Alvin Plantinga and Thomas Nagel are well-known senior philosophers at Notre Dame and NYU, respectively. Plantinga, a Christian, is known for his contributions to philosophy of religion, while Nagel, an atheist, is known (nevertheless) for his resistance to purely materialist/naturalist/physicalist theories of the mind (e.g. in his famous article, “What is it like to be a bat?“).
Now Nagel has reviewed Plantinga’s most recent book in the NYRB, giving it a much more sympathetic reading than most naturalists would offer. (For what it’s worth, Plantinga is a supporter of Intelligent Design, and Nagel has often spoken of it approvingly, while not quite buying the whole sales pitch.) Jerry Coyne offers a reasonable dissection of the review.
I wanted to home in on just one particular aspect because it was instructive, at least for me. There is a long-standing claim that “faith” is a way of attaining knowledge that stands independently of other methods, such as “logic” or “empiricism.” I’ve never quite understood this — how do we decide what to have faith in, if not by the use of techniques such as logic and empiricism?
Plantinga offers an answer, which I think is at least internally consistent — but that’s part of the problem.
So far we are in the territory of traditional epistemology; but what about faith? Faith, according to Plantinga, is another basic way of forming beliefs, distinct from but not in competition with reason, perception, memory, and the others. However, it is
a wholly different kettle of fish: according to the Christian tradition (including both Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin), faith is a special gift from God, not part of our ordinary epistemic equipment. Faith is a source of belief, a source that goes beyond the faculties included in reason.
God endows human beings with a sensus divinitatis that ordinarily leads them to believe in him. (In atheists the sensus divinitatis is either blocked or not functioning properly.)
Plantinga is clearly trying to separate “faith” from merely “things we would like to believe are true” — faith is knowledge that is put directly into our minds by God. Points for at least trying to offer a reason why we should put credence in beliefs based on faith even if the logic and/or evidence aren’t there.
Here, as I see it, is the problem. Any time we have beliefs of any sort, we need to admit the possibility that they are incorrect. Even if we have think that some result has been reached by nothing but the application of pristine mathematical logic (e.g. the ABC conjecture), it’s always possible that we simply made a mistake — have you ever multiplied two numbers together and gotten the wrong answer? Certainly in an empirical endeavor like science, we recognize that our theoretical understanding is necessarily contingent, and are constantly trying to do better, via more precise and far-reaching experimental tests. These are methods of reaching knowledge that have built-in methods of self-correction.
So what about faith? Even if your faith is extremely strong in some particular proposition, e.g. that God loves you, it’s important to recognize that there’s a chance you are mistaken. That should be an important part of any respectable road to knowledge. So you are faced with (at least) two alternative ideas: first, that God exists and really does love you and has put that belief into your mind via the road of faith, and second, that God doesn’t exist and that you have just made a mistake.
The problem is that you haven’t given yourself any way to legitimately decide between these two alternatives. Once you say that you have faith, and that it comes directly from God, there is no self-correction mechanism. You can justify essentially any belief at all by claiming that God gave it to you directly, despite any logical or evidence-based arguments to the contrary. This isn’t just nit-picking; it’s precisely what you see in many religious believers. An evidence-based person might reason, “I am becoming skeptical that there exists an all-powerful and all-loving deity, given how much random suffering exists in the world.” But a faith-based person can always think, “I have faith that God exists, so when I see suffering, I need to think of a reason why God would let it happen.”
Sometimes you will hear that “science requires faith,” for example faith that our sense data are reliable or that nature really obeys laws. That’s an abuse of language; science requires assumptions, just like anything else, but those assumptions are subject to testing and updating if necessary. If we built theories on the basis of our sense data, and those theories kept making predictions that turned out to be wrong, we would examine and possibly discard that assumption. If the universe exhibited a chaotic jumble of non-lawlike behavior, rather than falling into beautiful patterns, we would abandon that assumption as well. That’s the most compelling thing about science: it always stands ready to improve by casting out an old idea when the evidence demands it.
Okay, this is probably belaboring the obvious for atheists, and completely irrelevant for believers. But it’s useful to have a specific definition of “faith” right there on the page, if only to understand what its dangers are.
Re: Blunt Instrument
“Do you have children? Very small children are incapable of understanding this.”
And bigger ones can, the point being that a child can eventually understand his parent’s actions, so likening the relationship to that of men to God is a bad comparison, since we presumably remain permanently ignorant of God’s motivations.
“Why is his interference in natural selection necessary to prove his existence?”
It–along with proof of his interference with things such as tectonic plates or weather–would be necessary to proving that there is a God who interferes with his creation, rather than a deist abstraction.
“You presuppose that god would choose to interfere in human affairs to alleviate random suffering. Perhaps you or I would choose to do this. But why should god?”
Why should a God go to the trouble of creating so many beings and places and not care what happens to them? And if he doesn’t, why should we care about him in turn?
“But why does god’s lack of action to eliminate human suffering mean that he/she is irrelevant?”
Because a God who does not interfere with the world has no effect on our lives. He is either impotent, indifferent or malevolent. Perhaps he’s relevant to seeing how the universe was created, but cosmology leaves him little room even for that.
“So perhaps there is hope for you, as well.”
Yes, but none for a blunt instrument.
@Matt (46):
“you may not be able to absolutely define ‘set’, ‘true’ or ‘false’ but you can at least give me a set of axioms – rules for using these words to do maths with that are acceptably self-consistent , don’t lead to contradictions and allow me to construct meaningful chains of reasoning and assess the reasoning of others’in terms of the axioms provided.”
Umm, well, I’d say no, one cannot be given that. Except some very very simple axiomatic systems (those that cannot describe natural numbers), no axiomatic system can be known to be self-consistent (due to Goedel’s incompleteness theorem). You are just working in a set of axioms and hoping that you will not run into a contradiction. Some people would say “having faith” that there is no contradiction. 🙂
“If my maths teacher told me I could only understand set theory by ‘building my intuition’ about what he or she might mean I’d be a bit bewildered.”
Oh? So how about the axiom of choice? Do you consider it to be acceptable (and live with the Banach-Tarski paradox), or unacceptable (and live with the fact that not every set has a choice function)? Or you keep both options in play and check every proof of every theorem out there for using AC? There is nothing but intuition that can help one decide on the status of AC, and there are many mathematicians with many different intuitions out there… I’d suggest you start building your intuition regarding AC, if you care to understand set theory. 🙂
Similarly, if you talk to a believer about his faith, try to understand their own intuitive reasoning about faith. If you fail, the problem is most probably due to your lack of intuition about what faith is, rather than their lack of definitions which are clear from your perspective.
@IA (51):
Blunt Instrument:
“Do you have children? Very small children are incapable of understanding this.”
IA:
And bigger ones can, the point being that a child can eventually understand his parent’s actions, so likening the relationship to that of men to God is a bad comparison, since we presumably remain permanently ignorant of God’s motivations.
—
It is not a bad comparison. The problem is just that humans do not live long enough to be able to obtain enough information to understand God’s motivation. Just like a child which happens to have an unfortunately short life-span to reach the age where understanding the parent’s actions is possible. IOW, our lack of understanding why God allows suffering in the world is precisely that — lack of *our* understanding. The fact that we do not understand the “big picture”, doesn’t imply that there isn’t one.
Blunt Instrument:
“Why is his interference in natural selection necessary to prove his existence?”
IA:
It–along with proof of his interference with things such as tectonic plates or weather–would be necessary to proving that there is a God who interferes with his creation, rather than a deist abstraction.
—
It would not be necessary. God does not need to interfere with the material world, but only with the social one. God intereferes with the world in the realm of how people understand each other, their emotions, their relationships etc. Stuff that is always open to interpretation and cannot be studied empirically.
If God were to move tectonic plates or mountains or such, there would be observable proof of his existence. There would be no room for faith — one would be required to accept God’s existence, based on material evidence. In that way God would deny humans of any choice about his existence, in turn denying the concept of free will. And having free will is the very reason why God created us in the first place (if you believe he did).
So put simply, God wants us to make our own choices about right and wrong, good and evil, belief and skepticism, etc. That’s why he doesn’t interfere with the material world in an empirically measurable way, but only through our emotional and social life.
Consider this explanation: God allows some of his children to die in agony, in order to maintain the possibility for his surviving children to live in freedom. Is freedom of will worth dying for? That is a tough thing to answer, even for a moral atheist. 🙂 People have been choosing to die (or let others die) for far less.
“Faith and Epistemological Quicksand”
I used to expend energy on such a deliberation.
I’m still no further on than where I began.
Life is short, and I have a life to live, what’s left if it.
This ‘atheist’ has grown bored of such fusses.
It’s all just noise that interferes with the signal: Live your life, same as everyone else. Stop being a putz.
The Universe isn’t going to remember you no matter what you subscribe to.
How’s that for Universal Truth?
Re: VMarko
“The problem is just that humans do not live long enough to be able to obtain enough information to understand God’s motivation.”
What on earth makes you so sure that we would do so even if we did live long enough?
“The fact that we do not understand the ‘big picture,’ doesn’t imply that there isn’t one.”
As if there was any reason to believe in a bigger picture!
“God does not need to interfere with the material world, but only with the social one.”
First Blunt Instrument claims God is not understandable and now you’re telling us what God needs or doesn’t need to do…
“God intereferes with the world in the realm of how people understand each other, their emotions, their relationships etc.”
Show me any reason to believe this.
“If God were to move tectonic plates or mountains or such, there would be observable proof of his existence. There would be no room for faith — one would be required to accept God’s existence, based on material evidence.”
And is that a bad thing? Free will would still exist, just as we exercise enough free will to defy any other authority figure. And I’m uncomfortable with the idea of God standing by as earthquakes and tsunamis kill thousands of people just because interfering would blow his cover. Such a God would be a neurotic tease.
“That’s why he doesn’t interfere with the material world in an empirically measurable way, but only through our emotional and social life.”
And doesn’t interfering in our emotional and social life influence our moral choices?
“God allows some of his children to die in agony, in order to maintain the possibility for his surviving children to live in freedom.”
Name an example where this happens.
@vmarko
“Umm, well, I’d say no, one cannot be given that. Except some very very simple axiomatic systems (those that cannot describe natural numbers), no axiomatic system can be known to be self-consistent (due to Goedel’s incompleteness theorem).”
I know that. The axioms lead to some unprovable-but-true statements, but they don’t lead to contradictions and – importantly in this context – I can in principle understand how to manipulate the relevant symbols and check that other people’s manipulation is consistent. Without any kind of framework at all for working with concepts like ‘set’ and ‘number’ maths itself – including, ironically, the proof of Godel’s theorem itself – is impossible. This is where we are.
“ You are just working in a set of axioms and hoping that you will not run into a contradiction..”
No, I’m just working in a set of axioms. I don’t ‘hope’ or ‘believe’ anything about them. If they lead to a contradiction then there’s something wrong with the axioms, or something wrong with my reasoning. If I hit a Godel-type statement then I’ve reached the limits of that particular axiomatic system.
“Oh? So how about the axiom of choice? Do you consider it to be acceptable (and live with the Banach-Tarski paradox), or unacceptable (and live with the fact that not every set has a choice function)? Or you keep both options in play and check every proof of every theorem out there for using AC? There is nothing but intuition that can help one decide on the status of AC, and there are many mathematicians with many different intuitions out there… I’d suggest you start building your intuition regarding AC, if you care to understand set theory. “
I’m not a set theorist but I’m given to understand that the current protocol is your third option – where it actually matters to a proof, one produces a non-AC and an AC version, or states that the proof only works in one of these. I’m not aware that it’s necessary for the set theorist, personally, to ‘believe’ either one of these options. And I’m still lost on what ‘building my intuition’ means in this case – what process would it entail?. Is it your contention that a mathematician ‘builds their intuition’ sufficiently they will have some kind of personal epiphany about the Axiom of Choice and deeply ‘believe’ one way or the other? How would that help them do maths?
And we remain with the basic problem that if we can reach no mutually agreed-upon defnition of ‘set’ then the Axiom of Choice is irrelevant because the set theory to which it applies becomes impossible to do.
“Similarly, if you talk to a believer about his faith, try to understand their own intuitive reasoning about faith.”
This being what I’m doing. This is why I’m asking the questions. My problem isn’t that I don’t understand the answers, it’s that given even the widest parameters I’ve never been able to get any answers at all. Which bewilders me since the religious seem to think it’s terribly, terribly important that I believe the things they believe. You’d think they’d try harder.
Unless, of course, it’s genuinely impossible. Which it might be, but that really would imply that the consciousness of the religious is so wholly alien to my own that any appearance of communication with them at all is simply an illusion bought about by a shared language-system. Which is an unnerving, bodysnatchers-type thought.
“If you fail, the problem is most probably due to your lack of intuition about what faith is, rather than their lack of definitions which are clear from your perspective.”
How am I to judge this when I keep saying that I have no definitions at all, clear or otherwise. My ‘intuition’ about faith is that it’s somehow deciding that it’s OK to think certain things, but not others, are true without checking anything but one’s own internal feelings about them. Since I literally don’t know how to do this and can’t even imagine it’s possible without some sort of major rewiring of my nervous system, I remain confused.
Except, of course, I did say, ‘self-consistent’, didn’t I? My bad, and I promise not what I meant to do.
I feel like this has been an excellent discussion and a great topic. I am LDS and we have a different definition of faith, summed up well in a chapter of the book of mormon. I would love any thoughts on this chapter, I recommend starting from verse 20:
http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/alma/32?lang=eng
@ IA (51)
the point being that a child can eventually understand his parent’s actions, so likening the relationship to that of men to God is a bad comparison
You attempt to discredit my analogy by extending it where I did not.
would be necessary to proving that there is a God who interferes with his creation
Why is it necessary for god to interfere with his creation in this way? According to the new testament, god sent his son here to teach us how to live (among other things). What else is required?
Why should a God go to the trouble of creating so many beings and places and not care what happens to them? And if he doesn’t, why should we care about him in turn?
You presume that the only place where god can care for them is here on earth.
Because a God who does not interfere with the world has no effect on our lives.
God does not need to interfere with the world directly to have an effect on our lives. For example, our lives are as they are today because of the spread of christianity over the last 2000 years. They will be changed by its likely continued decline over the next several decades. How can you possibly say that this has no affect on your life?
I am a Muslim and believe in God based on evidence and reason. In the Qur’an there is no place for faith without evidence, since baseless beliefs can be dangerous. Belief in the Qur’an as a divine source neatly explains cosmic fine tuning, bio-friendliness and progressive evolution. The serious difficulty with this idea is that it does not say how God accomplished this and leaves God Himself unexplained. The Qur’an eliminates these 2 difficulties by informing man how he did it – and since no human had access to such ultramodern information when the Qur’an appeared 14 centuries ago, the reader is driven to invoke a superior intellect. Evidence is an essential aspect of reality – why should religion which is supposed to be a way of life, be approached differently?
Re: Blunt Instrument
“You attempt to discredit my analogy by extending it where I did not.”
And why did you not follow it through to its logical conclusion? Because it did not h0ld. A child’s situation is not permanent, whereas man’s in regard to God is.
“According to the new testament, god sent his son here to teach us how to live (among other things). What else is required?”
How about a reason to believe that what the New Testament said actually occurred? Why should we believe it more than the Greek or Norse legends?
“You presume that the only place where god can care for them is here on earth.”
If God does not care for man on earth, there is little reason for man to care in return. Why should a deity indifferent to our suffering on earth suddenly care what happens afterward?
“God does not need to interfere with the world directly to have an effect on our lives. For example, our lives are as they are today because of the spread of Christianity over the last 2000 years.”
And where is the proof that this was God’s doing, rather than another example of a man-made craze?
@ Gary (54)
I’m still no further on than where I began… This ‘atheist’ has grown bored of such fusses.
This ‘atheist’ thinks the fusses can be quite entertaining, but agrees that they are likely of little utility.
It’s all just noise that interferes with the signal: Live your life, same as everyone else. Stop being a putz.
That’s probably the most succinct description of ‘religion’ that I have encountered. Excellent.
The Universe isn’t going to remember you no matter what you subscribe to.
The universe will ‘remember’ us; the universe ‘remembers’ everything. But whether the universe ‘cares’ is a separate issue.
@ IA (61)
And why did you not follow it through to its logical conclusion?
Because my analogy was specific, not general. Yours is a ‘junior league’ rhetorical trick. Debate the analogy, not what you want the analogy to be.
How about a reason to believe that what the New Testament said actually occurred?
Currently, we only have the surviving records of testimony and subsequent behavior of numerous eye witnesses. God apparantly does not believe that your skepticism about it requires further clarification from him.
If God does not care for man on earth, there is little reason for man to care in return.
You continue to presume, without justification, that god does not care for man on earth just because god’s demonstrations of ‘caring’ are not consistent with what you want them to be.
Why should a deity indifferent to our suffering on earth suddenly care what happens afterward?
Perhaps because afterward is more important. That’s what the new testament teaches.
RE: Blunt Instrument
“Yours is a ‘junior league’ rhetorical trick. Debate the analogy, not what you want the analogy to be.”
When an analogy is bad, it deserves it to be taken apart. A child is simply not in the same position as a man before God, because unlike that man, the child will eventually understand the ways of his parents.
“Currently, we only have the surviving records of testimony and subsequent behavior of numerous eye witnesses. ”
No. We have a bunch of contradictory texts of doubtful provenance, written many years after the events they claim to have witnessed. Even the issue of the existence of a prophet named Jesus is doubtful.
“You continue to presume, without justification, that god does not care for man on earth just because god’s demonstrations of ‘caring’ are not consistent with what you want them to be.”
Any evidence of God caring for man on earth is flimsy and less likely than the idea that life subject to chance and the everyday forces of geology, physics, and biology, none of which show any signs of divine interference. The recent tsunamis in Japan and Indonesia have no more likelihood of being God’s work than 9/11 did. What I want God’s demonstrations of caring to be are justifications backed up the evidence of this world, not an old books of myths written by goat-herders.
“Perhaps because afterward is more important. That’s what the new testament teaches.”
The New Testament also teaches that God is not indifferent to our suffering. Given the evidence for his indifference, I ask again why should a deity indifferent to our suffering on earth suddenly care what happens afterward?
@IA (55):
Me:
“The problem is just that humans do not live long enough to be able to obtain enough information to understand God’s motivation.”
IA:
What on earth makes you so sure that we would do so even if we did live long enough?
—
Well, nothing, of coruse. But even if we assume that humans are in principle able to understand God’s perspective (given enough information), our lifespan is just too short to obtain all that information. The opposite assumption (that humans could never understand God’s perspective) can also be true, but reaches the same conclusion — we have no way of understanding why God behaves as he does.
Me:
“The fact that we do not understand the ‘big picture,’ doesn’t imply that there isn’t one.”
IA:
As if there was any reason to believe in a bigger picture!
—
That is the whole point of religion — belief that there is a bigger picture (life after death stuff), despite lack of any evidence whatsoever. Feel free not to believe if you don’t want to, but also let other people believe if they choose to.
Me:
“God does not need to interfere with the material world, but only with the social one.”
IA:
First Blunt Instrument claims God is not understandable and now you’re telling us what God needs or doesn’t need to do…
—
I am not telling you what God needs or doesn’t need. I am just offering a possible explanation for God’s behavior, which many religious people find plausible and satisfactory. If you want to understand why religious people are religious, and what do they actually believe in, then I guess it can be a good idea to understand how those people explain God’s behavior to themselves.
Me:
“God intereferes with the world in the realm of how people understand each other, their emotions, their relationships etc.”
IA:
Show me any reason to believe this.
—
What do you mean by “reason to believe” here? Evidence? If there were evidence, belief would not really be an option, everybody would have to face this evidence. Motivation? The motivation why some people believe this is because this belief makes their lives more soothing, and gives them a sense of purpose in the world. If you don’t feel a need for having a purpose in the world, and if you don’t need any soothing and comforting in the time of pain — or if you have an alternative way of satisfying those needs — feel free not to believe. Everybody can make a choice that fits them best. 🙂
Me:
“If God were to move tectonic plates or mountains or such, there would be observable proof of his existence. There would be no room for faith — one would be required to accept God’s existence, based on material evidence.”
IA:
And is that a bad thing? Free will would still exist, just as we exercise enough free will to defy any other authority figure. And I’m uncomfortable with the idea of God standing by as earthquakes and tsunamis kill thousands of people just because interfering would blow his cover. Such a God would be a neurotic tease.
—
Regarding free will, it would be just a mirage, since one would be given an ultimate authority that can answer what is good and what is bad. The point of free will is in the absence of an authoritative answer to the good/evil question — you need to exercise your free will to make your own decision about what is good and what is evil. Religious people just believe that this question has a well-defined answer (that will be revealed to them at the judgement day or such), while atheists believe that the “real” answer doesn’t exist and that concepts of “good” and “evil” are always subject to interpretation. The physical world around us does not have a definition for these concepts, so each person needs to make up their own mind. If God were interfering with the material world, one would in principle be able to “measure” (or otherwise deduce from observations) what is “really” good and what is “really” evil. There would be no choice one could make about the matter. Free will stops there.
Regarding your uncomfort about God doing nothing to stop a tsunami… As you know, everybody dies, eventually. The mechanism (tsunami, car accident, disease, old age, …) is not actually relevant too much, although you might find some of them more frightening than the others. A plausible explanation again: God is not interested too much in a material body of a human — it will perish anyway in some years. What is much more important for God is the human soul. Btw, the soul is again a psychological/social/emotional construct, having no manifestation in physical world, other than through human behavior.
So if someone dies a horrible and quick death by a tsunami or dies a painless and slow death of old age some years later, is not so important to God. It is only more or less frightening for humans. It also seems to be a bit less frightening for religious people than atheists, as far as I can see. People who are “strong in faith” do not really care when, where and how their life will end. That is an example of the “soothing comfort” that religion gives to a believer, that I mentioned above.
Me:
“That’s why he doesn’t interfere with the material world in an empirically measurable way, but only through our emotional and social life.”
IA:
And doesn’t interfering in our emotional and social life influence our moral choices?
—
Of course it does, that’s why you see religious and atheist people having all those moral debates about various stuff (abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, accountability for crimes, etc.). What is your point with this question?
Me:
“God allows some of his children to die in agony, in order to maintain the possibility for his surviving children to live in freedom.”
IA:
Name an example where this happens.
—
I am not exactly sure what kind of examples you are asking for, but let me try:
As for God, one example would be Jesus Christ dying in agony as a form of sacrifice for the remainder of the human race (as far as Christianity is concerned; I am not familiar enough with other religions to name analogous examples).
As for people, there are numerous examples — people sacrificing their own lives in order to save their loved ones; military leaders sacrificing the lives of some soldiers in order to win a battle against the enemy; even ants and bees display this kind of behavior, sacrificing part of the collective for the benefit of others. Also, governments of the developed countries sacrificing hungry children in Africa in order to maintain the wealth and life standard for the children that live in developed countries. Etc. It happens all the time. 🙂
HTH 🙂
@Matt (56):
Me:
“Umm, well, I’d say no, one cannot be given that. Except some very very simple axiomatic systems (those that cannot describe natural numbers), no axiomatic system can be known to be self-consistent (due to Goedel’s incompleteness theorem).”
Matt:
I know that. The axioms lead to some unprovable-but-true statements, but they don’t lead to contradictions and – importantly in this context – I can in principle understand how to manipulate the relevant symbols and check that other people’s manipulation is consistent.
—
Ooops, no, wait, I was talking about the *other* Goedel’s incompleteness theorem — the one that says it is impossible to prove the consistency of an axiomatic system if it is strong enough to describe natural numbers. So you *cannot* know that the axioms do not lead to contradictions. Sorry, I wasn’t precise enough.
Me:
“Similarly, if you talk to a believer about his faith, try to understand their own intuitive reasoning about faith.”
Matt:
This being what I’m doing. This is why I’m asking the questions. My problem isn’t that I don’t understand the answers, it’s that given even the widest parameters I’ve never been able to get any answers at all. Which bewilders me since the religious seem to think it’s terribly, terribly important that I believe the things they believe. You’d think they’d try harder.
—
Maybe you are talking to the wrong people? 😉
Also, there is a name for people who want to enforce their religion to others — fundamentalists. Religion (and also atheism) is a matter of personal choice, and everyone should be allowed to make that choice as they see fit. It is very important to make a sharp distinction between religious people and fundamentalists. It is also very important to refrain from judging about religion itself based on the hostile behavior of the fundamentalists (that would be a very blunt error). I find it quite sad when some atheists are reenforcing their atheism just because they live in a hostile fundamentalist environment (this is especially common in the USA, as far as I can hear). Just make sure not to fall into that trap. 🙂
When I figure that someone stops comparing my beliefs to his beliefs, and starts insisting on persuading me to accept his religious point of view, I usually give up discussing. Religion is about choice, not truth.
HTH 🙂
Dr. Carroll and others who actively promote atheism are presumably doing so because of all the harm done in the name of the Abrahamic religions. If the majority of Christians had actually followed what the New Testament says over the past 100 years, there would have been no WW I, no WW II (at least not in Europe) and certainly no Holocaust. So, bringing to mind a debate you can see on the Skeptic mag website held earlier this year, rather than debate the topic “Does Science refute Religion?”, maybe the more important question for atheists to consider is “Does Science refute that humans can truly follow their Religion?”
If the answer is no (ie, the majority of humans can over time be Christ-like or Buddha-like), then promoting atheism seems like a small, inconsequential academic argument. But if the answer is yes (ie, humans can profess these beliefs but cannot follow them), then the atheists challenge to believers should be “you call yourself Christian?- prove it (faith without works is dead).” It’s not the responsibility of a believer to prove to an atheist that God exists, but to prove that his Religion actually exists by healing/repairing the world.
“Once you say that you have faith, and that it comes directly from God, there is no self-correction mechanism. You can justify essentially any belief at all by claiming that God gave it to you directly…”
This is essentially the classic Great Pumpkin objection that Plantinga himself raised in a paper on his “Reformed epistemology” thirty years ago. It has been both the foundation and the primary weakness of his externalist system from the beginning.
Believers don’t get the joke nonbelievers tell them and vice versa. Therefore each tries to explain the joke to the other. We all know how funny jokes are when they need to be explained.
Some of the assumptions which science rests upon are truly fundamental, being about the scientist his- or herself. The kind of hand-waving which this piece resorts to in attempting to privilege methodological naturalism will not suffice to validate them: “If … theories kept making predictions that turned out to be wrong, [or] the universe exhibited a chaotic jumble of non-lawlike behavior, rather than falling into beautiful patterns”. Such unverifiable assumptions include:
1) The consciousness which I experience is localized.
2) This consciousness is distinct from and independent of all other conscious entities which may exist.
3) This consciousness can be considered to operate independently of its content.
4) This consciousness, as it now manifests, is comprehensively representative of consciousness as it has been experienced by humans.
It is, moreover, perfectly possible to investigate these subjective issues empirically; a process which is properly termed “meditation”. Each of us sometimes experiences the numinous. Whether systematically, through meditation; experimentally, through psychedelic drug use; or idiosyncratically, through those marvellous moments when we spontaneously find ourselves in harmony with nature. Science is awesome, but it isn’t enough.
Of course faith is ridiculous, but more importantly it is unhelpful as a means to comprehend reality. It is a potent distraction to those who are not content to go along with the current fad of ignoring one’s own subjective reality in favour of “emergence” or some such piffle. Consciousness simply can’t be reduced into information, it can’t be finessed into non-existence. I AM, and even though my nature is obscure, still nothing is more directly observed than the fact of my own existence.
@Vijen
I need make no assumptions at all to do science. The ‘actual’ nature of my consciousness, the consciousness of others or the external world in general, if there is such a thing, is irrelevant. I observe correlations. I make and share models that explain those correlations and we all check that they don’t also predict other correlations that aren’t observed or vice versa. Why does it matter whether the correlations or the people I share them with are ‘real’ in any absolute sense, or even whether I am?
And, I have, of course, experienced ‘the numinous’ via various routes. The fact that it can be induced chemically is pretty strong evidence that it’s a biological event, entirely describable in terms of the aforementioned correlations. This doesn’t mean it is, of course, but I’m not clear how the existence of transcendent experiences is conclusive proof that science ‘isn’t enough’ (enough for what, btw?).
As for consciousness itself – either it can be described as part of a model of the observed correlations or it can’t. If it can, then wouldn’t it be interesting to do so? If it can’t then we’ve always got art, which has been generating and sharing intricate and beautiful models of subjective experience since we first started banging drums, telling stories and daubing mammoths on cave walls.
@Matt Bright
I’m quite sure I made no claims upon “absolute” reality, but are you satisfied with “correlations”? When I assert that science isn’t enough, I do so on my own authority, based upon my own experience.
I would guess that you have an extensive science-based education, as do I. After at least a decade of hard work you have attained to a sophisticated appreciation of the wonders of external reality. So: when you chat with friends who followed a different path, is it easy and straightforward to share your scientific standpoint with them? Perhaps they accept your authority on evolution, vaccinations, climate change, homeopathy, etc.; but are they really competent to understand your perspective? Isn’t it probable that the next eloquent advocate of pseudoscientific bullshit will change their minds?
I’ve spent several decades engaged in an empirical enquiry into my own subjectivity. I’m not the first, there is a vast corpus of reported results from such enquiries. But unless you, yourself, invest the effort in meditation, this research will remain inaccessible to you. Any so-called “philosopher” (Dennet? Chalmers? McGinn? Flanagan?) will be able to confuse you.
I am driven to pursue a scientific understanding of the outer world by the same implacable spirit of curiosity which drives my joyful exploration of the inner world. As you say, artists do indeed have one foot in each world, but scientists can do the same. Stop trying to put a wrapper around consciousness and check it out for yourself, directly.
Thanks for your intelligent response, by the way, there’s more on my blog (click on my name) if you’re still attending.
@vijen
Yes, I am entirely happy with correlations. Some of them are elegant. Beautiful, even. I have no interest in whether they’re ‘true’ in any but the most trivial, everyday sense of ‘consistent with the currently available evidence. Which is lucky, since neither you nor I have a pipeline to the Ding-an-Sich, or even any guarantee that there is such a thing.
I am, as we all are (or, to be rigorous, appear to be), ‘engaged in an empirical enquiry into my own subjectivity’. Meditation is one form of this, but so, of course, is eating lunch. I have, yes, enjoyed the thinking of Dennett, yes, and Metzinger, and Damasio as considerations of subjectivity. I have also enjoyed the poetry of John Ashbery, the paintings of Mark Rothko, the music of Bach and Stockhausen, the comedy of Stewart Lee, the snooker of Jimmy White,a well-cooked dinner, a stimulating conversation, good sex and numerous other modes of investigating, experiencing and expressing subjectivity
I’ve even tried to create similar expressions myself – you seem to assume that scientists have difficulty creating art. I would like to disagree and so – in a much more forceful and worthy way, would Miroslav Holub, Primo Levi, Alexander Borodin and, I’m sure, many other.
In the end, there is no ‘inner world’. There is no ‘outer world’. There is ‘world’ – ‘suddener’, as Louis MacNiece said, ‘than we fancy it…crazier and more of it than we think. Incorrigibly plural.’ The thing to do is stop thinking you’ll get the drop on it, because you won’t – sit still and it goes away, act and you’re too busy to notice it. Fretting about ‘what it really is’ does you no good. I’m very firmly not putting a wrapper around consciousness – but you appear to be trying to.
As as Justin Barrett pointed out,” we might be born as believers”,
“Do children believe because they’re told to by adults? The evidence suggests otherwise”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2008/nov/25/religion-children-god-belief
But anyway believing that there is God is based also on intuitive thinking .
I can’t see how the universe, multiverse or whatever would emerge from nothing (literally nothing at all), how can physics explain that, so ignoring that point and accepting the world is against intitution and logic .
We should take care of details but never forget intuition or the whole picture.
The following article discusses also how believing in God is an intuitive thing
http://www.livescience.com/16151-god-belief-intuition.html
May be my two comments are out of context of the current article ,but I wanted to point out that believing in God is not an irrational or illogical.