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Go Home The Answers

BOOKS AND ARTS DECEMBER 14, 2011

The Answers

BY LEON WIESELTIER

Is there a god? No. What is the nature of reality? What physics says it is. What is the purpose of the universe? There is none. What is the meaning of life? Ditto. Why am I here? Just dumb luck. Is there a soul? Is it immortal? Are you kidding? Is there free will? Not a chance! What is the difference between right and wrong, good and bad? There is no moral difference between them. Why should I be moral? Because it makes you feel better than being immoral. Is abortion, euthanasia, suicide, paying taxes, foreign aid, or anything else you don’t like forbidden, permissible, or sometimes obligatory? Anything goes. What is love, and how can I find it? Love is the solution to a strategic interaction problem. Don’t look for it; it will find you when you need it. Does history have any meaning or purpose?It’s full of sound and fury, but signifies nothing.” I take this cutting-edge wisdom from the worst book of the year, a shallow and supercilious thing called The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions, by Alex Rosenberg, a philosopher of science at Duke University. The book is a catechism for people who believe they have emancipated themselves from catechisms. The faith that it dogmatically expounds is scientism. It is a fine example of how the religion of science can turn an intelligent man into a fool.

NOT LONG AGO the prestige of science was nastily contested by American politics, as conservatism’s war on evolution, environmental science, and other forms of empirical research threatened to confound the American sense of reality. It was George W. Bush against Francis Bacon. Against this obscurantism—which has long held sway over significant portions of the American electorate—it was necessary to offer a ferocious defense of the premises, and the blessings, of scientific inquiry. Unfortunately, the defense of science became corrupted in certain quarters into a defense of scientism, which is the expansion of scientific methods and concepts into realms of human life in which they do not belong. Or rather, it is the view that there is no realm of human life in which they do not belong. Rosenberg arrives with “the correct answers to most of the persistent questions,” and “given what we know from the sciences, the answers are all pretty obvious.” (I have cited most of them above.) This is because “there is only one way to acquire knowledge, and science’s way is it.” And not just science in general, but physics in particular. “All the processes in the universe, from atomic to bodily to mental, are purely physical processes involving fermions and bosons interacting with one another.” And: “Scientism starts with the idea that the physical facts fix all the facts, including the biological ones. These in turn have to fix the human facts—the facts about us, our psychology, and our morality.” All that remains is to choose the wine.

IN THIS WAY science is transformed into a superstition. For there can be no scientific answer to the question of what is the position of science in life. It is not a scientific question. It is a philosophical question. The idea that physical facts fix all the facts is not an idea proven, or even posited, by physics. Rosenberg does not translate non-scientific facts into scientific facts; he denies that non-scientific facts exist at all. But in what way is, say, The Jewish Bride a scientific fact? It is certainly composed of fermions and bosons, but such knowledge, however true and fundamental, casts no light upon the power of the painting, or the reasons for its appeal. The description of everything in terms of fermions and bosons cannot account for the differences, in meaning and in effect, between particular combinations of fermions and bosons. But Rosenberg’s complacence survives such an objection, since he holds also that “the meanings we think are carried by our thoughts, our words, and our actions are just sand castles we build in the air.” This leads him to a boorish attack on the humanities, which are “nothing we have to take seriously, except as symptoms.” What they symptomize is “the search for motives and meanings in thoughts about things,” which has all been retired by neuroscience; and also our sad need for narrative. (Never mind his bedtime story about the adventures of the hominid in the savanna.) The humanities are “fun,” he avers, but they “are a scientific dead end.” And so they are, which is a big part of their claim upon our reverence. It does not help that Rosenberg cannot spell the well-known name of the ancient Latin poem that he admires; or that he regards F.R. Leavis as the inventor of the New Criticism and “the progenitor of preposterous twentieth-century literary theory”; or that he gives “the Humanities’ greatest hits” as The Odyssey, Hamlet, War and Peace, Middlemarch, and Sophie’s Choice. I thought that the argument for imagination and interpretation as instruments of human knowledge was settled long ago—when Vico read the ancients, or when Mill read Coleridge, or when Dilthey read Schleiermacher; but here we are, still wrestling with the distinction between explanation and understanding, still enduring the old crap about the hegemony of the natural sciences.

THIS SHABBY BOOK is riddled with other notions that typify our time. Rosenberg maintains that atheism entails materialism, as if the integrity of the non-material realms of life can be secured only by the existence of a deity. Reason does not move him, no doubt because of the threat it poses to the physicalist tyranny. He asserts, as would anyone who does not live in Congo, that “most people are nice most of the time,” because “we were selected for niceness,” which is all we need for ethics. He calls this “nice nihilism,” since it promotes moral values without moral beliefs. As for “Hitlers, Stalins, Mao Zedongs, Pol Pots, and Osama bin Ladens”—the people who are not nice most of the time—“biology has the answer”: there are always variations in inherited traits. But the variations cannot be the answer, because they are the question. Moreover, most people are both good and bad, neither devils nor angels. Rosenberg is untroubled by such complications. He is untroubled by everything under the sun. The man’s peace of mind is indecent. “We know the truth,” he declares sacerdotally in his preface. “Some of the tone of much that follows may sound a little smug. I fear I have to plead guilty to this charge ...” Once upon a time science was the enemy of smugness.

Leon Wieseltier is the literary editor of The New Republic. This article appeared in the December 29, 2011, issue of the magazine.

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107 comments

The most formidable non religious thinkers have been humanists who question religion as well as science.

- arnon

December 17, 2011 at 1:14pm

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I haven't read Rosenberg's book. I get it that Wieseltier abhors it, though I am not sure what he offers as an improvement. I have no quarrel with Arnon's comment, though I am not sure what useful conclusion to derive from it. I am very conscious of what is known as "The existential dilemma." People such as Kierkegaard, Sarte, and Camus wrote turgid treatises on it, though I think what might be called the "folk wisdom" is much more concise and pithy, and gets the essence of it: "Life is a bitch [bastard if you prefer to equally defame both sexes], then you die." In any event, I will sum up my approach to getting through life, which I don't think attacks anybody [if Arnon wants to disagree with me, that is fine, but let's see if you can express your disagreement as a positive alternative and without being nasty]: 1. Try to do more good than harm. 2. Keep moving, and be as active and vigorous as I can. 3. Live until I die. [I stole #3 from somebody else.] Merry Christmas and merry every other belief you have.

- skahn

December 24, 2011 at 12:29am

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Attacking the humanities is not cool. The book's other stuff about which Mr. Wieseltier here complains is acceptable in that it seems to advance the discussion of some Big Ideas, but I won't have some "philosopher of science" downplay the value of Shakespeare and literary analysis. Give 'em hell, Leon!

- Konstantin

December 24, 2011 at 12:38am

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I haven't read the book. I doubt it truly is the worst of the year. But it sure does sound obnoxious, and I say that as an atheist who is sympathetic to several of the book's notions. The idea, for example, that there is only one sort of fact -- something either objectively exists, or it doesn't -- and only one way of knowing about it -- reason (including science) -- strikes me as true. Isn't that just empiricism? Wieseltier is right to identify this as a philosophical proposition -- that is, it's a proposition about the nature of truth -- not a scientific one. But it's a philosophical proposition that I think I agree with. Wieseltier, I gather, disagrees, although he offers no coherent rebuttal. He celebrates philosophy without doing any. In what way is The Jewish Bride a scientific fact? he asks. That's like asking, in what way is The Jewish Bride a fact? Well, it's a painting that actually exists, that was actually painted by Rembrandt, that actually depicts a Jewish bride and her father, and that, indeed, is actually seen as masterful and moving by many. Can science explain "the power of its appeal"? Of course it can, at least, theoretically. Why a painting appeals to people is certainly not outside the realm of scientific inquiry. Is it scientistic to study the question? Is it somehow outside science's realm? Not at all. We must resist artificial limits to scientific inquiry. Such scientific explanations may seem deflating, because they do not seem equal to the importance we place on our emotional response. It's like coming down from a manic high to realize that what we found so stimulating before was just so much nonsense. It's like having someone tell you that you fell in love because of her facial features, or because she subconsciously reminds you of your mother. We prefer the feelings to the facts that explain them. The feelings seem more important, more grand, more eloquent, more beautiful, more exhilarating -- or, sometimes, more devastating. Our feelings are our world, so we naturally resist statements to the effect that they are "just" so-and-so. I don't see anything wrong with that preference, so long as what we're talking about is our feelings. We're simply asserting the importance of our feelings. It's not irrational, because all we're doing when we talk about the "power" of love -- whether it's a person or a painting or a play or a piece of music -- is to describe our feelings, and our feelings surely exist, and our honest description of them is of course accurate. We might acknowledge the plausibility of a given scientific explanation for why we like The Jewish Bride, while at the same time not really caring, because that argument, while it might *explain* the high, doesn't really describe it, and what we're trying to do is describe it. As literature, "Patient experiences feelings of hopelessness and depression" doesn't hold a candle to "Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." In Shakespeare's hands, one *feels* the reality of despair, just as one *feels* that, counter Macbeth, man is a glorious piece of work. Neither statement is a factual proposition, which is why, though contradictory, both can be equally true. Do we find a sunset less lovely because we know that the sun is "just" a giant ball of fire and that it's not really setting? Well, if you were emotionally invested in the idea that the sun is actually a god, then, yes, I'm afraid that you'll be disappointed. We can't feel a fact, other than the fact of the feeling. It's the old distinction between fact and opinion, fact and feeling, subjectivity and objectivity, ought and is -- all well-trod philosophical ground. Wieseltier might like to say that The Jewish Bride is, objectively speaking, a beautiful painting. But the beauty of a painting is not a fact subject to rational inquiry. We can study whether it actually appeals to people. It would be senseless to conclude at the end of that study that the painting is actually beautiful. The most you can say is that people find it such (while others, I'm sure, laboring under what my father politely refers to as a "different aesthetic," do not). Likewise, the statement that there is no meaning to life is true in a sense -- that is, there is no *objective* meaning to life. There are no objective answers to the point of it all. There is the meaning we give it. Why, some of us wonder, isn't that enough?

- JakeH

December 24, 2011 at 2:23am

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I haven't read the subject book either and probably won't. Out of interest, I checked out Rosenberg's cv online. It's pretty impressive as these things go. So it's hard to imagine he wrote a book as callow as Wieseltier makes out. Maybe he did. No doubt news of this takedown has reached him. I wish he or someone sympathetic to his ideas would answer Wieseltier. The difference between, say, "fermions and bosons" in, and the human responses to, Rembrandt's painting seems so elementary and obvious that I'm perplexed by the thought that Rosenberg simply dismisses it in his scientism. But perhaps he simply does. Skahn, your post moves me to ask, not for the first time, "what the hell are you talking about, especially in what might with some effort be called your "first paragraph?"

- basman

December 24, 2011 at 2:29am

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Jakeh I didn't see yours when I posted my little thing. I'll give yours a good read. Btw, I in fact offered some "thoughts" in answer to your question as to them on the exceedingly small thread after Thomson's review of The Descendants.

- basman

December 24, 2011 at 2:38am

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To be clear, if the book does dismiss the humanities, then I do find it extremely depressing. The humanities (unless we're very religious and require only one dubious book) is how we honor humanity. To discount them is to dishonor humanity and devalue one another. I find sickening appeals to focus education on math, science, and a trade, as if your value is what your society is willing to pay you for your labor, indeed, as if the value inquiry begins and ends with dollars and cents. To the extent atheists are spreading this gospel, it's an awfully ugly one. Many scientists and mathematicians find science and math beautiful, as do I, but there are more ways to find beauty and meaning in life, including by studying those questions directly. I refuse to believe that that study is useless or beyond the reach of ordinary people. It seems more important than ever.

- JakeH

December 24, 2011 at 2:56am

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Howdy Basman, ditto re the last post -- posted before your latest. I'll check out the Descendants thread. Cheers.

- JakeH

December 24, 2011 at 3:02am

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12/24/2011 - 2:56am EDT | JakeH Hard to put it better than this in the way of getting eloquently to the point.

- basman

December 24, 2011 at 3:22am

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The essential problem with scientism is this: Solipsism is irrefutable. If I want to assume that I am the only conscience person and that the whole universe is a figment of my imagination, there is no way you can refute this belief. The only way would be for you to show me directly your own consciousness but, lacking the ability to do Vulcan mind-melds like Mr. Spock, this is impossible. Consciousness is outside of and not necessary for any scientific theory of human brains and behavior. No doubt Prof. Rosenberg would say that mind is an emergent property of the brain. This might be right, but there is no proof or even facts tending to prove it. (Compare to evolution, which has not been proven correct, but there are so many observations tending to prove it that there is no serious doubt.) The most that can be said is that there is no better explanation available. This is not a strong argument. It is akin to "What could possibly go wrong?". There is a great mystery at the core of our being, with Prof. Rosenberg ignores.

- Vekert

December 24, 2011 at 3:38am

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Thanks! p.s. I left a response over by The Descendants.

- JakeH

December 24, 2011 at 3:39am

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And: “Scientism starts with the idea...
Scientism is, of course, a term of derision. The misquotation is telling.

- kpidcoc

December 24, 2011 at 10:38am

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Damn. Sounds like someone didn't like being told they aren't the special snowflake they thought they were.

- Tobbar

December 24, 2011 at 11:30am

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12/24/2011 - 11:30am EDT | Tobbar Damn. Sounds like someone didn't like being told they aren't the special snowflake they thought they were. Please explain.

- basman

December 24, 2011 at 11:58am

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On the face of it an atheism project really does require quite a bit of Faith. There are some reciprocal conceits that are overlooked with casual abandon. Now if we want to venture the realms of definitional validities.... that is another beast. I don't have the time to expand right now but if allowances are to found in the near future I'l be happy to revisit. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, all y'alls.

- jacko

December 24, 2011 at 12:18pm

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I argue that atheism requires no faith comparable to religious faith. Wanna' fight? :-)

- basman

December 24, 2011 at 12:27pm

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I argue that atheism requires no faith comparable to religious faith. Wanna' fight? :-)

- basman

December 24, 2011 at 12:28pm

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Faith is precisely what atheism is against. If you catch an atheist making a faith-based claim, you've got a good argument, but I don't generally hear them doing that. Anyway, as The New York Times likes to say, "It's Christmas Eve! Remember the Neediest!" Happy Holidays!

- JakeH

December 24, 2011 at 12:37pm

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basman wrote: "Skahn, your post moves me to ask, not for the first time, "what the hell are you talking about, especially in what might with some effort be called your 'first paragraph?'" basman, I will respond with a joke/reminiscence. When my daughter was about 1 year old, I thought, "My parents were terrible parents. I want to do better than they did." Going to college at the time, I checked out some books on child development from the college library. One of the books, written by a couple of psychologists who studied child development, clelverly interspersed their rather dry academic conclusions with anecdotes from a pre-school they operated at THEIR college. One story struck me so potently, that I remember it even today (when my daughter is over 40, and still speaks to me, so I guess I did better than my parents). Two little girls (about four years old) at the preschool were squabbling over possession of a doll. Girl #1 held the dolly tightly, refusing to give it up. The second little girl, wanting to force #1 to give it up, but not wanting to resort to violence (and reflecting a certain parental style that many reading this my understand or even recall) said vehemently, "If you don't give me that dolly, I will...I will... I will...EXPLAIN IT TO YOU!!!! Basman, if you can't comprehend my first paragraph, back to preschool you go, though I have to wonder if starting over will assist you in making sense of it.

- skahn

December 24, 2011 at 2:08pm

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I don't want to comment on this thread, it is Christmas eve, I want to hang out with my kids so for today I have absolutely no opinion on this topic. Happy whatever to one and all.

- blackton

December 24, 2011 at 2:45pm

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Oh Itz, you know I love ya, man. I am on the road and so am not intrerested in too much advanture with this iPhone entry realities. You and I have been down the road I can honestly allow as to your decency and honest efforting in these, and really most any other realms, when so engaged. As it is I am truly in the hinters and enjoying few conveniences. So maybe on the other side of Christmas will accommodate. Have a great holiday, Itzik. Jack

- jacko

December 24, 2011 at 3:42pm

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Jack all amour is reciprocated of course and I always respect your views, disagree or agree. I wish you and yours the best in these holidays and in the coming year. I'm taking off tomorrow at an absurdly early hour to join the rest of my family on the Canadian west coast for a holiday. Always a pleasure to engage with you and it's good I find to revisit these trod roads as we continue thinking about these subjects and try to garner fresh insights and ideas.

- basman

December 24, 2011 at 3:51pm

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..., if you can't comprehend my first paragraph, back to preschool you go, though I have to wonder if starting over will assist you in making sense of it... Maybe. But I think it isn't that I didn't understand it but rather that I understood it well enough to understand what a holy mish mash it is, both trite and misconceived in it's comment on existentialism. What the hell though, right? We both have the privilege of being as fatuous as we are and perhaps it's best not to remind each other of it. So, New Year's resolutions: lose 5 pounds; exercise more regularly; find a cure for OCD and leave Skahn alone.

- basman

December 24, 2011 at 3:58pm

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JakeH “Faith is precisely what atheism is against. If you catch an atheist making a faith-based claim, you've got a good argument, but I don't generally hear them doing that.” This is too simple, JakeH. Atheism means “no god.” And atheists exists to counter claims about deities. This has been true since the days of Socrates if not earlier. Atheism is then a secondary not a primary mode of being. It is reactive. Now, since belief of all kinds (moslty fantastic precedes) non belief, it needs to be asked can humanity exist without such beliefs? The universal nature of beliefs in supernatural beings would lead to the conclusion that supernatural beliefs are part of our DNA. This of course doesn’t make them true, however, it does seem that most people including atheists end up sporting irrational beliefs of one kind or another which at the moment they displace with attacks on “believers.” The question that needs to be asked of atheists is what exactly do you mean by “belief?” And what is certainty in one’s own views about reality. Do atheists want to merely destroy organized religion or are they also after any cultural vestige that owes its origin to religion? Do they wish to enact an atheistic inquisition? To me the more rational approach is agnosticism which says that we really don’t know very much about the whys and how comes of existence, natural as well as human. We don’t even know what evolutionary purpose belief systems play. Atheists may not be religious but they more often than not exhibit similar behavior to that of religious fanatics.

- arnon

December 24, 2011 at 4:50pm

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Basman: thank you. I am glad that you did understand my comment. I am sure that my comment about existentialism is trite. It is quite likely that it is misconceived, though I am not sure in a godless universe who determines the proper conception of meaninglessness. And "holy mish mash" has a nice ring to it. You may remind me of how fatuous I am at least once a day; it provides a nice contrast to Aron's frequent reminders on the same theme. If a few more people join in on a regular basis, perhaps we can get some harmony going. At the risk of being seen as bragging, I will say that I checked my weight this morning and I had lost five pounds even before the first of the year and I am fairly close to the weight that my doctor advises. I exercise regularly; right after I post this comment, I will walk vigorously uphill for about half an hour, and I go to the gym at least 3 days a week and do a cycle of strength exercises. My wife is OCD, but she is getting better. I am messy and ADD/HD and closing in on Alzheimer's. For a New Year's Resolution I will clean up my (very messy) side of the house and find a cure for ADD/HD as well as a cure for dementia, if I can focus on the project long enough. Finally, basman, I wish you a merry and a happy. And I will bother (not to mention irritate and offend) anybody on the TNR social network at any time, and possibly at all times. [Leaves to run laps with the Grinch.]

- skahn

December 24, 2011 at 5:00pm

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Maybe just a quick note to establish the kind of bread that we baking and breaking mayhaps we should endeavor as to whether or not the capacity to rely upon description would imply a satisfactorily substantial basis of viability independent of degrees of Faith. Can parameters be encompassed to sufficiently claim a bona fide integrity? Itz, what kind of definitional distinction do you contend to hold the capacities of untainted faith. That is if you and I can agree upon the idea of reliable only being resolved by degrees of Faith. I contend that there only the most modest degrees of distinction so as to render such very negligible. Faith is essentially a willingness to trust. Naturally that trust comes in many different colors. If you are discussing colors, okay. What doe the rainbow tell you, sir? I'm just riffing and have little capability for proof reading and so operating with a kind of faith that I won't be held accountable without noting extenuations. Lord knows I require many allowances.... Often referred to as Grace in the Christian lexiconography.

- jacko

December 24, 2011 at 6:59pm

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The question that needs to be asked of atheists is what exactly do you mean by “belief?”
I think that most would hold that a belief is a position for which one can offer some justification. If it is a belief that an event has occurred, the justification will involve reference to evidence that the event has occurred. It is essential to religious beliefs that they are not, and cannot be, justified in this way. Hebrews 11:1
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Atheists are inclined to believe (for which they will offer justification) that there is something dishonest in this.

- kpidcoc

December 24, 2011 at 7:29pm

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Atheism means without belief in god, just as atypical means without typicality or amoral means without morality, the prefix “a” meaning without. An agnostic is therefore someone without Gnosticism, which is to say, without spiritual knowledge, an epistemological proposition, that we can’t know what is beyond materiality. So there is some confused thinking about agnosticism. Those who doubt God’s existence but hold themselves open to the possibility of his existence are not agnostics even though their disbelief is tentative. They are not agnostics because their tentative disbelief renders them without belief in God’s existence and therefore atheists. Doubt here constitutes disbelief, and the militancy or tentativeness of this disbelief doesn’t go to an analytical distinction between agnosticism and atheism. So if there is virtue in open minded disbelief, atheists can have it. As noted, agnosticism is an assertion about what we can know: that we can’t know what is beyond nature. Therefore the claims of agnosticism don’t go to belief or disbelief in God. And in this sense, it follows, that theists can be atheists because they can say that they cannot know the supernatural but believe as a matter of faith in God’s existence. So my question is what is the faith that necessarily marks atheists? Is it faith in the proposition that God does not exist? If faith is belief not based on proof, then what does it mean to say that the assertion of god’s non existence is a matter of faith? Does it mean that the assertion of non existence of anything is a manifestation of faith, like unicorns or cosmic tea cups, or the existence of any number of gods, (why just one?) This reasoning seems absurd. So until someone can persuade me of the difference in principle between disbelieving in unicorns not implicating faith and disbelieving in God not implicating faith, I’d contend they can’t make a case for atheists as necessarily marked by faith.

- basman

December 24, 2011 at 7:41pm

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jack(o) I made my last post without reading yours of 12/24/2011 - 6:59pm EDT. But I've read it now. Jack tell me if you think mine just above is at all responsive to yours. And if so, maybe we can go from there.

- basman

December 24, 2011 at 7:45pm

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“I think that most would hold that a belief is a position for which one can offer some justification. If it is a belief that an event has occurred, the justification will involve reference to evidence that the event has occurred.” An event either did occur or it didn’t. If it did it’s a fact and not a belief. If one says that the “believe that an even occurred” then they are in the realm of doubt. Belief is the opposite of a fact. The table I am leaning on is a fact and not a belief. Now you offer a line from the Christian bible, as an example of belief: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” And then conclude: “Atheists are inclined to believe (for which they will offer justification) that there is something dishonest in this.” But “faith” is not the same as “belief.” People can hold beliefs that have nothing to do with faith. I believe that the sun will rise tomorrow. I know from past experience that the sun rises daily and hence I draw the conclusion that it will rise tomorrow. But it’s not a certainty. The world or sun could explode or some other unforeseen and un-hoped for event could happen. This isn’t a question of faith. Faith usually refers to expectations that have no basis in reality. Getting back to your example from the New Testament: it could be true that “Faith could be the substance of things hoped for’ but it doesn’t follow that it’s the “evidence of things unseen.” The author was obviously being poetic and indulging in rhetorical license here. However, I am not an expert of the New Testament (not even an amateur) and you may want to talk to someone who can read the book in the original language.

- arnon

December 24, 2011 at 8:22pm

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My post above was in answer to kpidcoc's post: 12/24/2011 - 7:29pm EDT | kpidcoc

- arnon

December 24, 2011 at 8:28pm

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“An event either did occur or it didn’t. If it did it’s a fact and not a belief. If one says that the “believe that an even occurred” then they are in the realm of doubt.” Should have read: "An event either did occur or it didn’t. If it did it’s a fact and not a belief. If one says that they “believe that an event occurred” then they are in the realm of doubt." (In other words they are trying to deal with a doubt that the event occurred or didn’t occur.) Sorry about the lousy typing.

- arnon

December 24, 2011 at 8:52pm

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Itz. I'm getting at something more elemental than the very valid proposition you have put forth. Good points all within the parameters of normally acceptable terms. It doesn't speak to my not very well put inquiry which is at the base of perception are terms of reliability that necessarily include degrees of faith. Each and every one of us is included in this reality. All constructs are somewhat dependent upon this trust. Itz. This is as far as I can go right now. O'll catch up as soon as I can.

- jacko

December 24, 2011 at 8:56pm

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Arnon (annotated): JakeH “Faith is precisely what atheism is against. If you catch an atheist making a faith-based claim, you've got a good argument, but I don't generally hear them doing that.” This is too simple, JakeH. (Why? It seems right to me. I think what you'll hear from your "public atheists" -- say Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens, et al. -- is an argument against the foundation of religious belief -- namely, faith.) Atheism means “no god.” And atheists exists to counter claims about deities. This has been true since the days of Socrates if not earlier. (I think atheism refers to a disbelief in God. I don't believe that atheists exist to "counter claims about deities." They exist, because that's what they think. I've never believed in God, just as I've never believed in countless other superstitions. One need not be evangelical about it.) Atheism is then a secondary not a primary mode of being. It is reactive. (Oh, pish posh -- this is semantics meant to discredit a viewpoint merely because it's negative -- as if negative viewpoints are inherently suspect. Everyone who believes something is against other things which don't accord with it. Jewish believers are against the Christian view, for example. The "something" for atheists -- the positive belief -- is in reason, and the atheists' specific claim is that religious belief doesn't accord with reason. We're not "reasonists" only because a belief in reason is not culturally noteworthy -- it's taken as a given. Which is sort of the point -- religious belief is inconsistent with universally held, uncontroversial beliefs about how we know the fact of the matter.) Now, since belief of all kinds (moslty fantastic precedes) non belief, (I don't understand this. Nothing preceded my disbelief in God, other than a belief in reason.) it needs to be asked can humanity exist without such beliefs? (I don't see why that follows. A more salient question might be whether humanity can exist *with* such beliefs! The prospect of the world ending before its time at the hands of a religious fanatic strikes me as only a little far-fetched.) The universal nature of beliefs in supernatural beings would lead to the conclusion that supernatural beliefs are part of our DNA. (A *propensity* toward supernatural belief is no doubt natural -- perhaps in some of us more than others. But all sorts of propensities are in our DNA. Part of the project of civilization is to suppress the bad ones and encourage the good ones. I would say that supernatural belief -- another word is "superstition" -- is not a propensity that we want to celebrate and encourage, generally speaking.) This of course doesn’t make them true, however, it does seem that most people including atheists end up sporting irrational beliefs of one kind or another which at the moment they displace with attacks on "believers." (Okay, well we're back to my "too simple" point. As I said, if you can catch an atheist making a faith-based claim or "sporting" any irrational belief, you'd have a good argument. I said that that's not generally what I hear them doing. I'm not hearing any examples or counter from you on this point. In any case, I think that that argument would end up being against the atheists' irrational belief and not against atheism or for God. I don't think that irrational beliefs are inevitable. This strikes me as a canard that is both untrue and, as you sort of acknowledge, beside the point. After all, to say that people hold other irrational beliefs is not an argument in favor of any given belief's rationality or truth. Most people value truth. If they don't, then there's no point in arguing about what's true, I suppose.) The question that needs to be asked of atheists is what exactly do you mean by “belief?” (Well, "belief" is a word that is used in different ways in different contexts. I don't think it's important to sort all that out. What atheists are arguing against is a particular sort of belief which they regard as irrational -- that is, religious belief, or, really, any sort of faith-based belief.) And what is certainty in one’s own views about reality. (I take you to mean here, what do atheists think is the way to know about reality? It's the same way we all know about reality generally -- reason. One of the major points here, I think, is that religious belief or faith-based belief is *inconsistent* with how we all purport to know what reality is. Religious people arbitrarily adopt an alternative way of knowing -- that is, bald assertion, or, perhaps, intense emotional feeling -- when it comes to the subjects of religious belief. But they don't apply that way of knowing to other facets of life. Indeed, they would think applying that way of knowing to other facets of life is stupid or worse. The atheists' difficulty is understanding why certain arbitrarily chosen questions of fact -- say, whether God exists -- are reserved for this other way of knowing which we would all agree is completely irrational concerning non-religious questions of reality. What warrants this different way of knowing? Why is faith -- as a way of thinking about reality -- justified? Atheists don't think it is, which brings me back to the "too simple" point again.) Do atheists want to merely destroy organized religion or are they also after any cultural vestige that owes its origin to religion? Do they wish to enact an atheistic inquisition? (I can't speak for others. My preference would be to see organized religions and their trappings re-purposed toward inquiries into justice, morality, beauty, and truth. Note that many organized religions *purport* to be doing just that. But they're way of doing it is freighted with, I'm sorry, a lot of unconvincing hooey. I'd like to do something like what Jefferson did to the Bible -- excise the hogwash, the superstition, and create a public space for honest discussions of personal meaning and mutual obligation. A lot of folks are attracted to Eastern-religion-lite. I'm not big on that, because it often seems a little too focused on contentment and happiness, which strikes me as an amoral and overtly self-serving focus. I guess I'm more of a finger-wagger in the Western tradition. Define "God" as "goodness," and we might be on to something, with the proposition that you want to live your life, and die, close to "God" -- in a state of grace, if you will. In any case, I'm not an advocate for the destruction of churches, many of which are beautiful buildings, and I love Christmas kitch, which doesn't have anything to do with religion anyway. Nor am I an advocate for the destruction of religious institutions, especially if it means that people choose something worse instead. And I would never advocate any sort of "inquisition," nor would I challenge anyone's right to hold or express any religious belief. Show me any modern atheist who says otherwise.) To me the more rational approach is agnosticism which says that we really don’t know very much about the whys and how comes of existence, natural as well as human. (My problem with agnosticism is that I think it allows superstition too much credence. I take the agnostic to be saying, "Well, it might be true, anything might be true, we just don't know." I think that view concerning *respectable* religious beliefs -- i.e., those that happen to be common -- is inconsistent with how we normally treat the crackpot ones, which is to easily dismiss them without hand-wringing or protestations that an absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. Actually, it is, when you would expect to find some evidence. The fact that the omnipotent, benevolent creator of the universe has left us no trace of its omnipotence, benevolence, or creative activity, or otherwise confirmed its presence in any way that we can understand through the deployment of ordinary human faculties, is actually quite strong evidence of absence. It's not absolutely conclusive, sure, in the same way that countless nutty propositions you or I could just make up cannot be conclusively disproven. It seems that agnosticism gives religious belief more deference than we would give to such made-up nutty beliefs, and I have a problem with that.) We don’t even know what evolutionary purpose belief systems play. (There are a lot of theories about that, but I fail to understand why religion's evolutionary purpose is relevant to the question of what we should believe to be true.) Atheists may not be religious but they more often than not exhibit similar behavior to that of religious fanatics. (Maybe some exhibit such behavior. The author of this book seems obnoxious, as I said. I don't think that they exhibit such *beliefs* though, which was my point -- one which you don't refute with any real argument.)

- JakeH

December 25, 2011 at 12:41am

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The problem with atheists is that their arguments are almost always deflationary, and not only that but the presence of sublimity completely invalidates their proclamation that there is no God just because they wish to contradict Christianity only on principle. They don't even consider the idea that God is usually just an anthropomorphic humanization of what is ultimately labelless. Anyone who has read Thomas Kuhn knows that science is a human activity as well and the "revolutions" are enlightenment experiences that simply transform uncontrollable data without the self-recognition that so-called anomalies are just an ersatz recognition that science has been remanded to uselessness on trying to understand anything beyond its own narrowly defined parameters. The search for the meaning of existence is not a religious enterprise anymore than it can be caged in the pages of a physics textbooks. The reliability of even the hard sciences has already been called into question by Popper, and the need for independence of thought, not refutation, is the true path perhaps better understood by Eastern thought where the idea of a god is made obsolete with the pantheism that is the true operative state of the earth. Isn't it useless to try and describe the wetness of a raindrop? The whole problem of the discussion on the reality or irreality of God is precisely this inability to get beyond already instantiated, basically ignorance encrusted ideas that have no bearing on any kind of what is ultimately a sprawling adventure into infinite variable control that can never be done. We walk into a cathedral and never ever think one thought about God. We look up at the flying buttresses and think about the hands that built the stone, the human enterprise of designing beauty. Anybody who is untouched by this form of awe are always going to descend into solipsism where they live in word prisons, completely unable to prompt an emotion of the sublime which atheists are doing at breakneck speed anyway. Sanity is the home of the sublime, and absolutely everyone needs this sensory program, or they simply live in an ivory tower waiting for a prince that never comes.

- markhigham

December 25, 2011 at 3:24am

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12/25/2011 - 12:41am EDT | JakeH A quick response. That atheism is secondary to Theism is a logical, ontological and temporal proposition. The challenge to faith means that there has to be faith before it’s is challenged. It’s in this sense that atheism is reactive and secondary. Moreover, agnosticism doesn’t merely say that that religious beliefs are ok, it says that we don’t know enough about the origin (how it came to be) and purpose of the universe to be able to say that beliefs about its origin (whether in religion or science are valid or not). Agnosticism doesn’t endorse religion but neither does it deny it. Finally, when I say that “we don’t know what evolutionary purpose belief systems play” I mean that if supernatural beliefs of any type (unicorns, gods, witchcraft, ghosts, etc.) are part of our DNA then atheism’s dream of a humanity without irrational beliefs is as fanciful as those beliefs themselves without altering our DNA. The dream of atheism is more than just a challenge to religion; it’s a challenge to any belief system that can’t be proven by rational means.

- arnon

December 25, 2011 at 10:44am

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My suspicion is that most of the readers of TNR are getting old. I suggest that TNR adopt a strategy similar to the one taken by National Geographic to recruit younger readers. I just bought a gift subscription for my 7-year-old granddaughter to the youth edition of the magazine. As I went to the web site, I was lured into reading a brilliant article about North Korea and how horrid it is. I am glad that NG published this article, but it certainly is not appropriate for a seven-year-old fairly happy child. So I suggest that TNR start a magazine for children. Ideas on format, material to cover?

- skahn

December 25, 2011 at 1:49pm

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Everybody who posts here is more intelligent and more informed than I am. You may say this in your own way if you feel it necessary; it encourages me to display my ignorance and stupidity ever more energetically.

- skahn

December 25, 2011 at 1:50pm

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The universe exists, and we are conscious of our existence in it. We (human beings) are the only animals (as far as we know) aware of We (human beings) are the only animals (as far as we know) aware of the existence of the universe and with the abstract intelligence to contemplate its existence and our own existence. This is marvellous, except when we contemplate our mortality; in which case we sometimes become gloomy, sometimes kill other people, sometimes kill ourselves, which as Mr. Spock said, “Is most illogical.” As intelligent creatures, it is natural for us to wonder: where did the universe come from and what is our purpose in being alive, and why do we have to die? In early times, human beings made up stories we now call myths. In the days before we discovered/invented science, myths had some cogency. Now they are less relevant, though they still have some psychological insight, if not taken too literally. For example, any sensible person realizes: I am imperfect, I have faults, I hurt other people, etc. In this sense the Garden of Eden story is cogent, but to believe it is literally true (as many Christian evangelicals do) is downright stupid. Even stupider than I am. There are many religious beliefs. Most likely analyses: 1) None are true. 2) One is true; all the others are false. 3) All (or most) contain some shadow of a greater truth. The founder of the Ernst Becker Society said to me once, “Humans need transcendence.” Other members of the society speak of “immortality projects.” [Projects/activities – such as children, works of art, empires, etc., that we hope will live on after we are no longer here.] All humans experience suffering: pain, disappointment, disillusionment, knowledge of mortality. Religious belief seems to be the most effective method for consoling us about our suffering ever devised. It is a very imperfect and faulty method. For example, it fails the most elementary empirical tests. Religious believers are always inventing new beliefs and splitting into new sects because they are so frustrated by this thin gruel. Although many religious beliefs lead people to be kind, caring, charitable, succoring, and to experience fellowship and occasionally harmless joy, they also lead people to murder, torture and hurt each other. About the best we can do, I guess, is to keep working on improving things. In secular ways we can combat disease, protect the environment, find relatively harmless ways to occupy ourselves such as creating art, exploring new planets, discovering new rules of science. In religious ways we can create new religions and refine existing ones to be more tolerant, loving, and accepting. Merry and Happy, everyone.

- skahn

December 25, 2011 at 1:51pm

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Arnon, I guess I don’t understand why your “ontological” proposition has any relevance whatsoever, other than to speciously discredit a viewpoint merely because it’s negative. If I were to suggest to you that an amorphous, undetectable spirit of a dead elephant is haunting your living room right now, what would be the point of arguing that your disbelief in that proposition is “logically” “secondary” to my primary assertion and therefore “reactive”? Would it have any bearing on the question of whether the elephant spirit is actually there? Of course not! So, I guess I find this whole notion utterly beside the point. I think you illustrate my problem with self-described agnostics, which is that they seem to give religious beliefs too much credence. You say that agnosticism neither endorses nor *denies* religious beliefs. That seems problematic for at least two reasons. The first is that a statement that we can’t know enough, which seems to be your view, automatically denies claims that we *do* know. Religious beliefs consist of answers to questions that you claim are unanswerable. You say that we can’t know the purpose of the universe (if purpose there be). Religious people say, in direct opposition to that view, that we can know its purpose and that it’s x. Aren’t you then denying religious beliefs? Like many self-described agnostics, you seem to lack the courage of your convictions, which is one reason I shy away from the label. The second reason is that your “could be, don’t know” stance is, I think, inconsistent with how we treat fantastical propositions generally. Are there *no* religious beliefs, no matter how specific or fantastical, that you would feel comfortable denying? Do you think that Mormon beliefs, for example, are remotely plausible as a true account of the universe? My understanding is that they’re pretty wild! Another reason I use the label atheist, and reject the label agnostic, is that I feel comfortable denying such beliefs as made-up superstitions lacking proper evidence, not arrived at through any sort of reliable inquiry or investigation, but rather through imagination, unquestioned cultural tradition, fraud in the case of some cults, and/or emotional flights of fancy that are incapable of describing empirical reality outside the mind of the spiritually affected. Some argue that my “not enough evidence” stance is actually identical to your “don’t know” stance, and so that I should call myself an agnostic. If “agnostic” describes the view I’m articulating, which is that we may comfortably deny religious beliefs as irrational because they lack the usually required evidence, even though we cannot absolutely disprove them, just as you cannot absolutely disprove that there is an undetectable elephant spirit in your living room right now, well, fine. But I hear agnostics say things that don’t square with that view, such as that we can’t “deny” religious beliefs, so I go with the stronger label, “atheist.” Perhaps “strong agnostic” would be a better label, or maybe, “anti-faithite.” I don’t think the labels are very important so long as we understand what we’re talking about. To discredit atheism as “fanciful” because irrational beliefs are inevitable is like discrediting ethics as “fanciful” because immoral activity is inevitable or discrediting education as “fanciful” because ignorance is inevitable. It argues way too much. It suggests that arguing against any irrational belief is useless and/or somehow off-limits. But that’s obviously not true, and, if taken seriously, counterproductive and even monstrous! It’s way too pessimistic, and forecloses progress toward a more rational understanding of our universe. I would say that, over time, humanity has become both kinder and more rational. Is knowledge of our contrary propensities any sort of argument to arbitrarily stop that progress now, to foreclose appeals to greater goodness and rationality, which, by the way, are also (apparently) in our DNA? Of course not. I hear the suggestion that we need *some* irrational belief to get by, whether it’s “ghosts” or “witchcraft,” etc. I’m not convinced that that’s true, and pointing to genetic predispositions toward holding such beliefs, the same predispositions that perhaps caused early man (and a few modern hold-outs) to mistakenly anthropomorphize the sun or the weather or the whole course of events, doesn’t come close to demonstrating that. After all, there are lots of atheists and agnostics out there, including yourself, who find that irrational beliefs are not for them. Western Europe is full of them! (I enjoyed the moment in the Dragon Tattoo movie when Daniel Craig is shocked and concerned that his daughter would join a crazy cult known as Christianity.) Anyway, even if some irrationality is inevitable, do you think that that means that we shouldn’t or can’t argue against belief in ghosts? Witchcraft? You’re correct that atheism constitutes a challenge to irrational belief systems. That’s what I meant when I said that “faith is precisely what atheism is against,” which you found “too simple.” I’m not sure how you, or anyone, can defend irrational belief systems! In any case, you overstate my view by characterizing it in a threatening manner as part of an insidious “dream” to cleanse the universe of irrational thought. You, like Wieseltier, make it sound as though atheists are trying to bring about some hyper-rational dystopia in which nobody would be permitted to enjoy a painting. I can’t speak for others, and I haven’t read the “worst book of the year,” but *my* evangelism consists merely in the polite and, it seems to me, obvious suggestion, appropriately restricted to the appropriate time, place, and manner, that various irrational beliefs are in fact irrational and therefore inconsistent with our general preference for reason.

- JakeH

December 25, 2011 at 3:11pm

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skahn, I, for one, think your last post was not stupid! I don't think that atheists should argue against feelings of transcendence, which are feelings and therefore impossible to argue against. Nor do I think that atheists should argue that religions don't hold any insights whatsoever. I would just like to put aside the stuff that fails even rudimentary empirical tests, as you say, and encourage religions not only to be more tolerant, etc., but also more rational. I think we could do both.

- JakeH

December 25, 2011 at 3:22pm

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Thank you, Jake. I worked for a while in Oregon with a self-righteous evangelical Christian who had six children and criticized everyone around him for being less perceptive than he about technical and moral issues. Eventually, he lost his job; of course, it was everyone else's fault. (Actually, I got along with him better than anyone else, but he was an irritating trial to me as well as to others.) Ironically, after I moved to Washington again, I encountered him by accident in a library. He had lost another job, his wife had taken the six children and left him; now he was living in his vehicle; he had not lost one bit of his self-righteous certainty that everyone else was in the wrong. On the other hand. My closest neighbors now in the woods are devout ELCA Lutherans. They do ceaseless good deeds. Their church tries to welcome everyone (including some Jews, Muslims and some homosexuals) into their ("big tent") services They have welcomed my daughter and her partner and our granddaughter into their home. They diligently (in a gentle, kind and tolerant fashion) try to evangelize me into joining their church. If I were going to attend a church, theirs would be as good as any. I never argue with or criticize their beliefs, but I find no way to square their beliefs with my simple-minded empiricism and my "ethical nihilism," so instead of trying, I accept that we live in mutual peace, cooperation, and tolerance. I think that's the best we can do as humans. Now we will see if the human race can bring it off. It's late in the day for us to "grow up," as a species.

- skahn

December 25, 2011 at 4:27pm

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JakeH “Arnon, I guess I don’t understand why your “ontological” proposition has any relevance whatsoever,….” No you don’t and many of the “scientifically” oriented atheist also don’t. This is a pity because unless you learn something about ontology and logic as well as the history of ideas (or even evolutionary biology) you will be merely the latest group of atheists who failed to make their case properly. You are not the first atheist who has argued against irrational beliefs in supernatural beings. Ask yourself why these arguments seem to go nowhere.

- arnon

December 25, 2011 at 8:13pm

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JakeH “Arnon, I guess I don’t understand why your “ontological” proposition has any relevance whatsoever,….” No you don’t and many of the “scientifically” oriented atheist also don’t. This is a pity because unless you learn something about ontology and logic as well as the history of ideas (or even evolutionary biology) you will be merely the latest group of atheists who failed to make their case properly. You are not the first atheist who has argued against irrational beliefs in supernatural beings. Ask yourself why these arguments seem to go nowhere. The world is as in thrall to irrational ideas as ever.

- arnon

December 25, 2011 at 8:18pm

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My 2 cents. I thought I gave a defensible account of the difference between atheism and agnosticism in 12/24/2011 - 7:41pm EDT above. On my reading of the above comments I think it accords with what Jakeh has to say what atheism means and it kind of lines up with what Arnon has to say about agnosticism with a difference: that is that as I understand agnosticism it is a claim that we cannot know about God's existence that we are without-- "a"--special knowledge of what is beyond the material, that special knowledge being the essence of the gnostic. Finally, the differing different points have been well argued here but I respectfully think that the recourse to ontology is utltimately mystification. For example, while the ontological argument for the existence of God has perplexed philosophers, the most sensible thing I have read on it is that, and I'm not sure who said this, no one rational, reflective and serious, without theistic presuppositions, could be persuaded by it. I may have missed it but I have yet to read an argument for the proposition that atheism is its own mode of faith. And I tired to address that point briefly in my above cited post.

- basman

December 25, 2011 at 10:22pm

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Arnon, you're not making an argument in your last post. You're just saying, "You don't get it and never will." Ask yourself why that argument doesn't go anywhere. You assert that we are "supernatural beings" -- a controversial statement. Can you be bothered to explain what you mean? Are you referring to self-consciousness? I'm just saying what I think, and trying to defend it. Can you do the same? I could understand if you don't have the time, but then I could do without the peevish instruction to study my ontology in lieu of an actual argument. It seems to me that in the modern world, rationality is in greater command than in times past. Religion is not seen as the one true path to knowledge (except in some societies). Children the world over are taught science and a scientific ethos from a young age. When we want to understand how the empirical world operates, we rely on scientific expertise rather than magical thinking. When we get sick, we might pray, but, unless we're Christian "Scientists," we don't place all of our eggs in that basket. We go to a doctor to actually get better, not a priest. So yes, the world is to a large extent attracted to irrational ideas, but I wouldn't say that it's as attracted to them "as ever." The rise of widespread reliance on science and the scientific method -- and the decline of hardcore religious observance in, dare I say, advanced societies -- suggests to me that the world has in fact become more rational over time.

- JakeH

December 26, 2011 at 2:23am

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Basman, I think you're right where you suggest that there is no major difference between the atheists' strong rejection of unicorn belief on the one hand, and their strong rejection of God belief on the other, and that neither rejection is faith-based, but rather, I would say, based on commonsensical reasoning all of us employ to dismiss without difficulty fantastical notions of all sorts. I also think that resort to fancy words like "ontology," without explanation, is a cop-out that needlessly befogs the issue for those of us who are only casually acquainted with serious philosophy. I once got into an intense online debate with a guy at Oxford getting some sort of degree in philosophy about moral realism and Kant. (I, naturally, took the side of the skeptic.) He was patient with me and got me to think twice and thrice about the issue. I apologized at one point for not being a philosopher, and he said, admirably and correctly I think, Nonsense, you're doing philosophy, we're all philosophers. Your problem, he said, is that you're wrong, and here's why -- and he proceeded to argue the philosophical points in terms you or I could understand using methods that you and I (being lawyers) can appreciate, like using examples and analogies and hypotheticals, i.e., ordinary reasoning. Would that Arnon might be bothered to do the same!

- JakeH

December 26, 2011 at 2:38am

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“Arnon, you're not making an argument in your last post. You're just saying, "You don't get it and never will." Ask yourself why that argument doesn't go anywhere. You assert that we are "supernatural beings" -- a controversial statement. Can you be bothered to explain what you mean? Are you referring to self-consciousness? I'm just saying what I think, and trying to defend it. Can you do the same? I could understand if you don't have the time, but then I could do without the peevish instruction to study my ontology in lieu of an actual argument.” JakeH: Where did I say that we are “supernatural beings?” Here is what I said: Me: ‘You are not the first atheist who has argued against irrational beliefs in supernatural beings. Ask yourself why these arguments seem to go nowhere.’ I didn’t say that I believe in any supernatural being, what I said is is all the arguments against such beings by “scientifically” minded atheists hasn’t lessened the belief in such being. I put the word “scientifically” in quotes because such arguments are not sanctioned by science nor are they central to science. Science can’t answer the question of whether a “god” or “gods” exist because it’s the kind of question that can’t be tested in such a way where it could be falsified. Science is not about offering reified solutions to problems; science is about method, the scientific method. It treats science as if it offered absolute answers to contingent questions.

- arnon

December 26, 2011 at 9:30am

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“It seems to me that in the modern world, rationality is in greater command than in times past. Religion is not seen as the one true path to knowledge (except in some societies). Children the world over are taught science and a scientific ethos from a young age. When we want to understand how the empirical world operates, we rely on scientific expertise rather than magical thinking. When we get sick, we might pray, but, unless we're Christian "Scientists," we don't place all of our eggs in that basket. We go to a doctor to actually get better, not a priest. So yes, the world is to a large extent attracted to irrational ideas, but I wouldn't say that it's as attracted to them "as ever." The rise of widespread reliance on science and the scientific method -- and the decline of hardcore religious observance in, dare I say, advanced societies -- suggests to me that the world has in fact become more rational over time.” This proves that science and non rational beliefs can and do coexist, often times in the same person. It doesn’t prove that arguments against non-rational beliefs have been successful in dispelling such beliefs. In any case this isn’t true in most of the world where people are still killing for the sake of irrational beliefs. Even in the US fundamentalists of all sorts are getting huge support in the polls. I am not arguing for religion but merely stating that what is called the new atheism has not been able to convince most people to abandon religion. In actuality their fundamentalist like zeal has had the opposite effect. People in the 40’s and 50’s in the US were less likely to vote for religious fanatics than they are today, why is that? Politicians like Bachman and her ilk (not to mention former President Bush) would have been laughed of their soapboxes and not accorded any credibility.

- arnon

December 26, 2011 at 9:43am

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One last point JakeH. Historically, even some great scientists like Newton and mathematicians like Pascal have held both rational views of reality and non-rational views about existence. This means that science and religion are not mutually exclusive modes of thought. As Nietzsche and others understood science is not the negation of religion but often complements religion. What religion fears more than science is dialectical thought expressed in philosophers from Plato to Nietzsche. Even religious thinkers like Maimonides (In his Guide to the Perplexed) and Kierkegaard( in his Either/Or) have shown a skepticism that is deadly to religion. Rationally inspired skepticism is more effective in challenging religion than scientistically inspired atheism.

- arnon

December 26, 2011 at 9:58am

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"Even religious thinkers like Maimonides (In his Guide to the Perplexed) and Kierkegaard( in his Either/Or) have shown a skepticism that is deadly to religion." Should read: "Even religious thinkers like Maimonides (In his Guide to the Perplexed) and Kierkegaard( in his Either/Or) have shown a skepticism that can be deadly to religion."* * Maimonides influenced Spinoza and Kierkegaard much of 20th century existential phenomenology which is often (as with Sartre) hostile to religion.

- arnon

December 26, 2011 at 10:43am

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...To me the more rational approach is agnosticism which says that we really don’t know very much about the whys and how comes of existence, natural as well as human. We don’t even know what evolutionary purpose belief systems play. Atheists may not be religious but they more often than not exhibit similar behavior to that of religious fanatics.... These are the two points that interested me in this thread: I have, as I have said, tried to show why this is a misreading of what agnosticism means. I'd like to hear the argument for why I'm not right; and I don't know whether that last sentence is a claim that atheism is a mode of faith. That's why I thought it put on the table for discussion. But as I read these comments further I'm not sure. it may refer to some fanatic militancy on the part of atheists. If it's the latter I'm less interested in it. But if it's the former, I contend that case can't be made. Does someone here say otherwise?

- basman

December 26, 2011 at 11:44am

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P.S. Jakeh You cannot know how much I agree with with your plea for guys making plain spoken, logical arguments whether for or agin' even on esoteric points rather than a bunch of obscure off point talk with a lot of names and hIgh falutin words dropped. It's a pleasure, I find, to be disabused of errors or misunderstandings on my part by practical reasoning, examples, evidence, analogies, what have you and thereby learn something new, especially because I'm the last word on nothing.

- basman

December 26, 2011 at 12:50pm

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Skahn if you come back here, please consider this a note a Christmas and New Year's present: get the 13th annual Oxford American music edition with accompanying cd and in particular check out the essay by Peter Guralnick on Howlin' Wolf: it's a beautiful thing, perhaps another instance of "where the soul of man never dies."

- basman

December 26, 2011 at 1:10pm

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One correction: ...theists can be atheists because they can say that they cannot know the supernatural but believe as a matter of faith in God’s existence.... should say: ...theists can be agnostics because they can say that they cannot know the supernatural but believe as a matter of faith in God’s existence....

- basman

December 26, 2011 at 11:55pm

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The enterprise of accommodating various dispositions is always fraught with peril and error. That said, I think within the parameters as described Itz has a defensible efforting toward intellectual honesty. We are playing footsies with the parameters of conceit and trying to assign a descriptive label which will occupy a status of credibility reflective of a corresponding internal reality. I purposed via posit of faith requirement to level the playing field when referencing what is knowable and the reliability of that by which lead to that knowing. Hard knowledge conceit deserves and earns its reciprocal. This reciprocal is presented as paradox in contemplative ' faith ' journeys.

- jacko

December 27, 2011 at 12:34pm

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Oh yeah, full disclosure compels me to claim an unapologetic Christian disposition. Condemned to ever find fault with myself but find room for that imperfection and so forth in turn to my fellow human beings.

- jacko

December 27, 2011 at 12:58pm

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Absolutely nothing to apologize for.

- basman

December 27, 2011 at 2:32pm

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Arnon, thanks for the comments. Regarding "supernatural beings," I stupidly misread you to be referring to irrational beliefs held *by* supernatural beings, i.e., human beings, as opposed to what you obviously meant, which is that human beings irrationally believe in supernatural beings, which I don't disagree with. Your remaining comments seem directed at the practical effectiveness of atheists' arguments, as opposed to their accuracy. I of course recognize that people can and do hold both rational and irrational beliefs. I contend, though, that the irrationality of the latter is problematic and that pointing out the irrationality of an irrational belief -- of any sort -- is at least worth a try. Isn't the rise of science and reason, as I suggested, evidence of *increasing* rationality in human society? Are we to arbitrarily stop that progress now, deciding for no principled reason that we happen to have arrived at just the right mix of sense and nonsense? The suggestion that these arguments won't change anyone's mind about religion is not, I think, a persuasive argument for not making them. First of all, I'm not sure it's true. You might be too pessimistic. You assert that these arguments are not effective, and, worse, that they have the opposite of their intended effect, but it's hard to know that. I doubt that these arguments will change the minds of many strongly committed true believers. But it's possible, it seems to me, that the presence of the "new atheists" in the cultural stew might make the world a bit safer for non-believers and skepticism, might lead to some harder questioning of the authority or legitimacy of religious institutions, might lead some who are inclined toward an atheist perspective to feel that they are not obliged, culturally, to weakly (or weekly) attach themselves to some religious ideology. They might open some minds, and might gain some traction among the open-minded. I don't have the research in front of me, but my impression is that religious observance in at least this country is on the wane and religious skepticism is on the rise. Anyway, it's seldom if ever wrong, I think, to put forward an honest argument and see where it goes. Censorship, as a rule, will inhibit the conversation, and the progress of ideas. That progress is not unambiguously good, I'll grant. Genuine scientism has been used for immoral ends -- when applied to racial ideology, for example, or eugenics. But those arguments were shot down in time and, today, in what I called "advanced societies," they are considered illegitimate. Maybe I'm misreading you again, but you seem to argue that the rise of Christian fundamentalism is a reaction to atheism. There's a timing problem there, because the "new atheists" came along well after the rise of Christian fundamentalism. I haven't thought a lot about the true causes, but my armchair guess would be that, if it's a reaction, it's a reaction to the culture wars of the '60s and '70s, in which atheism as such wasn't really a headliner but more of a minor background player. The right's assertion of traditional values, though, included a reinvigoration of religious belief on the right. Today, the nutjobs on the right, as you say, have seized center stage. They are not reacting to legitimate threats posed by atheists. They lose their shit if the president -- who is thoroughly, even ostentatiously Christian -- sends the wrong type of Christmas card, so we're dealing there with a derangement that is not sensitive to the difference between your preferred "rationally inspired skepticism" or the arguments of new atheists, which, I would argue amount to "rationally inspired skepticism" anyway. So, Bachman et al. are not with us because of new atheism. Rather, new atheism is with us because of Bachman et al. They're reacting to a few different things, actually -- first and foremost 9/11 and Islamic terrorism generally, denial of climate change, denial of evolution, anti-intellectualism, and the celebration of ignorance. These atheist voices popped up to target irrational God-belief and its cultural acceptance and celebration as a major culprit in these alarming developments, and to suggest that God-belief is both philosophically indefensible and actually threatening to society and civilization. I don't agree with everything these guys say, but I buy that basic argument. Anyway, I think that the main point is the substance and validity of these arguments, not whether they might spark some negative reaction or not actually convince most believers. If your main objection is to the style of the sales pitch, we could argue about that, although I do think that many of these guys get a bum rap in that department. Dawkins, for example, is not rude at all, by any fair assessment. There were some parts of his book where I didn't go along with him entirely, but it was never crass or crude. The book was as reasonable in tone as any of his others. It's certainly possible to write an obnoxious atheist book -- and maybe this "worst book" is such a one -- but some of these "new athesists" get unfairly painted with that brush merely because they reject religion with rhetorical force. Many of the negative reviews of Dawkins's book seemed to reject it on the perverse ground that it made it's argument too well! The cultural attitude that views such forceful rejection as in itself impolite and somehow off-limits is in fact part of the problem they are rightly arguing against. Which brings me back to your preference for "rationally inspired skepticism." I think that that describes me and the arguments I've been making here pretty well. I don't reference Plato or Nietzche, nor Maimonides or Kierkegaard, but I think that what I've been saying more or less is that rational skepticism -- i.e., rationality, reason -- is "deadly to religion." I haven't really been arguing that *science* proves religion wrong, as in a falsifiable experiment or inquiry (although numerous religious claims can be, have been, and continue to be subject to such research -- see astronomy, archeology, biology, even the blind prayer study), so much as that reason proves it wrong -- that religious belief is fundamentally inconsistent with a general preference for rationality when it comes to determining our beliefs about empirical reality, a preference that is expressed in our unquestioned and easy reliance on science whenever we lack an emotional stake in the answer. In other words, as I said at the very beginning, the problem is faith, belief without ordinarily required reasons, belief as bald assertion, cultural tradition, or ecstatic "revelation," none of which are, I think we must concede, reliable ways of determining the fact of any matter, whether mundane or sublime. I think that this strong denial of religious belief and strong rejection of faith marks me as an "atheist," but I realize that there is some confusion on the labels. Bill Maher, generally seen as among the recent crop of vocal "new atheists," shied away at one point from the "atheism" label, because he doesn't purport to prove affirmatively that there is no larger force or god. As he has said several times, his big point is that "we can't know." That's why he's hostile to religion. He says to religious people, in substance, "How can you possibly know that what you say is true? You literally don't know what you're talking about, and yet you're out there pushing it, you're basing your life on it, you want to base policy on it, you might be willing to die for it." It seems to me that this is "rationally inspired skepticism," and yet Maher is a lightening rod for criticism. This tells me that the agnosticism/atheism distinction isn't that important when it comes to persuasion or risk of reaction.

- JakeH

December 28, 2011 at 1:09am

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Once upon a time depending upon when you caught me and what was going on in my life would have found me alternately hostile and/or simply dismissive to the idea of Truth as expressed within a religious context. I was a fairly self satisfied kind of guy. Looking back I see that I was every bit and often more self righteous than those I would indict. Thus hoist by my own petard and contented that they had it all wrong provided my frameworks by which much to my surprise came to find (or it found me) a much needed transcendental seed that was severely neglected and in dire need of watering and care. Surprise! Rational had and has very little to do with it. I now hold my foolishness as a close friend. He whispers in my ear on those occasions required as to inform any pretensions colored with conceit. I don't like the new atheist gig. It would happily do an Oedipus if it could but perhaps without having the vision to know its own crime or foolishness. Maher and his ilk fit nicely into that category of those I would have very little trust to venture forth honestly. Dawkins is just a dope. Hitchens has some juvenile arguments. Dennett has nothing to bring to the table. I give Harris a little room. He want to sell books but sometimes is willing to provide a forum of contention and at least explore some of his satisfactions as subjected to a more inclusive inquiry.

- jacko

December 28, 2011 at 9:11am

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Quick answer: I mostly agree with the main thrust of your comments, Jake H. When most discuss religion intellectually they do in terms of what they know, "the Jewish and Christian traditions." Some my add Islam but that changes little in their conclusion that "religion is irrational." I would like to add another point here. It's easy enough to attack anthropomorphically based beliefs (in monotheism god too is assumed to have human like qualities such as reason and even in some beliefs a human body). However if you think of a "god" not anthropomorphically but as as an Aristotelian first cause that is not imminent to his creation but completely transcendent then there is no basis for basis for saying that religious belief needs be non-rational. Such an Aristotelian belief may be wrong but it's not irrational. (Science is rational by definition, yet in its development it has shed many, many false hypothesis in its’ ongoing search for truth (remember the phlogiston theory?). The essence of science is not the production of facts (it does that alright) but the testing of all facts. My point is that religion isn’t always irrational but that still wouldn’t make it true. Religion may not be necessarily be irrational but since it has no way of testing hypothesis it necessarily reifies its beliefs. In any case the struggle shouldn’t be against religious beliefs per se but the teaching of scientific methods. This is where we fall short in the 21st century. Science too can slip into irrationality if and when science makes it its primary concern the devaluation of religion instead of concerning itself with methodology. It seems to me that the sciences are in crises. (the latest discoveries of the universe, black holes, etc.) have cast doubt on assumptions and orthodoxies of science. Religious thinkers have long used what is called the “lord of the gaps” to argue for the existence of god. This means that whenever a scientific theory can explain some phenomenon, religious thinkers will fill the gap by offering god as the answer to the scientific riddle. Given the recent discoveries of the nature and behavior of the universe which has cast some theories into doubt it’s no wonder that many ordinary but intelligent people would get confuses and begin to listen to the ”lord of the gaps” assumptions See: “The accidental universe: Science's crisis of faith” By Alan P. Lightman http://harpers.org/archive/2011/12/0083720 To me confusion is science is a good thing since it will allow scientists to rethink hypothesis. This is what science is all about. However for many who have been taught that science answers questions (instead of merely offering well-reasoned theories about the facts) these new developments can only confuse them. To an observer like myself the preaching of atheism by some contemporary scientists seems evidence of a malaise within the scientific community. As far as the general public is concerned who judge science by the tangible products it develops, i.e. cures for disease, the construction of space ships, etc. the world of science is pretty much as it was. It is fairly easy for them to accept both the outcomes of science and traditional religion. Scientists and real intellectual though should be held to a higher standard.

- arnon

December 28, 2011 at 9:45am

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Once one start defending religious belief as comprised by an uncaused first cause, detached from traditional religion and not wrapped in a theological package of an anthropomorphized deity who is the protagonist in a creation myth, whether then the diety hangs in there or deistically gets lost, unclarity in thinking sets in and ensues. Because what is one then "believing" in or having "faith" in? One for the purposes of the argument here is very close to a hypothesis that needs rational defense or refutation. Gotta ' run but another word or two when time allows.

- basman

December 28, 2011 at 1:57pm

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The above is pretty well the point Io wants to make. I'd just add that I see no problem with science criticizing religion and religious belief and here I'd distinguish between respectful discussion on what I agree is religion's fundamental irrationality and tactics and strategy in that attack in order to to confront a predominant and smothering ethos that would impose itself whereever it can for as much as it can, infiltrating our politics and our culture. In some respcts science is best equipped to do this and so is philiosphy.My view on this is that if the religious want to take part in the public square, where all entitled to be and even welcome, let them take as good as they give. It's news to me that science is in crisis. Where's that evident? And on an unsullied conception of what science is, it can' t be in crisis--unlike religion, it's neither reification nor ideology; it searches for truth, always accepting, in it's ideal, of its provisionality and in these ways and others too is the antithesis of religion.

- basman

December 28, 2011 at 3:22pm

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...The above is pretty well the point Io wants to make.... The above is pretty well the point I wanted to make. Damn you small print.

- basman

December 28, 2011 at 3:24pm

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Are there any particular issues that you would have science defend or advocate, Basman? In other words are there any specifics that you think deserve sauce for the goose per science and religion? I also think that your noble purity per science and its advocates is a questionable proposition. Its practitioners are every bit as subject to bias as any other human being. Perhaps as a set somewhat less likely but nonetheless.....

- jacko

December 29, 2011 at 9:10am

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I failed to mention that I do share certain sympathies with arnon's perspectives. I think he makes good points. Particularly on the scientific crisis point. Once upon a time, during my lifetime science enjoyed a kind of conceit that sprang from its successes which fed upon the ' just a small step away from the theory of everything' attitude. What was known was overvalued so as to dictate a bearing of near certainty in areas peripheral to its mission.

- jacko

December 29, 2011 at 10:54am

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Jack, I hope my comments just above gave no offense. I'm not sure I understand your question in your first of these last two comments? Science can critique a view and explanation of the world made up of truth claims and which aren't scientific, can't it? And as I asked before, where is it apparent that science is in crisis? I'm not aware that it is. Science of course like everything else can overreach, but that is separate from its validity as an approach to certain kinds of truths. No?

- basman

December 29, 2011 at 11:44am

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And here's a point I thought of on my way from my hotel to my mother in law's, when I do my best thinking: take the recent episodes of climate scientists fudging climate data and the politicization of certain issues marking a line when scientists cross the line from science to politics under the honorific of science. These wrongs are wrong when measured by the ideals of science and by its ethical imperatives. But doesn"t all that go to reinforce the validity of those ideals and imperatives and the unimpeachable validity of science as the search for a certain kind of truth, which in its ideal is immune from rational criticism? How does this line of reasoning apply to religion, do you think? I can see an answer that says I'm comparing apples and oranges in asking that question and the two things, science and religion, are different in kind and their twain doesn't meet. That's fair enough. And it gets me back to where I started: religion is faith based and I can respect that faith and be deeply moved by it others in the spiritual intensity of their lives and when I encounter it as a theme in art; science, I continue to want to say, is not faith based in any meaningful way that I can see and I still await an argument for the proposition that it is.

- basman

December 29, 2011 at 1:05pm

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Itz. Absolutely no offense taken in any regard. Umm... You offered that entrance in to the public square authorized a bare knuckles give and take. What kind of faith claims have manifested themselves in the public square that would offer opportunity for this kind of an honest setting the record straight? Incidently I have always considered the entire ' Evolution' 'Intelligent Design' thing to be an exercise of foolishness. I also reserve the right to be very suspicious of any philosophy that leans too hard into an exclusive mechanical Truth solution. Either leavened by science, philosophy or religion...... of any kind. Perhaps I'm wrong that there aren't more than a few bemused physicists by virtue of the failure to marry Relativity and Quantum. Bless their hearts. The AHA got away. Maybe crisis is an over dramatic characterization but I do sense disappointment at having discovered more questions than answers especially when it all seemed so close.

- jacko

December 29, 2011 at 1:10pm

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I get this feeling, Itz, that you want me to answer the 'faith' gambit I laid out many moons ago in this thread. Is that what got your ire? I SHOULD be willing to follow it up, neh? But I'm not. It's a big argument that is in this context unproductive. The small of it is trust. So score one for yourself if you're inclined. Now proofs of God is another realm that I don't and won't play. Science or religious vehicle. It doesn't work that way.

- jacko

December 29, 2011 at 5:12pm

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Since dropping names and using words the writer probably doesn't understand to be able to write a review. I will drop a name and quote him from memory. Stendhal has a dialogue about a man poopooing a revolutionary with his observation on how he looks. A lady responds to him: And you sir, you only have only a beard on your face. "Scientism?" Yet you use "fermions and bosons?" The whole editorial is just low level hack and not an argument against something I have no need to read to know that no other method beside the one invented by a certain Italian (I do not want to drop another name) can claim to be always searching for the truth and when it finds it, it regards this truth as a theory because of the faint possibility that in the future someone may find it lacking or contradict it. Nothing, absolutely nothing in all human behavior approaches this level of moral truth. Mr. Leon Wieseltier when you are about to speak about Science take your shoes off because you are about to walk on sacred ground for humanity.

- Poupic

December 29, 2011 at 5:44pm

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Jack: I'm not trying to win a debating point. And I may have lost the the thread of what the issue is. Do you have a sense of what it is, either as between us, or just as it's being discussed by others? Is it the propriety of science critiquing religion? I'm just not sure, but I will say that I disagree with most Arnon's last post, with which you agreed, finding a crisis in science and asserting, if I'm reading it right, that a deistic notion of God tracks the argument that goes on between present day believers and atheists, that the "cosmological argument" lays a foundation for rationality of belief and the inappropriateness of science critiquing religion, where it does. For example: ..However if you think of a "god" not anthropomorphically but as as an Aristotelian first cause that is not imminent to his creation but completely transcendent then there is no basis for basis for saying that religious belief needs be non-rational... I think that this is, with all due respect to Arnon, virtually incoherent for reasons I tried to give above. And I don't understand this: To an observer like myself the preaching of atheism by some contemporary scientists seems evidence of a malaise within the scientific community... The "preaching of atheism," which imports a misleading analogy between the preaching of religion and scientists making reasoned arguments against religion's truth claims--where are these declaiming, preaching scientists?--for me is scientists taking time from their day jobs, in which they may be quite brilliant and productive, taking on religion's truth claims where they obviate science, such with creationism. (in this regard check this out, though not by a scientist http://www.talkreason.org/articles/san.cfm) Why scientists addressing these issues is evidence of a malaise in science escapes my understanding. I see it oppositely: science stepping in where it should and expertly can to take on, in this instance, on religion's subversion of rational scientific inquiry in science classes, as opposed to considering creationism as a particular bundle of ideas worthy of intellectual consideration. So if you find in this things worthy of taking up, I'd be happy to. Otherwise best wishes for the New Year and a bientot.

- basman

December 29, 2011 at 6:07pm

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Itz. I'm surprised that you don't find any irony in evangelical atheism. Is is too obvious for ostensibly smart folks? I truly don't get it. Now I have little interest in defending arnon but do share a degree of sympathy with his assessment of science in crisis. As I've said before perhaps crisis is too strong of a word. Mayhaps..... disappointed disarray. I see it as good and healthy. Anthropomorphism is an entirely different subject. A very big one. The God above God ( for lack of better vernacular) is a way to approach something of what arnon may be referring to. It is not an uncommon subject for consideration among those that contemplate such things. Going there, however, is more than I am game for at this time. I'm not a censorship kind of guy. If a claim can't stand inquiry well then so be it. I have absolutely no problem with science making its claim within its domain. The idea that 'Evolution' somehow speaks to the God problem via resolving fraudulence is preposterous. I never found it necessary to invent another scientific model to compensate for bogus authority. If I'm not mistaken this thread really revolves around certain less than honest encroachments in to domains. Conceits if you will. Yeah I think science has had its hat handed back to its self congratulating self and is a bit hung over for the binge of assumptions and liberties indulged. Science is a human function subject to all of the weaknesses that the human can invent. It isn't the pristine and blameless paragon of virtue you would have it be. Now these are hard things to talk about and be understood as one might wish. There are always, 'yeah buts'. We may be in to 'Yeah But Territory'.

- jacko

December 29, 2011 at 8:39pm

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Poupic. Why is it that I have absolutely no problem understanding and accepting the validity of import contained in Scientism? Making a religion of science... and a pretense to Truth and Clarity. I've not read this book in question but am very clear on Leon's meaning and intent. I accept his meanings and their intent. He is one of the more careful writers I've had the honor of reading.

- jacko

December 29, 2011 at 9:47pm

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Arnon, thanks again for the comment. "However if you think of a 'god' not anthropomorphically but as as an Aristotelian first cause that is not imminent to his creation but completely transcendent then there is no basis for basis for saying that religious belief needs be non-rational." The problem with the first cause proof for God is that it's logically premised on the proposition that everything has a cause, but if everything has a cause, then what caused God? Super-God? And what caused Super-God? Super-Super-God? And so goes the infinite regress that's fatal to the first cause argument. We can arbitrarily stop the infinite regress by simply asserting that x is the beginning. But that's not based on any reasoning. It's just an assertion -- a faith-based assertion. After all, if we can simply say that x is God, we could just as well say that x is the Big Bang. And, of course, we could just as well say that the infinite regress doesn't stop -- that space and time are infinite, and so there's no first anything. So, an actual belief in a creator mechanism, anthropomorphic or not, that transcends space and time does seem irrational to me, because we can't know that it's true. Neither logic nor evidence suggests that it's true. It remains a baseless supposition -- pure speculation. It's a way of dealing with the fundamental incomprehensibility of space and time -- we have trouble conceiving of space and time as either infinite or finite -- just as an afterlife is a way of dealing with the incomprehensibility of death. But our inability to really grasp either of the options -- infinity on the one hand or finality (transcendent or not) on the other -- isn't an argument in favor of either one. I take the view expressed in an episode of House where one of the characters says, in substance, "If there *is* some transcendent something out there, it's probably so far beyond our comprehension that there's no point in talking about it." So long as the question isn't close to being answered, I'll continue to think that actually believing in any particular answer is in fact irrational. In any case, believing in a non-anthropomorphic transcendent first cause is a piss-poor religion. Indeed, it's not a religion at all -- at least, not any religion I'm familiar with. It simply doesn't follow from such a belief that one should worship any entity, meditate upon human-connectedness or all living things or some such, behave in any particular way, or expect some sort of a union with the divine upon death. In short, it gets you nowhere as a religion. The purpose of religion is to provide answers to questions that haven't been answered and may be unanswerable. In that regard, yes, I do think that all religions take irrational leaps, even if they're not as egregious as those taken by mainstream faiths when their copious details and doctrines are taken seriously, and can be rejected on that ground. As for "science in crisis," I take Basman's line. Science is a big idea. As you have said, it stands for a method -- that is, systematic, reasoned inquiry into empirical reality. To truly be in crisis, there must be some doubt as to that *method* of knowing. But, except among a few philosophers who puzzle over epistemological problems that go along the lines of "How can anyone know anything?", there's no real doubt about the method.

- JakeH

December 29, 2011 at 11:22pm

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Jacko, I've heard a lot about science's correct domain. What do *you* think is science's domain? My view is that science's domain is nothing short of objective reality. That doesn't mean that it has answers to every question about objective reality, but, if you want to know what objective reality is, or instruct others, I would say that one is obliged to rely on reasoned inquiry into the question, a/k/a science. Science isn't necessarily mundane. It's not just guys in lab coats looking at white mice react to chemicals, and things like that. The word means "knowledge," and it used to be called "natural philosophy." It's simply the study of nature, i.e., the universe (or multiverse, or whatever we think is out there), i.e., everything. Other than everything, what else is there? This isn't a matter of hubris -- just the opposite in fact. It's a matter of being careful to say only what we think we know, what we can establish through observation and experimentation. Theoretical physicists are famously in search of a "theory of everything." Note that they haven't found it yet, because, as I understand it, general relativity and quantum mechanics are hard to square. Arnon, I suppose, takes this as a crisis. On the contrary, it merely means that we've got hold of a juicy problem to work on. Now, suppose that that they *do* solve this problem, and arrive at the theory to end all theories -- a theory of everything. One can always posit, without any evidence at all, that there's something out there that transcends it. But this would be pure speculation. It wouldn't explain anything that we perceive, and, because it's bald assertion, it wouldn't be convincing anyway. It would be a naked hope, which has nothing to do with what's actually out there. Such hopes and dreams, I would say, are not grounds for belief. It continues to puzzle me and, frankly, annoy me when those of us who insist that we *don't* know various things -- this due to lack of evidence -- are conceited, arrogant, hubristic, overreaching, etc. That makes no sense to me. Surely it's the person who asserts that some transcendent hoo-hah is true without evidence, the person who makes the irrational leap and is very or even moderately sure of it, who is taking liberties and has the explaining to do!

- JakeH

December 29, 2011 at 11:53pm

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"Evangelical atheism." Now there's a noun phrase that could launch 1,0000 verbal ships, Jack. I'll keep it down. There is, obviously, an irony residing in the very words pd the phrase. And that irony I can see. But I'm thinking your observation goes to the substantive-rather than semantic-irony of dry as dust rational, scientific minded atheists, so proud of their rationality, proclaiming it, doing their hell fire, damnation- if-you-do preaching against the perils of religion.  The problem, at least for me, with the above substantive irony is that I don't know who's doing that kind of fervent declaiming in atheism's name. The so called New Atheists come to mi nd, at least two of whom might, with a stretch, be called scientists: Dawkins and maybe Harris, others like Hitchens and Dennett respectively, public intellectual as writer and academic philosopher.  If evangelism means ardent or missionary zeal for a cause, as it has been defined, don't we need to distinguish between those who argue, albeit vigorously, for their position by recourse only to reason, evidence and logic, finally arriving at their version of truth as comprised by a kind of ultimate not knowing, and those who preach from sacred texts, promising, many of them, eternal damnation in hell fire for non believers and sinners?  I'd argue that the substance of the positions and the modes of persuasion inform the criterion for the assessment of evangelism and that it doesn't apply to the New Atheists for precisely those reasons. Let me repeat my point about the argument from a non anthropomorphic God in the context of the discussion on this thread and without getting into the ins and outs of the cosmological argument for the existence of God. The argument as I read it here is that understanding God to be not,for example, "God the Father" of the New Testament, but, rather the uncaused cause stripped of anthropormorphism, creation myth, codes for right and pious human conductand eschatology, is not irrational and therefore defies the characterization of the religious as irrational.  (This argument, as I read it here, doesn't rest on religion as faith in the supernatural but on the plausibility and reasonableness of that kind of non anthropomorphic view of first causes.) What I ask iin response to this, putting it somewhat differently now, where are the  churches or other places of worship celebrating this, to me, attenuated kind of religion. Who and where are these particular religious believers?  These answers take me to the essence of my criticsism of this argument: it conflates an abstract and vulnerable philosophical argument for the existence of God with a real mode of religious belief. And once this uncaused cause is detached from the usual features of religion as it's practiced on this planet and as I pointed to above, what are we left with?  Only with a detached, abstract proposition naked of the cloth of real belief and faith, which finally calls for scientific or philosophical support or refutation by the means of those disciplines. As that as a argument for the reasonableness or plausibility of religious belief, it lays a big egg; and I say that, I must stress, without impugning that reasonableness or plausibility, the case for which, as I before suggested, can be made on entirely different grounds, which I can respect, but which are precisely grounded on faith. Fwiiw, I have been present when Hitchens said to an audience in Toronto that he has no brief against those who choose to exercise their faith. It is when the faitthful seek to invade public policy that he is moved to argue publicly against them. Finally, a word I'm sure you will be relieved to hear, I want simply to reiterate my distinction between science in its ideal as a rational mode of inquiry based on evidence and, definitionally as it were, the possibility of falsification of its hypotheses and conclusions and human failing in the practice of it. Granting that, and acknowledging those failures where they occur,  I don't know where science as an unblemished enterprise in its conception has had its "head handed to it" or is in crisis. I've asked a number of times for examples of this crisis or, as you would have it, this head handing, but have been offered none. I don't have to be convinced, and it's a truism, that science has limits and I think I understand the nature of scientism. But, once again, these, on my argument, don't come close to comprising a crisis in science as a means of ascertaining truth, as a model for many kinds of deliberation or as a perfectly appropriate and expertly equipped discipline from which to attack religion's truth claims, where public policy would want that attack in the social interest.

- basman

December 30, 2011 at 2:32am

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Itz. I appreciate your thoughtful and comprehensive reply. Religion and science when the better angels of both practitioners prevail do have similar capacities in 'Faith'. That is faith that Truth can be known. That it exists out there somewhere. This is not completely divorced from 'Hope'. The two are very close cousins. This faith and hope tandem. There is no scientific slice and dice that can approach such a statement without a truth conclusion of its own bias. I do unequivocally contend that science has been a back door vehicle for atheist apologetics. The 20th century is a huge garbage bin filled with the victims of its truth claims. Talk about Holy Wars! Inferences do have their claim and standing. Certainly, your being an attorney and excellent wordsmith, understand the value of unstated inference. It often speaks much louder than words. I vouchsafe science my own bad self. There are various unpopular insights that I am willing to at least let breathe because I think that there is something more there than meets the eye. I think Julian Jaynes is a genius. If not in particular time frame detail then in an expanded allowanced validity. I think he was/is barking up the right tree. As I'm given to understand he was the atheist son of a protestant minister. That he came up with his insights so disposed makes no never mind to me. To my knowledge he never made a public human value conclusion or projection in accordance or leveraged upon his theories. Carl Jung is a man that I respect and admire. Not so much for his absolute accuracy but for his efforting with a kind of honesty that spoke well for his ideas. Perhaps you can infer where I might position myself on the whole anthropomorphism thing. If you want we can go down those roads at another time. I had tried to touch upon these things in the past but couldn't get much traction around here. Anyway. Yes. I think science has it conceits and wears them defensively.... at times. Probably can't be any other way. I'll get back later to try and be more specific to your propositions. JakeH. Thanks for the note. I'll get back

- jacko

December 30, 2011 at 11:03am

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Jack, let me steal a little from you: Thanks for the note. I'll get back.

- basman

December 30, 2011 at 11:16am

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Some brief answers to your post, JakeH. “The problem with the first cause proof for God is that it's logically premised on the proposition that everything has a cause, but if everything has a cause, then what caused God? Super-God? And what caused Super-God? Super-Super-God? And so goes the infinite regress that's fatal to the first cause argument. We can arbitrarily stop the infinite regress by simply asserting that x is the beginning. But that's not based on any reasoning. It's just an assertion -- a faith-based assertion. After all, if we can simply say that x is God, we could just as well say that x is the Big Bang. And, of course, we could just as well say that the infinite regress doesn't stop -- that space and time are infinite, and so there's no first anything.” The first cause argument is also applicable to science which handles it by making causality a problematic category. This is true of both Newtonian as well as Einstein’s physics. The Aristotelian first cause or prime mover is not the same as an anthropomorphic deity. The latter is a self-conscious being while the former is not. Also in Aristotelian physics this first cause is axiomatic: the system presupposes such a beginning. Now such a system may be true or not (I don’t believe that it is true) but it’s not irrational in terms of its own logic any more than other scientific postulates once held to be true but were shown to be false were “irrational.” Rationality is defined in terms of logic, coherence, and consistency. Truth is defined in terms of reference external to the system. Scientific theories also need to be coherent but they have the additional burden of needing to show that they can explain external physical phenomena they cannot appeal to faith as fanciful belief systems can. Rationality and truth are not co-extensive any more than reason and faith are coextensive. A system can be rational without being true. The Ptolemaic system was very rational (more rational than modern physics in fact) but it wasn’t true. Religion too has produced many rational systems such as that found in Thomas Aquinas’ philosophy which were also shown to be not true. In contemporary religious thinking some groups like Unitarians adopt a view close to that of Aristotle’s prime mover. Notions like prayer, in such a belief system, become problematic since a prime mover isn’t something that can be appealed to. I introduced the notion of a prime mover merely to suggest that a belief system can be rational but not true. In many respects many religious systems can be made to seem rational which is why it’s so difficult to sideline them. You say: “The purpose of religion is to provide answers to questions that haven't been answered and may be unanswerable.” This is probably true since they offer answers and meanings which science does not do. A rational coherent system can accommodate many anomalies of existence which science is not equipped to do since it is limits by criteria of verification and tests of falsification. “Science is a big idea. As you have said, it stands for a method -- that is, systematic, reasoned inquiry into empirical reality. To truly be in crisis, there must be some doubt as to that *method* of knowing. But, except among a few philosophers who puzzle over epistemological problems that go along the lines of "How can anyone know anything?", there's no real doubt about the method.” That science is in crisis is expressed overtly in the article by the MIT physicist Alan Lightman. (Did you read it?) He “one wonders whether a young Alan Guth, considering a career in science today, would choose theoretical physics.” This is because “If the multiverse idea is correct, then the historic mission of physics to explain all the properties of our universe in terms of fundamental principles—to explain why the properties of our universe must necessarily be what they are—is futile, a beautiful philosophical dream that simply isn’t true. Our universe is what it is because we are here.” Alan Lightman Now, science is not religion and it need not explain the meaning or origins of the cosmos and life, but it does have to show that it will eventually be able to explain the nature and function of the cosmos. If an MIT scientist has doubts that physics will ever be able to explain the nature of the universe and further had doubts about the validity (in terms of reference) of recent explanations than it’s obvious to me that science is in crisis. However crisis does not mean failure nor does it mean that it is having some kind of “nervous breakdown,” crisis means that scientists have hit a dead end and will have to rethink their theoretical views of the universe and of physical reality. (Crisis originally meant among other things ‘moment of decision.” Crisis in this sense offers opportunity. Kant said that the philosopher Hume sent philosophy into a state of crisis. Hume skepticism had shown the dead endedness of philosophy in his day. This led Kant to write his “Critics” of “pure reason” and of “practical reason.” Critique (a word related to crisis) meant the rethinking of the system of philosophy. Perhaps a scientific Kant will come on the scene and produce another scientific revolution. (Einstein had done just that in the early 1900’s). In this sense science being in crisis is not a bad thing. It’s an opportunity as well as a loss. It’s a moment of change. Notice how scientific reasoning drives change while systemic thought (be it religious or just fanciful) abhors change for the sake of consistency and spurious rationality. Anyway, this short answer is way to long. And I have said all I will say about this topic, JakeH, on this thread.

- arnon

December 30, 2011 at 1:34pm

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I need to add one more point, JakeH: Until recently scientists didn’t worry about religion. They took it for granted that scientific modes of thought would someday overcome religious ones. It was actually religious thinkers who attacked science and not the other way around. The religious critics were on the defensive. Now, it seems that it’s the other way around. Why is that? Science hasn’t introduces any new major theories in a very long time. Could this be another indication of the crisis I spoke about above?

- arnon

December 30, 2011 at 1:57pm

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I'm not a philosopher but once I had the pleasure of getting into an extended discussion of themes being discussed on this thread and part of it included some consideration of the "first cause" or cosmological argument. I thought it might be to a point or two here to repeat a few of my comments there here: ..The point the argument raises is there having been a first cause in time. The second point the argument raises is an apeal to contingency. Matter needs to have come from something and therefore the universe--the totality of all matter--must have been brought into existence by God. The first problem with the cosmological argument is how certain can we be there is no infinite regress. While paradoxes abound over the notion of infinity, they reflect our counterintuitive discomfort with the idea. But, as you will know, mathematicians deal well infinite sequences of integers. Dawkins specifically says that resort to the difficulties of understanding infinity is "an argument to personl credulity". I.E. how can argument for God proceed merely from what we cannot understand about the constituents and ultimate nature of the universe. The new atheists to a man and woman say, I paraphrase, "we don't know, what we don't know, and until we come to know what we don't know, we continue not to know what we don't know." Altogether a sensible and adult position: humility in the face of what we don't understand. After all--who argued?--all we know is properties within the universe. It's beyond what we know to say the universe has a cause or is contingent. The cosmological argument is one of massive circularity. In line with this type of objection, the cosmological argument entails a time when before the universe began. But the universe is by definition the totality of all time and space. Similarly, the argument is nothing can be the cause of itelf but that God is the cause of himself so that God is beyond the the universe, not boundby it, by its laws. But this concedes infinity and denies contingency and therefore undermines he argument that the universe must have a cause, over and above the problems of saying something is beyond or outside the universe. Further even if it's meaningful to speak of God as the cause of himself, a huge "if" by the way, why can't the Big Bang be the first, sufficient unto itself cause. Since we can't understand the idea of what is necessary, on what basis--other than circular reasoning--can we assume that necessity is in God and not in the universe. Unless we understand why God created the universe and why he is necessary, resort to God doesn't account for anything. We err in postulating God---a mystery external to the universe--without good reason. We are better off cosmologizing by means of the Big Bang--limiting it to being a provisional hypothesis within the protocols of science.  If the universe is a Russellian "brute fact", asserting God as first cause, and then ducking out by claiming God is perpetually present, simply shifts the brute fact from something we know about--the universe--to something we know nothing about and reify--God. I'll conclude with the following: 1. Nothing here suggests that you defend the cosmological argument; 2. but the above demonstrates its utter circularity, the utter arbirtariness of its assumptions, and its dependence, finally, on a kind of leap of faith;  3. there is nothing in the above that the new atheists have not spoken to, particularly Dawkins, Harris, Swineburne and Dennett--Hitchens makes more historically rooted arguments; and  4. the arguments against Hawking et al are still no further ahead... After all, if stinginess is a good criterion for acceptable argument--in the sense of that famous razor--there are simpler explanations than mind- bending complicated ones like God. There is no reason whatsoever to equate first cause with any traditional conception of God...

- basman

December 30, 2011 at 2:41pm

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Where are the scientists or those who observe science and think about it who say science is in crisis? This seems to me a very odd and dubious proposition to me, despite all the twists, turns, wiggling around and arbitrariness in post 12/30/2011 - 1:34pm EDT | arnon, which I'd be happy to try and engage some but seem, unfortunately, to have a reluctant interlocutor.

- basman

December 30, 2011 at 2:49pm

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I only have a few days left before I need to start pursuing justice and costs again.

- basman

December 30, 2011 at 2:58pm

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Basman: "Let me repeat my point about the argument from a non anthropomorphic God in the context of the discussion on this thread and without getting into the ins and outs of the cosmological argument for the existence of God. The argument as I read it here is that understanding God to be not,for example, "God the Father" of the New Testament, but, rather the uncaused cause stripped of anthropormorphism, creation myth, codes for right and pious human conductand eschatology, is not irrational and therefore defies the characterization of the religious as irrational." I want to get basic here, Itz. Does anything change for you if we take the creation myth from the physical realm and into the psychological realm? ie. creation myth is actually an elegant poetic on the consequences of consciousness. The dawn of consequence in space and time. I for one regard this Hebrew brooding to be a lovely, elegant and comprehensive poetic premonitory meditation. I'm going to avoid the cosmological frankly because I don't care all that much. It doesn't have all that much bearing on Truth. And yes, the mystery of it is implied in various codifications. But it isn't an issue for me. To me psychologically speaking a split anthropomorphism is unavoidable and altogether fitting and logical.

- jacko

December 30, 2011 at 6:13pm

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Jack I'll respond to you, or try to, still this year.

- basman

December 30, 2011 at 9:11pm

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Arnon, sorry that you're done -- maybe you'll be moved to check out the thread again and respond. I'd like to zero in on what I think is a point of disagreement (among many points of agreement). That is, your contention that a religious belief can be *rational* even if it's not *true.* I agree that a belief may be rational and, despite its rationality, turn out to be false. Persuasive evidence can be misleading. I also agree that an irrational belief may turn out to be true. As the saying goes, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean people aren't after you. I agree too that rationality is, as you say, about consistency and coherence. Where I disagree is the notion that a faith-based *religious* belief about objective reality can be rational. This is because such a belief is perforce inconsistent with what we otherwise believe -- that is, that knowledge about objective reality requires evidence. We all accept in the abstract that, as I suggested, bald assertion, pure speculation, active imagination, mere hope, cultural tradition, or ecstatic "revelation" better explained by psychological phenomena are not reliable ways of determining the fact of any matter. Resort to faith as a serious account of any question of reality therefore seems premised on an exception to that rule, and I struggle to understand the justification for the exception. Is it because the matters and subjects of faith are very important to us? That doesn't seem like a good reason. After all, as we all agree, wishing, no matter how fervent, doesn't make it so. Is it because the subjects of faith are unanswered, even stubbornly unexplained? Likewise, that doesn't seem like an adequate justification for a faith-based belief. If the question is unanswered, then that means, does it not, that it's simply unanswered. It's not a warrant for making up answers. Gaps in knowledge are just gaps in knowledge, not objects of worship. Anyway, as we've seen, gaps can be and have been explained through reliable methods, at which point faith-based belief, unless it's very stubborn, departs the field and seeks out some other blank to fill in with unaccountable conjecture. Wouldn't you agree that this process is irrational? You seem to want to say that a belief system may be rational if it is internally consistent -- that is, consistent with itself in a narrow sense. I think your attitude here is too generous, and your standard for rational thinking too low. It's akin to saying that the only way to know that the events in fiction are fictional is if the writer makes an internal error and has, say, a character walking around in chapter five who was killed off in chapter two. In fact we know that fiction is fiction not because of any such tell-tale error, but because the process used to generate it is not a way of knowing about reality. We know that it was the product of imagination. The products of imagination are not made real merely by avoiding gaffes and bloopers. As it happens, actual religions are full of such mistakes anyway, but even if we were to cleanse doctrine of such superficial errors in the telling, irrational belief in the core messages would not be made rational. The first cause argument *does* in fact seem internally inconsistent, as I (and Basman) tried to show. It's premised, as I said, on the idea that everything must have had a cause, which, right then and there, is totally at odds with any suggestion of a first cause. If a cause were truly first, then it didn't have a cause, which means that not everything has a cause after all. Which is it? Does everything have a cause or not? And if it's possible for a cause to be first, to be itself uncaused, then that cause might just as well have been a non-transcendent, natural occurrence. You say that the Aristotelian system presupposes such a first cause, that it's "axiomatic." Just so. It's assumed, not shown. Such simple assertion or conjecture, we must agree, is not a rational basis for belief about reality. I read your link with interest. I won't get into the whole thing, as much as I'm tempted, except to point out that it seems to place, naively I think, some stock in the "fine-tuning" argument for the existence of God (or some non-anthropomorphic, transcendent force, or whatever) -- that is, that, if so-and-so property or event were just a little different, then we wouldn't have the improbable event of human life, or anything we call life, or anything close to it. (Dawkins deals with this argument at some length, and touches on just the issues of theoretical physics discussed in the article. Have you read The God Delusion?) This reasoning strikes me as very flawed. First of all, it's tautological to say that if things hadn't happened as they did, then things wouldn't be as they are. It's true, but so what? When "things" are "life on Earth" (or life anywhere), we perceive "fine-tuning," but only because we regard life as important. We thereby introduce circularity into our reasoning. We prove our cosmological importance by assuming it. We demonstrate our divine provenance by asserting our miraculousness, by casting it in those terms. I could make the same sort of argument about my own life. It's supremely important to me. If just the right combination of events had not occurred -- if things had gone just slightly differently somewhere along the path of infinite possibilities -- then the "miracle" of my consciousness, which is my entire universe (or multiverse), would never have existed. It simply doesn't follow from this admitted improbability of my existence that it must have been predestined, set up, fine-tuned by some higher explanatory force. We might as well give up the game and subscribe seriously to the notion of fate. People do, especially when convenient, but isn't that irrational? The other big problem with this way of thinking is that it doesn't advance our understanding, it doesn't solve any problem, even on its own terms, even if we take it seriously. It merely substitutes one mystery with a bigger one. This is Dawkins's main point, and I think he's on to something here. It's similar to the blindness at the heart of the first cause argument. We're just nudging the problem, poking at it with a stick, pushing it down the alley. We're not actually addressing it. The reason we're not addressing it is that God, a/k/a the supreme force, a/k/a the prime mover, a/k/a the transcendent je ne sais quois, is as at least as difficult to explain as what we're using it to explain. We ask why, we don't have the answer, so we fill in the blank with question-begging gibberish, and call it a day. We might as well be speaking in tongues. Nothing rational, I argue, is going on here. Do you (or anyone else here) disagree?

- JakeH

December 31, 2011 at 1:01am

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JakeH. I find myself wanting to ask you what the ostensible benefits you believe your particular flavored 'rational' regard for the nature of things might be. I've been impressed with the degree of faith and hope that is invested in the idea that 'if only disabused then'. Therein is part of the evangelical implication to the 'new atheist' message. Be honest now.... the purpose of this push goes beyond academic into the apologetic realm with consequence beyond its surface proposition.

- jacko

December 31, 2011 at 7:17am

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Jack I very much like your question to me. I'm thinking I understand it. And yes, as I sit in a Victoria B.C. Starbucks wiling away the last few hours of a holiday,   and it's gray and windy and cold with ominous weather in the offing, everything changes if we move, as you say, from physical realm to the psychological one. And you put it beautifully as a poetic and elegant meditation on the birth of consciousness and its workings, or better yet as you say it, its consequences as consciousness comes out of the womb kicking and spitting and crying and demanding and wanting reassurance and succor and comforting and placating. One, too, might think about the Big Bang in these metaphoric ways. I love that way of thinking and imagining these things. So you have introduced me to a specific world with your question which co exists, and harmoniously, with the world premises and logical steps and reasons and conclusions. I wouldn't want to do without either world, and other worlds as well. I want to inhabit them all in my way as best as I can. Happy and good New Year Jack and Jakeh and Arnon and maybe Leon W. and anyone, unlikely, still raveling or unraveling this thread.

- basman

December 31, 2011 at 12:50pm

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JakeH “Arnon, sorry that you're done -- maybe you'll be moved to check out the thread again and respond.” OK, one last response to tie up some lose ends and this will be it, JakeH. “I'd like to zero in on what I think is a point of disagreement (among many points of agreement). That is, your contention that a religious belief can be *rational* even if it's not *true.* I agree that a belief may be rational and, despite its rationality, turn out to be false. Persuasive evidence can be misleading. I also agree that an irrational belief may turn out to be true. As the saying goes, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean people aren't after you. I agree too that rationality is, as you say, about consistency and coherence. Where I disagree is the notion that a faith-based *religious* belief about objective reality can be rational. This is because such a belief is perforce inconsistent with what we otherwise believe -- that is, that knowledge about objective reality requires evidence.” The main point of your assertion above is the last clause: “that knowledge about objective reality requires evidence.” I wish it were that simple, Jake H. “Objective reality” has changed over time time. What we consider objective reality after the theory of relativity is very different from what scientist considered objective reality in the 19c or before. I could come up with hundreds of other examples but you get my point. In a sense “objective reality” is the product of our (the community’s) system of belief. Still, objective reality is real and it is objective. (Postmodern critics would deny this, but I believe they are in error.) No argument there. The best and briefest way of answering your concern about making religion a legitimate system of belief and true (I emphasize the two are not the same “truth” which what we are all after and rational systems are not the same.) Logic differentiates between “truth” and “validity.” This is impoertant since may syllogisms can be true but not valid. Example First an old but still valid and true proposition: All men are mortal Socrates is a man Socrates is mortal What makes this valid is that the conclusion follows from the premises (major, minor and middle terms are properly arranged and distributed. What makes it true is that the major premise is true. It corresponds to the actual facts. Now, here is a syllogism which is valid but untrue: Cats are mammals. Tigers are mammals. Therefore, tigers are cats. Here the conclusion does not follow from the premises (though the major premise is true): there was no relation between established in the premises. To make it valid and true we can rewrite the premises establishing a relation between tigers and cats: Cats are mammals. Tigers are cats. Therefore, tigers are mammals. Now, deductive logic (Aristotelian) and inductive logic (used in science, etc.) arrive at conclusions differently. I don’t have the time to go into details here but you can read about in the Stanford University encyclopedia here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-inductive/ Now, in deductive logic the theory comes first then the attempt at substantiating it by observation. In inductive logic, on the other hand observation comes first from which a tentative hypothesis is drawn and then confirmed in a hypothesis. A recent example of such work is the man who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry this year Daniel Schechtman. http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=2011-nobel-prize-in-chemistry-11-10-05 His discovery follows the classic rules in science from observation to confirmation. Now, and this is what I am getting at, it is normally thought that religion and science are naturally opposed to one another and there is no other mode of thought that can counter religion. Burt this isn’t the case. Religion and science share a desire to find meanings and not just meaning that are true but to find meanings that are “absolutely” true. The word “absolute” is crucial here. In this game ironically religion has the upper hand because science doesn’t offer absolute truths, what it offers are contingent truths. This is because it uses inductive and not deductive logic. Every scientific hypotheses is tentative: it is true according to the observations made at the moment, according to objective reality as then understood. Newton’s theories have been shown not to be universally valid and I suspect that Einstein’s theories will in time be modified or even changed. To me this means that science is more not less trustworthy than rational systems that claim to have discovered absolute knowledge. Not just religious systems but many secular ideological systems have tried to impose on us their “absolute truths:” Here is a short list: Hegelianism, Fourierism, August Comte’s system the founder of ‘positivism,” Marxism, all fascist ideologies, and the list goes on. All these systems like those of religion are valid in their own narrow sphere, (notice that some of them like Marx and Comte thought of themselves as scientists) but they are all spectacularly not true and many of them are or can be dangerous and that includes religious superstitions. However, there is one mode of thought that challenges both the scientism of positivism as well as religious dogma and that is philosophical thought (today we refer to it as “critical thinking”). Critical philosophy challenges all ideologies but questioning the premises of said ideology. Lately ideologues have claimed that they too are “critical thinkers” which is nonsense. A true rationality isn’t content with answers but keeps interrogating and asking questions. In this it resembles scientific thought at its best. Religion (and all ideologies no matter how complex or rational) on the other hand is circumscribed within a narrow set of formulas, principles, and values and can never challenge its foundational premises. This to me is the real difference between religions and ideologies and science: science makes no claim to absolute truth but what it does accept as truth are notions and propositions tested and always open to further tests and revisions. In this it resembles critical philosophy (which is also agnostic) which argues that there are no absolute truths that can be known with certainty (except for the truth of mortality) and that such knowledge is the beginning and not the end of understanding and rational inquiry. This JakeH is my last post here. I need to go back to my own work.

- arnon

December 31, 2011 at 1:56pm

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Hey Itz, Back at you man. Happy New Year! Only the best. Jack

- jacko

December 31, 2011 at 3:44pm

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This above reads to me as a confused post the consistent line of argument in which seems, respectfully, hard to make out, and with a lot of sidebars along the way. And at times, without going back to the thread in careful-combing-through-it kind of way, I'm at times not sure whose prose is whose. But let me take but one example from the pile. JakeH seems to have it that faith based religion cannot be called rational. His argument as restated by Arnon and further paraphrased by me is that religion cosmologizes based on faith whereas theories about the nature of reality, objective reality, want evidence to sustain them, and the theories ascend in scientific certainty as their testing and their evidence pan out. Arnon say this is too simple because objective reality changes, paradigms change, cosmological notions, at the large end of science change and so on. Arnon then goes on to say a lot of different things in the ostensible development of his point, but they don't make a great deal of sense to me and his point before that development I think can stand alone in what I think is its quite obvious erroneousness. In a word objective reality doesn't change. Conceptions of it via science do and what of that? That's the nature of science's progress. How Arnon derives a criticism of Jakeh's point in this escapes me.

- basman

December 31, 2011 at 4:10pm

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Arnon, thanks, although I think I have to agree with basman that I'm not really seeing how your post supports your view that faith-based belief about objective reality can be rational or refutes my argument that it can't be. I may agree with your account of scientific truth as contingent, and religious "truth" as absolute. The problem is that such religious assertions about absolute truth are merely made up, and so unconvincing. Does the mere concept of absolute truth warrant any particular belief about what it is? Of course not. We must have reasons for belief about objective reality -- whether the question of reality is mundane, sublime, contingent, absolute, whatever. This is basic. I contend that our reasons for our beliefs about objective reality must be grounded in evidence, logic, reasoned argument -- that the scientific or rational ethos to which we all subscribe in some large measure must be brought to bear to support the contention, and that if the argument is shown to be deficient or flawed in these respects, it can be rejected as irrational. It could theoretically, coincidentally be true, but we wouldn't have enough evidence to justify a belief that it is. Some religions purport to agree with me here -- that reason must support belief. Those religions, most notably Catholicism, make a point of arguing that their beliefs *are* supported by that rational ethos. The problem is that their arguments -- like the philosophical "proofs" for God -- just don't work. Like the first cause argument we've discussed, or the intelligent design "fine-tuning" argument that your Harper's article alludes to, or (most embarrassing) the ontological argument (which essentially conjures God into existence by defining God as existing), these arguments don't hold up under rational scrutiny. The next move by the religious apologist, if it's not to change the subject, is to abandon reason and resort to faith-based ways of knowing, which aren't ways of knowing at all. They're ways of simply asserting. The question we sharp skeptics ask is, How do you know? If the answer amounts to, Because I do, then it seems to me that we've got a major rationality problem. You seem to want to dispute that conclusion or, in some way, soften it, but I don't see how one can. Anyway, if you don't have time to reply -- which I understand, as I too have to return to my real work -- nice talking to you, and Happy New Year! Cheers.

- JakeH

January 2, 2012 at 12:25am

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JakeH. Any comment about my characterization of your position on Faith? Is Proteus messing with yo head?

- jacko

January 2, 2012 at 9:41am

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JakeH “Arnon, thanks, although I think I have to agree with basman that I'm not really seeing how your post supports your view that faith-based belief about objective reality can be rational or refutes my argument that it can't be.” First, JakeH, I don’t read Basman’s posts so I don’t know what he said. Basman seems obsessed with me and will counter whatever I post. He wants to engage me in debate and thinks he cand do so bt attacking my posts. I am not interested in debating him because he argues not to explore a topic but to show off as the winner in a contest he invented. I told him already that I will not read his posts and that should have been the end of that..

- arnon

January 2, 2012 at 11:32am

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“I may agree with your account of scientific truth as contingent, and religious "truth" as absolute. The problem is that such religious assertions about absolute truth are merely made up, and so unconvincing. Does the mere concept of absolute truth warrant any particular belief about what it is? Of course not. We must have reasons for belief about objective reality -- whether the question of reality is mundane, sublime, contingent, absolute, whatever. This is basic. I contend that our reasons for our beliefs about objective reality must be grounded in evidence, logic, reasoned argument -- that the scientific or rational ethos to which we all subscribe in some large measure must be brought to bear to support the contention, and that if the argument is shown to be deficient or flawed in these respects, it can be rejected as irrational. It could theoretically, coincidentally be true, but we wouldn't have enough evidence to justify a belief that it is.” Since I was not and am not positing any religious belief as true, I don’t know who you are arguing against. My only point above was that some religious systems have validity in the way I defined that above, but ARE NOT TRUE. I further stated that many belief systems even those who claim to be atheistic have a similar structure of belief to religion. I gave examples above: Hegelianism, Marxism, Fascism, some even argue that Freudianism is such a belief system. There are many others. I also said that some use science as a belief system when they take the scientific theories as final. What is of great interest to me is that former religious people move with some ease from organized religion to embracing some kind of Ideology. These have moved from one form of ideology to another. Atheists are no immune to the pull of irrational beliefs. In any case, religion can be rational but untrue and that to me is enough to discredit it. I am sorry that you feel that one must not say anything positive about religion, not even that it has validity but not truth. Here is the essence of our disagreement. Finally, there are to me more interesting questions to ask about individuals and their belief systems than atheism allows for. But these questions will have to wait for another occasion and to be discussed with people who are not religious but neither are religio-phobic. It’s been interesting JakeH.

- arnon

January 2, 2012 at 12:04pm

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...First, JakeH, I don’t read Basman’s posts so I don’t know what he said. Basman seems obsessed with me and will counter whatever I post. He wants to engage me in debate and thinks he cand do so bt attacking my posts. I am not interested in debating him because he argues not to explore a topic but to show off as the winner in a contest he invented. I told him already that I will not read his posts and that should have been the end of that.. I think you do read them but that's up to you. I don't reflexively disagree with you. I sometimes agree with you and sometimes don't. I seem to have hurt your feelings when once a little exasperated by how you were arguing I made a personal comment about you being too wrapped up in your own posiition, about which: 1. the comment was mild in the extreme compared to the slanging that often goes on here; and 2. If you will check you will see that on that thread that I said I regretted that slight. More than that I cannot do. Obsession is no trait of mine. You took part in a discussion in which I have some interest and in which I was taking part. So naturally I read your comments and noted what I thought of them in the course of the discussion. Your refusal to engage me lately is not without interest to me and I can't imagine it stems from one relatively mild slight as those things go here including by you with others. I imagine I'll never know. Which is all too bad, I think, but so be it. But where your comments cut across a discussion I'm generally engaged in, I'll continue to remark them if in my view the flow of the argument warrants that, either for or agin' as the case may be.

- basman

January 2, 2012 at 2:43pm

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Analysing the analyst is as taxing as evaluating a work itself. Bosons and fermions pretty well dismiss any faith or ethnicity as being essentially meaningless, hence, I guess Mr Wieseltier’s fury. They demolish everything a super-tribalist loves, lives by and stands for, and a good thing Mr Rosenberg is probably Jewish himself, or we’d get into a whole new argument. But is this virulent critique objective? I think not. For much of what the latter describes or defines here is dead on, and empiricism not scientism as far as I know. On the other hand Wittgenstein’s fireflies cannot explain the bottle. And the famous allegory of the old fish crossing two younger ones, saying Morning Boys, how’s the water? And one of young fish asking the other What is water? ever so poignant. If there is one huge weak side to Mr Rosenberg’s journey, it’s that he has forgotten his way back. There is no real talk of joy, and nothing is meaningless if there’s joy. Joy equates meaning and meaning equates joy, even though contrived joy is not meaning, it is contrived meaning, that some too desperately hang on to, alas! The other weak point in Mr Rosenberg’s discourse is its pre-supposing that we know everything there is to know. And what he’s really dishing up is The End of Knowledge. When we all know how accurate Fettuccini’s, sorry, Fukuyama’s End of History turned out to be. Nice Nihilism is not joy and therefore deeply unrealistic. I prefer Richard Marshall’s critique of The Atheist’s Guide To Reality in 3AM-Mag, it is far more balanced and tolerant, ending with its author leaning back and deciding to bide his time.

- steyning

January 4, 2012 at 7:29am

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Does Joy require definition and parameter?

- jacko

January 4, 2012 at 11:40am

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Steyning “Analysing the analyst is as taxing as evaluating a work itself. Bosons and fermions pretty well dismiss any faith or ethnicity as being essentially meaningless, hence, I guess Mr Wieseltier’s fury. They demolish everything a super-tribalist loves, lives by and stands for, and a good thing Mr Rosenberg is probably Jewish himself, or we’d get into a whole new argument.” Steyn, your criticism is as misplaced as it is incoherent. Marshall’s article doesn’t mention “ethnicity” (not the same as “faith,”) nor does Wieseltier’s. Neither does the article mention Jews in any ways. Your attempt to turn these issues into another “Jewish question” makes whatever else you say irrelevant. Marshall rightly points out that Rosenberg’s book is as critical of many scientistcally oriented atheists as it is of religious sensibility. The former want to embrace an easy atheism and not deal with the consequences of their stance. Marshall intimates that if you are going to deny the existence of god from a scientific pint of view you also need to deny the existence of, free will, any system of morality, and even a natural attachment to other people (not just an ethnic group—that’s easy-- but even family groups). Wieseltier’s comes at it from the other side but says something similar. One essay does not negate the other essay. Each essay focuses on an aspect of the book under review implications. Hence we have a number of points of view to consider: the easy atheistic view which says that there is no god and doesn’t deal with the consequences of such a belief; the more critical atheistic view (represented by the Rosenberg’s book which affirms an atheistic point of view and draws some implications from its scientific principles, and the criticism of these views by the reviewers from different angles. I would say that JakeH’s view represents the easy atheistic point of view while mine is more in line with the critical perspective of Marshall and Wieseltier’s.

- arnon

January 4, 2012 at 12:15pm

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I like this by Williamson as quoted by Marshall: ......We can formulate the underlying worry as a sharp argument against the extreme naturalist claim that all truths are discoverable by hard science. If it is true that all truths are discoverable by hard science, then it is discoverable by hard science that all truths are discoverable by hard science. But it is not discoverable by hard science that all truths are discoverable by hard science. “Are all truths discoverable by hard science?” is not a question of hard science. Therefore the extreme naturalist claim is not true.’... Knocks the shit out out of Rosenbergian type naturalism, just the way the verifiability principle knocked the shit out of logical positivism. I reject the notion of nice nihilism or even that the notion that nihlism follows from atheism and reject too that what follows from a certain type of atheism, as say represented by jakeh or myself, is I may say so, is easiness or that that type of atheism may be characterized as easy. This attribution of easiness is as self sanctifying as is the contemplation of the possibility of God's existence ultimately incoherent. It strikes me that the idea that "...nothing is meaningless if there’s joy. Joy equates meaning and meaning equates joy..." says a lot in a metonymic way even if I would articulate that idea more elaborately and with much less succinct force. A mistake that is often made in these matters is the conflation of feelings of meaningless and desperation with ontological meaninglessness, an entirely different proposition, a conceptual confusion which riddles the The Stranger for example and is suggestively hinted at in the above further statement by Steyning: "...even though contrived joy is not meaning, it is contrived meaning, that some too desperately hang on to, alas!" The assertion of nihilsm concequent of atheism is altogether sophomoric stuff in my view, as is the naturalism of Rosenberg, which parades as tough-mindedness but falls prey to things like joy, and our commonly felt and understood experience, neither of which require even the comtemplation of the possibility of God: ...I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, upon various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason - Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. This pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration... All that said, I suspect steyning disagrees with me though I found some ideas in his post nicely and incisively put and pointing, as I read it, to ideas I hold. I do though agree with the subsequent criticism of the first paragraph of his post by Arnon, who hasn't quite yet had his last word yet, it seems.

- basman

January 4, 2012 at 4:08pm

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Arnon, it's not that I can't abide any positive statement about religion. It's one or two of your particular positive statements I have a problem with. I understood our disagreement to be that you thought that faith-based religious belief could be rational or "valid," whereas I said that it could not be. The reason it cannot be is that such belief is ultimately based on mere assertion, which, I argued, was not in fact a valid way of knowing about objective reality. I accepted your point that rationality -- and, perhaps, science generally -- is about consistency, about contingent truths. But that doesn't help the religious apologist, because faith is, I argued, not consistent with how we generally approach *any* question of objective reality, which is to require reasons, logic, evidence, etc. It is percisely this inconsistency which I believe marks faith-based religious belief as irrational. You seem to want to say that a religious belief can be "valid" or "rational," because it can be valid on its own terms, internally consistent. I tried to argue that this is a trivial point. Of course a religion can be internally consistent. So what? Anyone could make up a story, be careful about having it be internally consistent, and label it non-fiction. It's that last step that I take issue with. It's senseless to say that the middle step somehow makes the last step rational or valid. Otherwise, any belief that some made-up, internally consistent story were true could plausibly be seen as offering a rational, valid account of reality. Actually believing that such a made-up story is true strikes me as quintessentially irrational. I didn't really see any counter-argument from you on this point. I don't see how your digression into the absolute vs. contingent reality question addresses it or solves it.

- JakeH

January 4, 2012 at 6:40pm

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Regarding the Marshall vs. Rosenberg question, I would need to actually read what they said in more detail, but it seems to me that one cannot absolutely disprove the existence of some transcendent something or other. Suppose that we could somehow discover the existence of a multiverse. Suppose we explain all the dark matter. We could still posit the existence of some unperceived, transcendent something that stands apart from all that. No matter how far physics advances in explaining the universe (or multiverse), it seems that we could always come up with more questions and more (dubious) answers. Note that this applies to God too. Suppose we came upon conclusive evidence for the existence of an omnipotent, benevolent, transcednent creator. Would it be impertinent to ask where *it* came from? The answer might come, "I don't come from anywhere, I just am, I'm everything." Of course, that answer might apply to our universe or multiverse too, obviating the need for God. We're not satisfied with that answer, though, and I'm not sure that our inquiring minds can ever be satisfied in this way. As I pointed out, our minds have trouble, when it comes to space and time, of grasping *both* alternatives -- that is, infinity on the one hand, or finality on the other hand. If it's suggested that something goes on forever, we wonder, "But where does it end?" If it's suggest that something ends, we wonder, "But what's beyond it?" The concept of "everything" proves a slippery one, or, if you're high, a mind-blowing one. Marshall is undoubtedly correct that the question of whether all truths are discoverable by hard science is not a question that can be answered by hard science. All we need do is imagine an undiscoverable truth (as, in fact, we do). But, so what? If it's not a question that can be answered by hard science, it's not a question that can be answered *by anything*.

- JakeH

January 4, 2012 at 7:15pm

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JakeH “I understood our disagreement to be that you thought that faith-based religious belief could be rational or "valid," whereas I said that it could not be. The reason it cannot be is that such belief is ultimately based on mere assertion, which, I argued, was not in fact a valid way of knowing about objective reality.” I already addressed the issue of “objective reality.” Objective reality is always based on what we know about reality. This seems to give people a difficult time. It’s very simple: if I were living at the time when we all “knew” that the world was flat that would be our “objective reality.” After Copernicus our objective reality changed. After Darwin, Einstein, Freud, etc. our objective reality changed again. It’s in the process of changing if we accept the Daniel Kahneman’s notions about thinking “fast and slow.” This doesn’t mean that there is no objective reality it just means that our objective reality is based on what we think is real. In our world it is science or critical theories that don’t contradict our accepted scientific notions that determine our concept of reality. There are no other standards that I know of. Now just as science offers us not absolute truths but contingent truths so to we need to realize that “objective reality” is also contingent reality. Religion did once upon a time play the role of arbiter of objective reality, but this hasn’t been true for at least a couple of centuries. Now, when I say that religion or better still theologies like those of Thomas Aquinas or Maimonides are valid but not true the emphasis shoyld be on truth and not on validity. In logic and philosophy “validity” is a technical term an doesn’t mean what it means in daily life. Validity here is merely a property of an argument not the whole argument hence an argument can be logically valid even if its premises are false. Theologies assume the existence of a deity and build a system around it. This is why the system can be consistent and moral but untrue. Btw: the untruth of a system doesn’t just depend on the question of reference since even in science reference is not simple. It doesn’t just depend on empirical evidence. What is known about atoms and subatomic particles is often based on inference and not on direct observation. However, and here agree with you, the fact that a religious system is untrue is important because its inability to prove itself to its believers leads to schisms and violence. This has been going on for thousands of years and we have a right to insist that believer keep their beliefs out of the political realm. Christians, Muslims, Jews have been fighting for ever and in each religion there schisms and schisms within the schisms. I just read the latest history of Jerusalem by Simon Montefiore and the violence one encounters there is sickening. It’s not just the Muslims versus the Christians versus Jews. Among Christians for example the Eastern orthodox, the Armenians, the Copts the Catholics etc all fight over who will be first in some Church to say mass. These fights have often led to deaths. And this in a religion that is supposed to teach people to “turn the other cheek.” The same among the other religions. There ought to be a limit to how long one is allowed to wait for the Messiah. It seems to me that after a few centuries sober people will say “he is not coming.” Instead of admitting that, they would rather insult other believers and non-believers and start wars. These wars are just a way to change the subject. In any case, the case against religion has been made and it doesn’t interest me anymore. (Although the question of why people will not accept the evidence that there is no god does interest me.) The real question right now is what are the consequences for humanity if we follow a scientific point of view to its logical conclusion. If I accept the truth of the proposition that people ought to believe only what is scientifically verifiable and science tell me that as an individual I am conditioned by material causes beyond my control that I have no free will, in short that I am what my genetic inheritance made of me then I ask myself if I decide that I will dedicate my life to science on what basis can I say that it is a decision freely made and not a choice imposed upon me by genetic inheritance along with some environmental factors. Is such a scientific universe what becomes of myself as a unique and individual self? These are only some of the consequences that follow from my view that science dictates what I am to believe and how I am to behave. In other words will science turn me into a mere cog in it's rationalistic and coherent machine? Now, if I say nuts to that I will reject both religion and science and act as if I were a force of nature on what basis can a science tell me that I am doing wrong. Of course science can tell others to do away with me, it can also show them how to do so, but on what principle other than might will they be acting? We are back here to questions raised by ancient traditions when they asked questions about why should people be moral. The answers today will be radically different as Nietzsche recognized since we can’t rely on a deity or on custom to help us solve the problem. To be fair, these are questions raised by the two articles in questions as well as Rosenberg’s book. IOt would take a lor more time to answer them assuming that we could answer them. One of my points all along has been that declaring oneself an atheist is the easy part, figuring out how to live in such a “disenchanted” universe is the hard part. (This was Max Weber’s term which was taken up by Adorno and Horkheimer’s in their “Dialectic of Enlightenment.”)

- arnon

January 4, 2012 at 8:44pm

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I just want to say what a pleasure it has been talking to the heathen and ne'er do wells. A real treat to see this rather evenly discussed by some interesting folks. For the record I'm not a Campellian Relativist. One thing that needs mention and escapes the parameters of this discussion is religious function. Now please believe me when I say that I have been a collective/church critic before AND after the prevailing winds of my spiritual disposition came about. What outsiders can't really appreciate is the fullness of influences. I've been able to put brakes on some real hair brained head trips. Sometimes just by rubbing shoulders with folks. Like any other organization or collective body those that are unsuited to power often are the most ambitious seekers and achievers of it. Again we see this in all walks of life whether it be politics or group medical practice. This is fairly widely accepted as gospel in most churches and the moderating effects are unseen because that is the nature of the creatures involved and an accountability principle. Religion as the basis of a typical social construct can indeed be quite destructive. It can also be quite instructive and a force for some good things. Arnon. I liked your contributions here. Itz. As I've said before you know I love ya. JakeH. You seem like a decent sort. If there is a heaven i'll see if I can't tip the maitre de and get you in. :) Jesus coming in the clouds. It's a metaphor.

- jacko

January 5, 2012 at 6:27pm

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An excellent article worth pondering for any one left to ponder here: "Why science is more fragile than faith" "Don’t assume our brains can leave religion behind," says Robert N. McCauley http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2012/01/08/why-science-more-fragile-than-faith/RBLXLgK8x8mpVXPWs25EQM/story.html This was part of my argument above when I said that given the extent of humanities belief in supernatural explanations that such irrational belief systems may encoded in our DNA.

- arnon

January 8, 2012 at 4:04pm

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Hi Arnon. Yeah. I find it completely unsurprising that the issue of supernatural would confound science. The psychological bedrock is well founded and not altogether irrational. Given a most cursory self examination leads you to correctly understand that all of what you are isn't due to any of your own doing. Every fibrous reality of your being and the energy to fuel their reactivity is subservient to something far beyond our individual capacities. Thus and so. Contemplation and measuring of this reality and its significance has been a favorite preoccupation of our psychological functioning for quite some time. That science would want to jettison miraculous in favor of its own superior regard is quite easily seen as just a new sales job of its own interests. A viewpoint that I don't entirely disagree with. I've been rereading some of Sam Harris' stuff and still find that many of his complaints to be very, very, valid. I actually think he is doing a necessary function..... probably despite his own bias and inclination. His demand that we humans claim ownership of Love is worthy even if he is not motivated by purest of reasons. So it goes for all of us and that claim has been the crucible upon which all weights and measures are calibrated whether we know it or not. Now try to distill that in a scientific alchemy and you will always find righteous and right objectors. Even Leon.

- jacko

January 9, 2012 at 8:59am

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