My daughter turned four months old yesterday, and I realized that since her birth, it is still getting more difficult, not less, to find time to write here. For a while, she was taking extended naps and encouraging my wife and me with indications she might be one of those low maintenance babies you sometimes hear about. She’s been disabusing us of that notion over the past month or so, unfortunately.
On the other hand, I have been simultaneously working on two substantial and heavily-researched posts—one on the legal and political legacy of the baby boomers, and another reviewing Lawrence Lessig’s Republic, Lost. These efforts, too, have contributed to the slow rate of posts of late.
In the meantime, I’ve long been meaning post a response to something Tod Kelly wrote in his “Confession” back in August:
I’ve always been somewhat suspicious of the entire business of capital “P” Philosophy, and at different times in my life have found it pretentious, distracting, purposefully exclusionary, and a linguistic tool to reshape reality when your belief system is proven to be wrong. Mostly though, my problem with Philosophy is its reliance on combat rather than collaboration. An example: In Jason’s recent post on the FOX Facebook page where thousands of Christians called for the death, rape and beating of atheists, I had what can best be described as a total disconnect with Tim Kowal. Tim’s initial assertion was that in order for my beliefs to count, I needed to come up with an entire system of epistemology, ethics and metaphysics that other atheists and agnostics could agree to*. Until I did this, Tim argued, we couldn’t debate and find a winner as to whose belief was correct. And while I grant that Tim’s approach to personal belief is quite common, I nonetheless find it an astoundingly bizarre way to approach a subject that is in turns a source of both communal connection and self-identity, deeply personal and often private.
. . . .
*For what it’s worth, I totally reject this supposition. If we are standing in my front yard and you insist there is a dragon across the street that we can’t detect, you might well need to use linguistic gymnastics to define “reality,” declare how we know things to be True, and create an entire metaphysical system whereby your assertion that a dragon no one can detect is really there is “proven.” I reject that I have to do the same to reject your proposition. You might say you’re just being intellectually honest, and I might say that you’re using cleverness to be intellectually dishonest. You say to-may-to…
Reading back through the comments in the post Tod is referring to here, perhaps there’s not much left to say. Besides, Tod’s “total disconnect” might not be with me only, but with Jason as well, evidenced when Tod asked, “Why do I have to create an entire metaphysical philosophy, just to say ‘no thank you” to you[r religion]?” and Jason answered, “ “You don’t have to. But if you want to be rigorous, to be philosophical about it, you should.” This certainly does not mean one’s beliefs “don’t count” short of meeting this intellectual burden. It just means that arguments in a debate about epistemology and metaphysics that lack intellectual rigor don’t count, or, at least, don’t count for much.
But given that Tod regards the topic as “deeply personal and often private,” it doesn’t feel right to press the point. Still, I do not like the thought of a “total disconnect.” As Tod raises the issue of “tribalism,” I can’t help but conclude he feels our respective tribes are positively unfriendly with one another. Granted, the “Christian tribe” is not going to be particularly friendly toward the “atheist tribe.” But certainly these two tribes are not monolithic. And Tod strikes me as the sort of person who relishes in finding commonalities between otherwise inapposite groups. (I like to think this describes me as well. For example, my last post concluded the Occupy movement and the Tea Party have some common ground.)
Establishing commonalities, however, requires careful scrutiny of each side’s presuppositions, metaphysics, world views, or first principles, whatever you like. Thus, I was disappointed that Tod apparently took me as being obstreperous or intentionally abstruse when I said “It is a precondition—if not directed by logic then certainly by the standards of fair and honest discourse—that if one is going to criticize another’s epistemology he reveal the terms of his own epistemology that make the criticism intelligible in the first place.” The point of this observation, after all, was to bridge the “total disconnect” between the two sides of the debate, not to create one.
I was encouraged, at least, that Mr. Likko took my statements in the spirit in which they were intended by recognizing that rejecting the existence of God is something quite other than rejecting the existence of “a dragon across the street” or “virgins in Newport Beach,” and offered the possible beginnings of an atheistic metaphysics based on Platonic Forms. Again, I grant that finding common ground here is exceptionally difficult. In all my years having this debate, I have found exactly one other person like Burt who was willing to engage the metaphysical problems at issue. But I am gratified to know that, even here, lightning can strike twice.
Tim: Tod, Jason & Likko are named here, and should read this. If I follow you correctly, your plaint is only that one should understand what they’re rejecting. Sounds reasonable.
It sounds reasonable until one considers the thousands of faith systems that exist all across the world. You reject all of them but one. I reject all of them.
We are more similar than you imagine, and we face the same problem here.
If we stipulate to rename “faith system” something along the lines of a metaphysical framework for a working epistemology, or simply a worldview, I think we can then agree that we both have one. I took that to be the implication of your observation quoted above. That puts us in the same universe for purposes of discussion, at least.
Alright then, even better.
On what basis do you reject the religion of the Trobriand Islanders?
You’re not allowed to Google for this one, because you have already made your rejection. I’d like to know its basis, right now, at the moment.
I only ask that you understand what you’re rejecting. Which is fair, right?
Jason,
Your tenor seems to suggest you’ve sunk my battleship, but I’m afraid I’m at a loss as to how.
Trobriand Islanders? How about rejecting The Onionists? And no, they have nothing to do with The Onion.
I’m a pagan Onionist at heart. Symbolism is everything in this universe of ours. Symbolism is even more real than realism. Symbols have at least 8-10 layers to them and if you really want to dig yourself into the aethers, you’ll find the number is infinite.
What I mean to say is that we all reject many, many belief systems. So many, in fact, that Tom asks the impossible when he asks that we “understand what we are rejecting.”
We all get by on what we consider the best hypothesis going, given our various experiences, dispositions, and considerations. We have to; we can’t do otherwise. Asking us to consider everything before choosing anything is too much for one lifetime.
So in other words, it wasn’t your battleship I was sinking. It was Tom’s.
Jason, don’t be a hater. Likko got the point easily that it was about classical theism, not Jesus died for your sins or 1000 other religions.
Neither do I discuss my personal beliefs in fora like this: you could have reasonably known that by my reference to the Stoics the other day.
Mostly, I was putting out a pointer to those mentioned in Tim’s post since it’s down here at the sub-blog, to do what they will with it. Chill, brother.
I wonder if Russell’s comment below was meant as a reply to this. I join in his comment. As a technical matter, I at least need to know whether the religion of the Trobriand Islanders does or does not comport with my own. But yes, armed with certain basic information about their beliefs, I agree we might reject it before thoroughly understanding it.
But this sounds different than the view you’ve characterizing Tom of advancing—i.e., thorough, academic understanding as a condition precedent to rejection. I don’t think that’s what he set out. It sounds like we’re pretty close to being on the same page here on the meta-point of how to talk about religious beliefs.
But yes, armed with certain basic information about their beliefs, I agree we might reject it before thoroughly understanding it.
Then you and Tom appear to disagree on the question, Tom’s protests to the contrary notwithstanding.
Tom advocates that “one should understand what they’re rejecting.” This taken at face value is often impossible. There are some belief systems that are, in actual fact, impossible to understand, because they are internally incoherent. In such cases, Tom would apparently insist that we not reject them. Charity demands that I not read him this way, so I suppose I am to conclude either that (a) he thinks no belief systems have this property or (b) more probably, he didn’t think out the implications of the statement in this regard, either.
Jason, you’re misrepresenting my point either unintentionally or willfully, and abstracting it completely away from the context here regardless.
To the substance, one can certainly reject the possibility of revelation [the Bible or Quran, God speaking directly to man] without knowing or understanding the content of that claimed revelation.
I think charity demands that we inquire more fully into what he said rather than to take everything to its logical conclusion as soon as it’s uttered. Some people say / believe / write things without fully intending them to be carried so far so fast to their logical conclusion.
I don’t say this as a slight to Mr. Van Dyke or Mr. Kowal. In fact, I’m like that, too. I had a friend once who, in a depressingly large number of conversations, would ask me a question, and when I’d respond, he’d pounce on me for *really* supporting whatever was the logical conclusion of what I said. (This little Socrates is not my friend any more, for what it’s worth.)
Pierre, the difference between debate and discussion, the former being adversarial, the latter cooperative.
What stands out to me in the Socratic dialogues is the good faith and good cheer, and the willingness to “play along” with a premise rather than choke it in the crib.
We watch too much Law & Order, and being a good sport has become a lost art.
Mr. Van Dyke:
I think I agree with your distinction between debate and discussion. I confess to not being as much of a good sport as I ought to be. To paraphrase the old cliche: if I can’t stand the heat, I should get out of the blogosphere.
I prefer discussion to debate, mostly for self-serving reasons: I’m a poor debater and get emotional way too quickly. But I also think discussion is usually more conducive to arriving at agreement, or at least respectful disagreement, while debate is more conducive to drawing lines in the sand and defending a temporary position to the extreme, no matter what intellectual costs one must pay to do so.
Of course, there’s a place for debate: without debate, certain things would go unsaid that need to be said and the holders of certain positions would not likely realize the full degree to which they hold those positions.
Finally, I’m not a big fan of what I’ve read of the original
PlatoSocratic dialogues, and I’ve read a lot of them (although I can’t claim to have understood them all). They seem more about baiting philistines into saying something unsupportable than about arriving at the actual forms thatPlatoSocrates is aiming for. (I assume my attitude is in part a misunderstanding of the dialogues and in part an ignorance of the historical context of Athenian society and politics c. 400 bc.)I’m not sure that’s fair, reading back over the referenced dialogue. In the link Tim points to, Tim does not suggest that the transcendental argument gets you to Christianity. Rather, he offers the transcendental argument as his basis for reasonable faith in generalized theism, a more modest proposition than the disputed correctness of the Christian flavor of Jehovah-worship.
I have indicated elsewhere that reliance upon “epistemology” as an arguing tactic is overused and should be presumptively treated as evidence that the disputant who relies upon criticizing an adversary’s epistemology has run out of ammunition. A discussion of the transcendental argument is the primary exception to this rule which I can imagine, because knowledge of knowledge is at the core of this particular debate.
And while I’m still unconvinced of the linkage between conceptual “things” like love, justice, and evil on the one hand, and the “existence” of supernatural entities on the other, it is nevertheless possible to see how a proponent of theism could point to that linkage and claim a point in the discussion. If you and I can discuss something intangible like “malice” with very substantial certainty that we are discussing the same thing, then “malice” has some manner of objective existence. The theist can then propose that “God” has the same sort of existence as “malice.” (Or “love,” if you prefer.)
Either “malice” or “love” might in theory be reduced a set of electrical and chemical reactions to external stimuli within one’s brain. Doing so certainly diminishes the experience of either having or receiving such emotions, and I’d go so far as to suggest that devoting excessive thought to the micro-physiological side of the experience of emotion can become a pointless distraction to nearly anyone other than a clinician. Mythic (note that by “mythic” I do not necessarily mean “fictional”) structures provide our conscious minds with ample tools to address the intangible; if you reduce these to micro-physiological activites as well, you’re now engaged in neuroscience rather than philosophy. On a philosophical level, we have symbols for things that enable us to understand them. This is a part of what we call “semiotics.” Our culture informs our myths and our myths give us the symbols we use to understand the ineffable. (This means that if I am ever convinced of the existence of the supernatural, I would need further convincing of anything other than universalism.)
And semiotics teaches us that the symbols we use to understand things molds that understanding. That’s a place where things get slippery, particularly when confronting concepts of something existing outside of existence, something outside of nature altering nature in some way (perhaps by creating it?), of an ineffable will and intelligence and personality completely removed (or at least removable) from the realm of tangible.
To me, such concepts seem paradoxical. To talk about “love” or “malice” as things we can experience and even do means that inherently those things are part of the universe, not removed from it. Reduce them to micro-physiological neurological events if you wish, although I don’t think that’s necessary to identify them as residents of natural rather than supernatural reality. To the theist, perhaps not; while we shall very likely never convert one another to switch such a facet of our respective world views, we can intelligently discus such things and mutually refine our understanding of both one another and the world we share.
Burt,
Some of these ideas, to my understanding, assume some of the very questions that remain unanswered. For example, that we live in a “shared” reality rather than in utter solipsism. Descartes postulated (he thought he “proved”) God’s existence to pull him out of his state of absolute doubt. The transcendental argument recognizes this, but then takes the further pragmatic step of positing that, duh, absolute doubt is no way to live, and thus God (or something similar) must exist. Not the same thing as saying a perpetual motion machine must exist, because a perpetual motion machine isn’t necessary to pulling us out of Cartesian doubt, or having an answer to that weird dude who asks “how do you know we’re not all, like, living in the Matrix?”
But then, I’m not looking to bang away at these arguments all over again. Mostly, I was appreciative that it’s even possible to discuss these matters here, and wanted to address Tod’s concern that I was employing philosophical arguments in an effort to shut down rather than facilitate the discussion.
Why is the Christian tribe not going to be particularly friendly to the atheist tribe?
I’m probably thinking of the internet world, where no one is particularly friendly to anyone else. In reality, you’re right, that’s not necessarily so.
I’m kind of a philosophy-phobe myself, but it’s mostly because rigorous philosophical is not what I’m good at. I remember the few philosophy classes I took in college–most were the meet-and-greet introductory level courses, so maybe things are different at the upper division courses–but it all seemed to be an exercise in seeing what other people have said and noting big holes in their arguments that they refused to acknowledge themselves (at least not in the excerpts we read).
I suspect there are philosophical underpinnings to what I believe and my approach to issues and the way I think about them are probably “philosophical” in some vague, non-rigorous way. So perhaps my misosophy is more a sign of laziness on my part. It is also possible I’m missing what “philosophy” really is, in a similar way that I find a lot of people miss or misconstrue what the study of “history” is (I’m not sure I know what history is, but I’ve studied enough to know that I don’t know).
The whole argument usually amounts to “who has the burden of proof” and then the person who doesn’t have just shrugs for three paragraphs before declaring victory.
Which, you’d think, would tell us something right there.
Thanks for posting this Tim, especially with a four month old cutie in arms. (We had a similar situation with out oldest boy; the first several weeks of sleep and happy chirping made the intense sleep deprivation that was to come a bit of a surprise.)
In theory I agree that I would object to Jason as much as anyone else in this regard. My specific objection to what believers were saying in that and few previous posts, if I recall correctly, was not a Believers vs. Non-Believers issue. (As I said in Confession, I like, respect and admire faith in others.) My objection was believers using philosophical arguments and 19th century writings to “prove” to me why, even though I am a happy person, I am in fact very sad – perhaps on the verge of nihilistic despair. (This is an argument I have grown tired of having. If someone is truly convinced that what some dead white guy said two hundred years ago is a better indicator of how happy I, Tod Kelly, am today than my own experience, what the hell am I ever going to say to convince them they’re wrong?)
I might suggest, though, that the need to hammer out entire metaphysical systems to come to a place of acceptance, understanding and mutual respect is a you thing and not an Truth. Most people I know do this all the time with people in their community, without any referencing of the writings of St. Augustine at all.
Still, I appreciate your reaching out; I think that I did misunderstand your earlier intentions. I think you are right that we each look for commonalities to build on. I think we use different mechanisms o get there, but I think the struggle itself is the important thing.
Cheers.
Thanks, Tod. These things, like you said in Confession, are largely private for most people. Then again, so is politics! Hopefully, taking the risk of making our privately held beliefs public refines them and makes us better, happier people. Given the right company, of course. Granted, I’m used to having the theism versus atheism debate in more hostile forums than this, so perhaps I could use a softer touch.
Yeah, I had meant to touch upon this when I started writing my comment and then spaced it, but it occurred to me that I should retroactively cut you some slack and shoulder some blame.
I did step into a Believer vs. Atheist cage-match thread, so it’s it’s pretty understandable that even if I hadn’t meant to be part of that exact argument that you might have reasonably assumed & responded as if I did.
My objection was believers using philosophical arguments and 19th century writings to “prove” to me why, even though I am a happy person, I am in fact very sad – perhaps on the verge of nihilistic despair. (This is an argument I have grown tired of having. If someone is truly convinced that what some dead white guy said two hundred years ago is a better indicator of how happy I, Tod Kelly, am today than my own experience, what the hell am I ever going to say to convince them they’re wrong?)
Tod, the point being made is not that you are in fact in nihilistic despair.A number of different points are being made.
One point is that it is inconsistent to say that anything let alone morality, love or family is valuable if we suppose that the only kind of thing that exists is physical stuff.
Another point which has more to do with the epistemology stuff is that the only way we can reasonably claim knowledge about the external world is if we presupposed God.
The criticism being raised against atheism here, is not that atheists are all miserable, but that atheists should be nihilists if they were to be consistent. Non-nihilistic atheists are making a mistake of some kind.
Well put, Murali.
In the initial thread, Tim, you told me that you were not arguing that atheists cannot offer an epistemology of their own, but only that they do not. Has this changed? You now agree with Murali that if they are consistent, they are nihilists. Can this be consistent with the notion that they could offer an epistemological alternative to theism and remain atheists?
No, my position has not changed. My position has been that to the extent atheism does not or will not posit any preconditions to make basic propositions about reality intelligible, it is either inconsistent, or results in nihilism. As Murali indicates, if you’re this sort of atheist but not a nihilist, then you’re doing it wrong.
But there are many brands of atheism and atheists, so I don’t purport to offer this argument as some kind of an “a-ha!” I merely offer that the kind of atheism that doesn’t or won’t bother with metaphysics probably does, as Murali suggests, end in nihilism, if consistency is to prevail. This in turn is designed to coax non-nihilist atheists into following the debates away from the New Atheism style of arguments and into the metaphysical context.
Yeah, yeah. “Jaybird wrote an essay that went a different direction and he keeps pointing it out and I’m going to pretend that it doesn’t exist but in a completely different way than those atheists pretend that God doesn’t exist.”
Would you believe I still intend to write a response to that essay? It took me three months to respond to Tod’s, and I’m working in reverse chronological order.
Would you believe I still intend to write a response to that essay?
I have more evidence for the existence of God.
I thought you’d start to see things my way.
I’d say that an atheist doesn’t necessarily need to be a nihilist to be consistent, as long as s/he recognizes that in identifying one or more fundamental moral principles, s/he’s playing in the same ballpark as the theists.
Yeah, this would be the kind of “I’m focusing on the text book and not the world around me” claptrap to which I refer.
I can understand why you feel it’s all “claptrap,” Tod, though I would be disheartened if you were to write it off that way. I say I can understand it because, sometimes, everyone gets tired of having certain debates. Even debates that, at other times or in other circumstances, we have enjoyed. Sometimes I really like engaging in serious discussions about abortion, or the existence of God, or whathaveyou. But when I’m not in the mood or don’t have time to engage these subjects with the level of engagement they require, I tend to ignore them completely. It’s not like you can have light-hearted discussions on these subjects. If all I’ve got time for is a 5-minute distraction before I start working on a new matter, I’m going to look at political blogs, not philosophy blogs.
But that doesn’t mean the former trumps the latter. Far from it! Nor does it mean that “the world around me” is more important than the world of ideas or the construction of narratives and ideas and abstract models through which we perceive reality, through which “the world around us” has meaning. Indeed, it is the differences in the world of ideas rather than “the world around us” that accounts for the differences of opinion and diversity of perceptions. And it is by spending time in the world if ideas that causes us to change our opinions, attitudes, and behavior in “the world around us.”
Granted, discussions about God and epistemology can get quite abstract. But I think that’s simply the nature of the subject—it wasn’t made that way by sophists, it just is difficult by its nature. Yet we discuss it not because we like to engage in claptrap, but because it’s important and interesting. In certain doses, at least.
Pls read. Pls. Tim, Tod, anybody who gives a shit. A sci-fi classic [1951], back before it was all about games and thrones.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/31069880/anthony-boucher-the-quest-for-saint-aquin
Tom – Thanks! I am on a plane all day tomorrow, so as soon as I can figure out how to download the thing I will; it’s nice to have something to look forward to reading in the airport.
Cheers, Tod. Downloading should be unnecessary, scribed.com. Read. The transcription is rough, but hey, it’s free.
I have just re-read it, and now shall read it again. It’s better than I remembered it from my youth, as the truly great things are that can penetrate even a young man’s brain.
Thanks for sharing that, Tom. What a great story! Serious analysis of so many of the important questions impel us to compartmentalize in one way or another, and thus by that first step we lose touch with truth. Even perfect reason gives itself up once it is employed in the service of a particular objective. Faith and reason are perfect. One exercises them for their own sake, and for the sake of the truth they represent. Whatever worthy objectives they may produce, whether happiness or security or community or love, are byproducts only.
Tim – I apologize for being short and snippy on your page. Let me take the time to try to communicate where I’m coming from on this issue – so that if for no other reason you can see why these arguments drive me batty.
From my perspective, what happens is this:
A very bright and intelligent person, such as yourself or Murali, think about the world – what makes it tick, why things are the way they are, what those thing that transcend it might be. And you take the time to verbalize complex theories that neatly explain and categorize things to your satisfaction. And this is all well and good. And then you take your theory and hold it up to the observable world, and make judgements. And then it gets a little tricky.
In this case, each of you has built a theory where – and I realize I am over-simplifying – people of faith are happier, and (let’s be honest) are better and truer people than those who aren’t. And that is all well and good as well, except that when you observe the world you might notice that the faithful aren’t particularly more happy than the agnostic, and the agnostic aren’t nihilistic in the way your theory says that they should be. I would argue that the intellectually honest thing to do at this point would be to say, “Huh. So maybe I haven’t got this figured out yet after all.”
Instead, you decide that your theory is right, but the world is wrong. Is Tod agnostic *and* a happy, optimistic and productive member of society? Then clearly Tod lacks the intellectual chops to understand that he *should* be sad and nihilistic. The fact that he doesn’t believe what you folks do and is still happy, optimistic and productive is a sign that Tod is being “inconsistent.” If only he could think like you, he would know how unhappy and/or confused he really is!
The first problem, form my perspective, is that you believe that people lack the vast complexities they really have; they can’t just be put into neat little cubbies like you think they can. I’m not a happy, satisfied adult because I am inconsistent. Your view that you must be a believer to be a happy satisfied adult is just a botched thesis.
The second problem, again from my perspective, is that you are going out of your way to divide people up needlessly – worse, you’re doing it in a way that allows those who read you to justify piggish behavior. Don’t want to hire a teacher because they’re an atheist? It’s ok, it’s not really ignorance on your part – here’s a fabulous philosophical treatise showing how those rascals are just a good think away from getting up in the tower with a high powered rifle.
Is the correspondence between happiness and religion still in the “theory” phase at this point? I thought, in the US at least, it was somewhat documented. The question being which way the causation runs and by extension whether irreligious people would be happier if they were religious.
(This is a problem more generally with People In Category A are happier than People In Category B… a lot of people make the assumption that People In Category B would be happier if they were in Category A. Not necessarily so.)
people of faith are happier, and (let’s be honest) are better and truer people than those who aren’t
Errm, Tod, this is so not what I am about. I dont think people of faith are better than people of non-faith. And this is me the elitist talking. Also I was just pointing out what the actual argument was. i.e. me being pedantic. I was not defending the argument.
Is Tod agnostic *and* a happy, optimistic and productive member of society? Then clearly Tod lacks the intellectual chops to understand that he *should* be sad and nihilistic
Two things.
1. The claim is not against agnosticism. In fact, the above type of “epistemological” argument cannot get you much further than agnosticism. Those arguments are aimed at those who deny the existence of God, not those who reserve judgement on the matter. (Technically people of faith are still agnostic. They lack knowledge of God, and have doubt which is what faith is all about) Also, mere agnosticism does not lead to nihilism. Nihilism is a positive denial about morality or value or beauty or whatever. Merely saying that you are not sure whether there is objective morality just makes you a kind of sceptic, not a nihilist.
2. Again, the thesis is not that you must be a believer to be a satisfied adult. But, that some kind of supernatural must exist in order for their to be objective normativity and value etc.
Don’t want to hire a teacher because they’re an atheist? It’s ok, it’s not really ignorance on your part – here’s a fabulous philosophical treatise showing how those rascals are just a good think away from getting up in the tower with a high powered rifle.
Everyone is a good (or bad) think away from nihilism. Even if the suprnatural were necessary for the existence of objective value and meaning, it would not follow that the supernatural was sufficient.
Also, the mere fact that people hold wrong philosophical or religious doctrines does not justify discrimination. If we dont think it reasonable to discriminate based on a person’s political affiliation, then discrimination based on religious belief is similarly bad.
Holding wrong philosphical positions (on God or otherwise) is not even sufficient grounds to disqualify you from teaching philosophy at a university.
Murali – This is the problem with debating using the language of philosophy as the primary rule of engagement: the ability to be clever with words trumps reality.
What on earth would I ever be able to say to make you see that you’re wrong; that somewhere in your reasoning that atheists can’t be moral you have made a misstep? I could point out all of the atheists that lead moral lives and you will just find an awkward verbal argument that dismisses this reality. I can flip that coin and show you countless examples of immorality by people who claim to be Christian, Muslim, Jewish, etc., and again you will just use semantics to erase these facts until your philosophy is proven. I could even point out comparisons of things like divorce rates, murder rates, incarcerations rates, studies showing the willingness to torture for nationalistic reasons, willingness to justify rape/female subjugation/genital mutilation, etc. between atheists and fundamentalists, and these statistics will take a back seat to your creating semantic gymnastics to reshape the world until it is resembles your philosophy.
If you want to convince me that you are right – that a belief in the supernatural is needed to be a moral person – then making long-winded arguments, quoting theologians and philosophers you respect, etc., will not help you. Because while all of those things prove that you are clever, none of them counter all the obvious evidence to the contrary. If you really want to convince me that you might be right, then you’ll actually have to leave the text books and jargon and wade into the real world to do so. In fact, here is how you could do it:
Go through the past year’s posts over at Not a Potted Plant. Read the outstanding body of work by Mr. Likko. By my estimations, Mr. Likko is as upstanding a guy as you might hope to find. He’s certainly one of the most – if not the most – respected of all the gentlemen here. Loving husband, honest debater, empathetic and compassionate colleague, and someone who stands up and gets counted – sometimes with passion and anger – when he witnesses moral transgressions around him. In fact, I have the sense that he sees his volunteer hours and advocacy to advance society’s views of atheists as part of a moral imperative which he deeply holds dear.
So go through and read his posts, and then explain to me why Burt obviously possesses no moral compass – which surely must be the case if what you say is true. Make your argument, email it to me (email! do NOT publish a post saying anything unkind about Burt) and if you make a convincing argument – (that is, one that relies on the observable facts at hand, not semantic play such as “I have decided to define ‘moral’ as ‘a belief in God,’ therefore Q.E.D…”) – I will not only publish a post detailing how wrong I was on this subject, I will ship you a bottle of fine 80 year old scotch. (Assuming you’re allowed to do that between the US and Taiwan).
I offer this with no worries that I will ever have to pay up, because from where I sit the fact that Burt is an atheist and a good and moral person is both obvious and indisputable. Until you can convince me that he is either a believer trying to trick all of us into thinking he is an atheist, or a man devoid of any kind of morals, your thesis is demonstrably false. Period.
Everything else is just clever word play.
that somewhere in your reasoning that atheists can’t be moral you have made a misstep?
Perhaps I have not ben clear.
1. Tod, I am not making that argument. Sure atheists can be moral, just look outside the world. Sure, there are probably lots of theists who are immoral monsters. All I was pointing out was that the argument being made was not the argument you were responding to. Let me repeat that. You are still not responding to the argument being made.
2. The argument is not whether atheists can be moral, it is not whether atheists can want to be moral, it is not even whether atheists can think that they ought to be moral. This is not about what atheists can or cannot do.
One of the unsolved questions in moral philosophy is about why we should be moral. It is not clear ultimately whether anyone, atheist or otherwise has a good answer to this. The argument being put forward here is one against strict materialism, and it basically says that if such a reason existed, it would have to invoke more than merely material facts about the world. The argument is basically saying: dont be so sure nothing beyond the material exists. The theist might go on to specifically claim that whatever that is, we might as well call that God. I am not endorsing the theists argument here.
While I am inclined to think the argument is successful, I haven’t thought about it deeply enough to be sure. I dont know that it ultimately is. I am not pushing the argument at you (unless we wre here debating the truth of ontological naturalism. But we’re not). All I’m saying is that the argument that you were attacking is not the argument I (and I think Mr Kowal was making).
P.S. Note, this is not something that just exists for morality. It is a problem for mathematics or any type of universal. I am inclined to think its correct that we cannot make sense of universals (like 2+2=4) in a purely material cosmos.
Now, does that mean I’m saying that atheists make bad mathematicians, or are deficient in their mathematical understanding in some way theists aren’t?
Murali, you’re a Straussian, whether or not you know it yet. Not only is “One of the unsolved questions in moral philosophy is about why we should be moral,” but
“positivistic social science . . . is characterized by the abandonment of reason or the flight from reason. . .
According to the positivistic interpretation of relativism which prevails in present-day social science . . . reason can tell us which means are conducive to which ends; it cannot tell us which attainable ends are to be preferred to other attainable ends. Reason cannot tell us that we ought to choose attainable ends; if someone ‘loves him who desires the impossible,’ reason may tell him that he acts irrationally, but it cannot tell him that he ought to act rationally, or that acting irrationally is acting badly or basely. If rational conduct consists in choosing the right means for the right end, relativism teaches in effect that rational conduct is impossible.”
Could there be any other answer?
It seems backward to me to require an understanding of each particular thing before one is allowed to reject it. Isn’t that the opposite tack we should take? Rather, we should have a good understanding of what we accept, and why we accept it. Those belief systems that, though foreign, are largely congruent with our own have a decent chance of being accepted. Those that are not can be presumed to be rejected.
So, if a central tenet of my belief system is “I do not believe in the existence of entities for which there is no objectively verifiable evidence” then I can handily reject any belief system that posits the existence of such entities. I need know nothing further about the belief system in question. Now, it’s a bit more tricky if one does allow for the existence of such entities, but assuming one is intellectually rigorous enough to have established which attributes of said entity one believes in, it still would be simple enough to accept or reject unfamiliar ideologies based upon how well they align with what one knows one’s self to believe.
It’s computationally impossible to require a full understanding of everything before rejecting it (it’s also logically insane to demand this as a precondition in any discussion, since it assumes that everything can be entirely understood, which is bollocks).
However, the shorthand reverse is not really acceptable, either. If one believes in the absence of an Entity that Plays Not According To The Rules, this is usually predicated on a number of axiomatic assumptions. The vice-versa is likewise true.
If you’re actually engaging one another (either to find common ground or not), there’s nothing wrong with asking for a summation of those assumptions on both party’s parts. If one of the axioms is obviously skewed, then that’s an open ground for discussion.
For example, one might say, “I don’t believe in God because all organized religions have terrible histories of abuse”. Well, the second clause may or may not be true, but in either case that doesn’t tell you much of a goddamn thing about whether or not God exists (although you may enter it into evidence as towards the nature of God, should existence be true). That’s a bad reason, and there’s nothing wrong with digging into that dirt.
Generally, I find that your average bloke on teh Intrawebs has lots of riddled fallacies in their barely cogent imaginings of the world. But that generally doesn’t hold true here, at least.
I mean, it is practically unheard of on this site for one longtime member to just outright call another one a idiot and a fool. Mislead, foolish in a particular belief, whatever… but we’re generally pretty good at assuming that people are arguing in good faith, and we’re all generally pretty good at having non-half-assed frameworks of belief for whatever thought construct we’re currently hanging out there for examination.
Only a complete moron or moral pervert could have written such rubbish.
As both a bit of a moron and an over-the-top moral pervert, let me assure you I had no part in writing this.
My (relative) believes in God quite strongly because, among other reasons, s/he has direct experience of the Divine.
Fair enough. It would not behoove me to argue against my (relative).
This is not sufficient evidence for me to believe in God… that said, if I had direct experience of the Divine, I’m pretty sure that I’d want to get all y’all on board. Hey. Free Divine.
My reasons for my (admittedly amorphous) belief in God are so nebulous, even to me, that I would never hope to use them to convince anyone else.
“It is a precondition—if not directed by logic then certainly by the standards of fair and honest discourse—that if one is going to criticize another’s epistemology he reveal the terms of his own epistemology that make the criticism intelligible in the first place.”
Why?
If your epistemology is based on the occurrence of an impossible event and doesn’t explicitly declare that the impossible event is possible in that epistemology then do I need to completely define my own epistemology to point out that error? If your epistemology is based on overt logical flaws–like, “two plus two equals five” flaws–do I need a complete philosophy of existence to call them out?
The issue is that you think you’re making statements that are about matters of…well, faith, and that these are entirely personal. But to others you might well be talking about fact. A true atheist is going to a priori reject any arguments that are based on the existence of the supernatural–and he’s going to reject them as though they were facts. He’s not going to say “I can understand how you might find it necessary to posit a supernatural Supreme Being in order to justify morality, but I disagree” (which is a statement that implies a justification by some other means, and invites a discussion of what that might be.) He’s going to say “arguing that God exists is like arguing that gravity doesn’t“, which is not really a statement of philosophy, and when you say “well what’s your philosophy then” he’s going to reply like a Republican in a Global Warming thread asked to explain why the line on the chart keeps going up.
DD, anyone can play Immovable Object. When the burden of proof is shared equally, we can only ask which competing view is most complete, not necessarily most correct.
It’s easier to be “correct” when one ventures little beyond negation.
“Yet this modern “mechanical” picture has never been established by science, and cannot be, for it is not a scientific theory in the first place but merely a philosophical interpretation of science. Moreover, as I argue in the book, the philosophical arguments in its favor given by the early modern philosophers were notable only for being surprisingly weak. The true reasons for its popularity were then, and are now, primarily political: It was a tool by which the intellectual foundations of ecclesiastical authority could be undermined and the way opened toward a new secular and liberal social order oriented toward commerce and technology. So as to further these political ends, it was simply stipulated, by fiat as it were, that no theory inconsistent with the mechanical picture of the world would be allowed to count as “scientific.” As the centuries have worn on and historical memory has dimmed, this act of dogmatic stipulation has falsely come to be remembered as a “discovery.”
But this modern philosophical picture of nature is not merely unfounded. It has rationally unacceptable implications, making the relationship between mind and body, our knowledge of the external world, causation and induction, free will and personal identity, all utterly mysterious or even unintelligible. (Many of these so-called “traditional problems of philosophy,” I argue, are largely artifacts of the novel and historically contingent assumptions put at the center of Western thought only with the mechanistic revolution.) Indeed, this mechanistic picture, at least as developed by contemporary naturalists, is demonstrably false. For it entails that rationality, and indeed the human mind itself, are illusory. The so-called “scientific worldview” as it has been distorted by the New Atheists thus inevitably undermines its own rational foundations; and into the bargain (and contrary to the moralistic posturing of the New Atheists) it undermines the foundations of any possible morality as well. By contrast, and as The Last Superstition argues, the classical teleological and essentialist picture of nature can be seen to find powerful confirmation in developments from contemporary philosophy, biology, and physics; moreover, morality and reason itself cannot possibly be made sense of apart from it. The metaphysical vision of the ancients and medievals is thereby rationally vindicated – and with it the religious and moral worldview they based upon it.”
http://www.themontrealreview.com/2009/The-last-superstition-a-refutation-of-the-new-atheism-Edward-Feser.php
“When the burden of proof is shared equally, we can only ask which competing view is most complete, not necessarily most correct.”
That’s…not really what I was saying, at all.
What I’m saying is that I don’t have to be a tailor to point out that you’ve got your pants on backwards.
DD, again:
“But this modern philosophical picture of nature is not merely unfounded. It has rationally unacceptable implications, making the relationship between mind and body, our knowledge of the external world, causation and induction, free will and personal identity, all utterly mysterious or even unintelligible. ”
Your working theory [or none, at least that you’ve advanced] can’t account for any of these empirically observable facets of man.
Yes, I know what you were saying—bullshit! Now you know what I am saying to such a negation, that its incompleteness is at least equally unsatisfactory.
[Nobody’s arguing the Bible is true here, or other doctrines, for the record. The subject is mere theism.]
DD,
Some interesting points here.
Not necessarily. If you are merely critiquing my worldview, you might simply be pointing out that though it purports to lay the foundation for the laws of logic, it depends on some violation of those very laws. That would be a perfectly appropriate criticism. However, if we are debating worldviews, it would be incumbent on you to reveal how your worldview lays the foundation for the existence of the laws of logic sufficient to give me an opportunity to issue a counter criticisms.
From there, we get to a divergence in approaches among atheists based on a divergence in definitions of atheism. Is atheism simply the absence of belief who thus can issue criticisms without the burden of providing an affirmative model of his own? Or is it a worldview all its own? That’s a vast rhetorical battle ground where many debates have gone to die.
In debates over epistemology, what constitutes “fact” quickly gets into question-begging territory. What constitutes a fact ultimately depends on precommitments about what constitutes reality, truth, goodness, beauty, etc. Thus, even mundane facts have matters of “faith” at their core.
“[I]f we are debating worldviews, it would be incumbent on you to reveal how your worldview lays the foundation…”
That’s certainly true. “Pepsi tastes like ass” is different from “Coke combines with the chemical receptors of human taste buds in a manner which more optimally stimulates the pleasure centers of the brain”.
“Is atheism simply the absence of belief who thus can issue criticisms without the burden of providing an affirmative model of his own? Or is it a worldview all its own? That’s a vast rhetorical battle ground where many debates have gone to die.”
Darn tootin’. There’s a huge battle there in your statement, over whether your first sentence is actual atheism or more properly described as “agnosticism”. But this isn’t the place for that battle.
Where I was going with my post was just “you’re right that battling faiths requires that those faiths be laid on the table, but sometimes people aren’t responding to your statement as though it were about faith”. It seems like you’ve got that, which makes me happy because I don’t always get my point across properly.
It’s a bit different, but not in any important way — regardless of the scientific jargon, you haven’t provided any objective basis for the “more optimally” bit.