Evil, and how do we know them when we see them, and where do they come from? And I submit, that is the same thing as asking, what is the nature of God?
52. Bernie | April 18th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Luis:
It is difficult to follow your arguments - primarily because you jump around and seem to focus on points that I and others have not made or do not contest.
Why on earth would you get mad as opposed to unpersuaded. Why would you be mad that people would simply reject your assertion that there was no Santa. If you are unpersuaded…well, you are unpersuaded.
Your comments on the Church and a heliocentric universe are, you have to admit, a bit of a non-sequitur and, I guess, reflect an incomplete thought. My recollection was that the Church said Galileo could not publicize what he thought he had proven. This was a bit short sighted of the Church - but then they had only just come to terms with the fact that they lived on a sphere, yet somehow had not fallen off!! From our vantage point they look silly, corrupt and vicious. I am a little more forgiving and think that many of the pretty smart guys were in total shock and disbelief at what they were hearing. It was the equivalent of how I might react if tomorrow a sentient alien life form were to show up or it was shown that ants have a sufficiently complex language and that we could meaningfully carry on this very conversation with the aliens, the ants or both!
Look, Matt says explicitly and I say explicitly that all proseltyzers should be held to the same standards for that which they proseltyze. Atheists, theists and agnostics all bear the same burden. It just so happens that Berlinski’s book was about atheists attempting to use science to prove something that many of us see as being beyond the power of science to prove. Science can’t prove lots of things, its OK. It is no big deal.
By the way I do not believe in Santa but I had no trouble proving he existed until my kids were 8 or 9 years old, after that they became progressively more difficult to persuade. My expectation is that they in turn will have no difficulty persuading their children that the universe includes a certain benignitity that is worth anthropomorphizing once a year.
I have to do some work now.
53. cookie | April 18th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Thanks for the reply, ‘Briggs’.
You believe I am mistaken in saying that you are making a ’straw man’ argument. You may be right.
The paragraph underneath the sub-heading ‘Scientific Ontology’ has the final sentence ‘ Some scientists are therefore anxious to fill in these gap with…something, anything but God. Or, if that cannot be accomplished, then to prove that God does not exist.’ On a second reading, I now assume that in the following paragraph you are arguing not that Dawkins is one of these anxious scientists, rather that he is trying to prove that God does not exist. Ho hum. That leaves me with the minor quibble that I am not sure Dawkins is trying to prove that God doesn’t exist, only that his existence is unlikely (both attempts being equally specious in your opinion, I guess). Whatever the case, I am not sure that Dawkins makes both premise 1 and premise 2 in the manner that you describe. Perhaps taking a direct quote or two and analysing those might help?
Anyways, your last statement: ‘My own surmise is that any proof—for or against—is impossible. And so any belief you have is based entirely on faith.’
As i said in my original comment, it is for the believers in whatever god or gods to do the proving. Atheists may indulge in a little believer-baiting from time to time, but they know they cannot prove a negative. As I said, they don’t have to …
54. Luis Dias | April 18th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
@Mike D.
“Evil”
I don’t like to name “Evil” as if it had somehow an abstract persona, as in “Devil”, as if people where somehow possessed with this trait “Evil” and that explains it all. It’s simplistic and one of the many reasons why so much wrong was made by the church, for it followed if “Evil” was a distinct “Thing”, and if it could be “Removed”, then all we had left was “Goodness”. Utterly dumb. Let’s not have that.
“Why the correction? Rejection of religion IS very often evidence of Evil.
Let us not quibble with definitions. Communism, Nazism, Islamo-fascism, and atheism can all be classed as religions. “
Rejection of the freedom of religion is bad, I agree with all that. Rejection of religion on a philosophical debate, rejection of religious motivations on political decisions, why on earth is that bad is completely beyond me.
But to say that Atheism is a religion is proof of your ignorance. This is crutial. You are but attempting to categorize me and other atheists inside your bag of religion only to imply that we are all “the same”. We are not. Atheism is exactly the ABSENCE of belief, ABSENCE of religion. And it doesn’t follow that atheists should have any authority, any “theology”, any worshipping, any ritual whatsoever.
That atheist communists chose to create their own religion, communism, is their own problem to solve. It’s, of course, without solution, it’s a state of hypocrisy.
“Something then must guide our actions.”
Agreed. But we disagree on the “what”.
“I maintain we are each of us imbued at birth with some knowledge and awareness of Good and Evil.”
Just as Mr. Briggs likes to say, maintain by what? What does maintain your rationale? I may object and out of thin air I can come up with lots of different scenarios: like, for instance, that we are imbued at birth the awareness of pain, and therefore learn to avoy anything that causes it. You may say this is a quible of no interest. Mere words. I say it makes the whole difference.
“We wouldn’t be having this conversation if we didn’t, each of us, care about Good and Evil, and even more telling, choose Good. Right?”
Following what I said, I probably just care about not getting hurt, or try to be loved. If I do a lot of bad things, I might not reach said objectives.
“Why try to convince Briggs, or me, or anyone of anything philosophic if not to further some deep drive within you? If you didn’t care, it wouldn’t matter to you what anyone else thinks.”
You talk about the deep drive as if it were about some mysterious stuff. It isn’t. Get off that pedestal. Life is Life. It grows. It expands. It evolves. It learns. It loves. It thinks!
And if by that you mean ̶