Exapologist wrote: Thanks for that link. Although I never quite make it to atheism, I see in Alan's post this curious link between atheism and some reductionistic kind of materialism that apologists often link together. So there's this sort of implicit conditional:
If atheism is true, then reductive materialism is true.
Or some similar claim lurking in its neighborhood. Does this seem right? If so, then I wonder what sort of reason one might offer on its behalf. I assume it wouldn't be something to the effect that it would be weird if there were necessary truths if the God of classical theism didn't exist.
It seems to me that the atheist is only commited to something along the following lines:
Whatever turns out to be on the catalogue of things there are, a theistic god isn't in it.
But this sort of claim is compatible with lots of things that go beyond reductionistic accounts of materialism. In fact, it's totally compatible with the view that, e.g., there are necessary truths (including necessary moral truths).
EXAP: I'm not at all sure that the claim that atheism entails reductive materialism is required for this argument. One could argue that nonreductive materialism has difficulty fitting moral truths into the world as well. Even if you admit that such truths can be admitted into one's ontology wihtout compromising naturalism, you still have the problem of how it is possible to come to believe that such and such is a necessary moral truth, at least in part in virtue of the fact that such and such is a necessary moral truth. That is, in my view, what it would be for us to know that something was a necessary moral truth, and all forms of naturalism undercut this possibility.
I happen to believe that if there are objective moral values, the theistic God is the best explanation for why these exist.
Many people do want to use the existence of evil as a reason for preferring naturalism to theism. However, if the statement "There is evil" is part of the argument (as opposed to just saying "there is something the theist is going to call evil), then this argument might raise a problem for theism, but on my view it is logically incompatible with naturalism.
The argument from evil, used as a stick to beat the theist over the head with, can easily turn into a rattlesnake that bites the atheist on the hand.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Lecture notes on the Buddha
Buddhism
I. Siddhartha Gautama, known as the Buddha, the founder of Buddhism
A. Lived approximately 563 B. C. to 483 B. C.
B. He was a prince from Northern India
C. Married at 19 to his cousin
D. Apocryphal story of the Four Passing Sights
1. Whether this story is literally true or not has no bearing on the truth of Buddhism. Buddhism, like Hinduism (and unlike Judaism and Christianity) is a non-historical religion)
E. Renounced life as a nobleman and went out on a religious quest as a homeless wanderer at 29.
F. Attempted to find religious satisfaction through knowledge- this failed
G. Also sought enlightenment through extreme bodily asceticism
H. At 35, under a tree he discovers the secret—that his failure to achieve release from suffering was due to desire or craving-tanha is the Pali word for it, a concept also found in the Upanishads. However, the Upanishads connect this with eliminating earthly desires to as to desire only Brahman-atman, Buddha emphasized not a metaphysical solution but a practical psychological one.
1. Another apocryphal story about his being tempted by the Evil One.
I. At this point the Buddha achieved enlightenment; he had freed himself from the bonds of desire and had achieved a state of wakefulness.
J. Now he faced a problem: should he share the doctrine he had discovered?
K. Decided to advocate a middle way between self-indulgence and asceticism
L. Established the Buddhist order, the sangha
M. Ten Precepts of for Buddhist Monks-the first five are required of laity as well as monks
1. Refrain from destroying life
2. Do not take what is not given
3. Abstain from unchastity
4. Do not lie or deceive
5. Abstain from intoxicants
6. Eat moderately and not after noon
7. Do not look on at dancing, singing or dramatic spectacles
8. Do not affect the use of garlands, scents, unguents, or ornaments
9. Do not use high or broad beds
10. Do not accept gold or silver
N. The Buddha accepted women as nuns, but also said it would harm the longevity of his message.
O. Died of food poisoning at the age of 80.
I. Siddhartha Gautama, known as the Buddha, the founder of Buddhism
A. Lived approximately 563 B. C. to 483 B. C.
B. He was a prince from Northern India
C. Married at 19 to his cousin
D. Apocryphal story of the Four Passing Sights
1. Whether this story is literally true or not has no bearing on the truth of Buddhism. Buddhism, like Hinduism (and unlike Judaism and Christianity) is a non-historical religion)
E. Renounced life as a nobleman and went out on a religious quest as a homeless wanderer at 29.
F. Attempted to find religious satisfaction through knowledge- this failed
G. Also sought enlightenment through extreme bodily asceticism
H. At 35, under a tree he discovers the secret—that his failure to achieve release from suffering was due to desire or craving-tanha is the Pali word for it, a concept also found in the Upanishads. However, the Upanishads connect this with eliminating earthly desires to as to desire only Brahman-atman, Buddha emphasized not a metaphysical solution but a practical psychological one.
1. Another apocryphal story about his being tempted by the Evil One.
I. At this point the Buddha achieved enlightenment; he had freed himself from the bonds of desire and had achieved a state of wakefulness.
J. Now he faced a problem: should he share the doctrine he had discovered?
K. Decided to advocate a middle way between self-indulgence and asceticism
L. Established the Buddhist order, the sangha
M. Ten Precepts of for Buddhist Monks-the first five are required of laity as well as monks
1. Refrain from destroying life
2. Do not take what is not given
3. Abstain from unchastity
4. Do not lie or deceive
5. Abstain from intoxicants
6. Eat moderately and not after noon
7. Do not look on at dancing, singing or dramatic spectacles
8. Do not affect the use of garlands, scents, unguents, or ornaments
9. Do not use high or broad beds
10. Do not accept gold or silver
N. The Buddha accepted women as nuns, but also said it would harm the longevity of his message.
O. Died of food poisoning at the age of 80.
The passing of Molly Ivins
Molly Ivins, the author of Shrub and Bushwhacked, passed away yesterday. A left-leaning Texan (hence a walking oxymoron), she was an entertaining writer that even conservatives could enjoy and appreciate. She will be missed.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Alanyzer: The Problem of Evil Is a Problem for Everyone
Alanyzer: The Problem of Evil Is a Problem for Everyone
Alan Rhoda has an interesting discussion on the problem of evil that parallels some arguments made here. He's even debating some of the usual suspects.
Alan Rhoda has an interesting discussion on the problem of evil that parallels some arguments made here. He's even debating some of the usual suspects.
Al Haig's theodicy: An "informed consent" solution to the problem of evil
By Albert Haig, who I take it is not related to the Al Haig of Nixon administration fame. He was an Alexander.
Vallicella on the "problem of interaction"
This is an objection that, according to William Hasker, sets the all-time record for overrated philosophical arguments.
Tom Gilson reviews The God Delusion
It looks to me as atheists are better off with the likes of Mackie, Flew, and Parsons than they are with Dawkins.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Buddha, Stoicism and Epicureanism
In my class on History of World Religions, we have ended our treatment of Hinduism and are starting Buddhism. The question I have is what makes Buddha a religions teacher, and not an ethical philosopher. Buddha offered a way of dealing with, and overcoming, human suffering and the transitoriness of human existence, and formed a group to pursue that end. But didn't the Stoics and Epicureans do the same thing? What property does Buddha have that makes him a religious teacher, and the Stoics and Epicureans philosophers instead. And not a property like "founded a movement that eventually became one of the world's great religions." I mean a property that you could have picked out when Buddha was alive.
Can Science explain everything
Apparently not, according to Denis Alexander. In this piece Alexander says that naturalism is self-refuting and self-defeating.
More on Buddhism, Stoicism and Epicureanism
A redated post from 2/8/05, which followed the last one back then
Apparently I started a discussion that not only really got going here, but has spread to Maverick Philosopher and Big Hominid. where will it end?
Certainly Stoicism is a profoundly religious philosophy; the ideas of the "God-intoxicated Jew" Spinoza are remarkably similar to Stoicism. I'm not at all sure whether Boddha's teaching is supposed to teach us to get our desires calmed down so we can stop suffering, or whether there is a positive element in Nirvana, or enlightenment.
As for what a religion is, it seems as if we learn how to use the word "religion" when we see the religions that are prevalent in our neck of the woods (in this neck of the woods it's Christianity for the most part) and then we look at other cultures and describe as "religious" the things tha they do that are like what we call religion here. Only the way in which we divide life up between the religious and the not religious is probably not how people in other cultures would divide it up; in fact it is pretty unclear whether they would make that kind of a division at all. (Can you say "secular humanism" in Swahili?)
Also, probably the mystical or religious elements of Stoicism probably got washed away or absorbed by the rising tide of Christianity in the ancient world.
Apparently I started a discussion that not only really got going here, but has spread to Maverick Philosopher and Big Hominid. where will it end?
Certainly Stoicism is a profoundly religious philosophy; the ideas of the "God-intoxicated Jew" Spinoza are remarkably similar to Stoicism. I'm not at all sure whether Boddha's teaching is supposed to teach us to get our desires calmed down so we can stop suffering, or whether there is a positive element in Nirvana, or enlightenment.
As for what a religion is, it seems as if we learn how to use the word "religion" when we see the religions that are prevalent in our neck of the woods (in this neck of the woods it's Christianity for the most part) and then we look at other cultures and describe as "religious" the things tha they do that are like what we call religion here. Only the way in which we divide life up between the religious and the not religious is probably not how people in other cultures would divide it up; in fact it is pretty unclear whether they would make that kind of a division at all. (Can you say "secular humanism" in Swahili?)
Also, probably the mystical or religious elements of Stoicism probably got washed away or absorbed by the rising tide of Christianity in the ancient world.
A question from a student
According to perhaps the most popular philosophical tradition in Hinduism, Advaita Vedanta, all things are one and distinction between one thing and another, or between God and the world, are not real. Yet through much of Hindu history, one of the defining elements of Hinduism is the caste system, which makes a good deal about the distinctions between persons. If, as Advaita Vendanta teaches, all things are one and all things are God, doesn't it follow that all castes are one and distinctions between them are not real?
Monday, January 29, 2007
Still More Plato Notes
I. Plato’s political theory
A. Plato defines a just society to illustrate what a just life would be, since the principles of political science and the principles of psychology are the same.
The soul of the person is a miniature version of the structure of society.
B. The good life cannot be lived apart from the state.
C. State should be built around a division of labor.
1. Those whose first inclination is to be governed by the rational part of the soul should be Guardians, in the ruling class. However, they get the least in terms of economic gain. (Since they are not guided by their appetites, they should not need to indulge their appetites so much). These are the philosopher-kings; the idea is that those who rule should love wisdom above all.
2. People on the second level are the auxiliaries, those whose first thought is to follow the spirited part of the soul. They are ambitious, assertive, and desire honor. They are the police-soldiers of the state.
3. On the third level there are the producers, people governed by appetites. (Clearly the most numerous of the three groups). They get more riches than anyone else but no political power. In fact the lovers of guardians are justified in telling lies to these people to get them to do what is in their best interest.
D. How do you get an ideal state? Plato tried to teach a prince, it didn’t work. You just have to be lucky enough to get a king in there who happens to be a lover or wisdom.
E. And even then the idea society will eventually disintegrate. In fact what will happen is that it will disintegrate into a democracy. Instead of the country being run by those who are most competent, a democracy will “promote to honor anyone who merely calls himself the people’s friend.”
(But that never happens in an actual democracy).
II. Plato believes that the order of the universe points to a wondrous regulating intelligence.
A. The supreme cause is called the demiurge
B. It does not, however, create the universe out of nothing.
C. Imposes the forms on the chaotic “Receptacle.”
D. The order of the universe points to a mind behind it all.
A. Plato defines a just society to illustrate what a just life would be, since the principles of political science and the principles of psychology are the same.
The soul of the person is a miniature version of the structure of society.
B. The good life cannot be lived apart from the state.
C. State should be built around a division of labor.
1. Those whose first inclination is to be governed by the rational part of the soul should be Guardians, in the ruling class. However, they get the least in terms of economic gain. (Since they are not guided by their appetites, they should not need to indulge their appetites so much). These are the philosopher-kings; the idea is that those who rule should love wisdom above all.
2. People on the second level are the auxiliaries, those whose first thought is to follow the spirited part of the soul. They are ambitious, assertive, and desire honor. They are the police-soldiers of the state.
3. On the third level there are the producers, people governed by appetites. (Clearly the most numerous of the three groups). They get more riches than anyone else but no political power. In fact the lovers of guardians are justified in telling lies to these people to get them to do what is in their best interest.
D. How do you get an ideal state? Plato tried to teach a prince, it didn’t work. You just have to be lucky enough to get a king in there who happens to be a lover or wisdom.
E. And even then the idea society will eventually disintegrate. In fact what will happen is that it will disintegrate into a democracy. Instead of the country being run by those who are most competent, a democracy will “promote to honor anyone who merely calls himself the people’s friend.”
(But that never happens in an actual democracy).
II. Plato believes that the order of the universe points to a wondrous regulating intelligence.
A. The supreme cause is called the demiurge
B. It does not, however, create the universe out of nothing.
C. Imposes the forms on the chaotic “Receptacle.”
D. The order of the universe points to a mind behind it all.
Lecture Notes on Plato
IV. Plato: The first comprehensive philosophical system
A. Theory of Knowledge
1. Against relativism
a. Relativism is self-refuting
b. Everyone recognizes the difference between belief and knowledge. Ex. If hurt our foot, does anyone think their own opinion is as good as that a trained physician in determining whether or not the foot is sprained or broken
2. Against empiricism (the claim that all knowledge comes from experience
a. The world of experience is in flux
b. Objects in experience are relative to the observers
c. What is real knowledge must be something universal that we can capture in a universal definition. Consider the concept of justice.
1. Either justice is something real and objective, or it is a mere word.
2. If the second alternative is true, then our moral judgments have no value. There is no real difference between Hitler and a saint except certain sounds we conventionally apply to them.
3. But this is absurd. There is a difference between Hitler and a saint.
4. So justice is something real and objective.
5. That which is real must by physical or nonphysical.
6. Clearly, justice cannot be physical.
7. Therefore justice must be something real, objective, and nonphysical.
3. Knowledge is more than just true belief.—must be justified.
4. Universal forms are the basis of knowledge. Forms are
a. Objective
b. Unavailable to the senses
c. Universal
d. Unchanging
e. Grounded in a rational understanding
5. Knowledge comes through recollection
a. Before we were born we had access to the forms
b. When we became encased in fleshly bodies we lost that knowledge
c. Knowledge of the forms can be recovered through a process of recollection.
d. Slave boy argument-Socrates by questioning a slave boy leads him to prove a mathematical theorem. Since Socrates didn’t pump anything into his head, he had to have had the knowledge inside all along, waiting to come out.
6. The divided line
a. Imagination or conjecture-knows shadows, images and reflections
b. Belief-knows things and objects
c. Thinking-knows lower forms
d. Rational intuition or pure knowledge, knows the higher forms.
A. Theory of Knowledge
1. Against relativism
a. Relativism is self-refuting
b. Everyone recognizes the difference between belief and knowledge. Ex. If hurt our foot, does anyone think their own opinion is as good as that a trained physician in determining whether or not the foot is sprained or broken
2. Against empiricism (the claim that all knowledge comes from experience
a. The world of experience is in flux
b. Objects in experience are relative to the observers
c. What is real knowledge must be something universal that we can capture in a universal definition. Consider the concept of justice.
1. Either justice is something real and objective, or it is a mere word.
2. If the second alternative is true, then our moral judgments have no value. There is no real difference between Hitler and a saint except certain sounds we conventionally apply to them.
3. But this is absurd. There is a difference between Hitler and a saint.
4. So justice is something real and objective.
5. That which is real must by physical or nonphysical.
6. Clearly, justice cannot be physical.
7. Therefore justice must be something real, objective, and nonphysical.
3. Knowledge is more than just true belief.—must be justified.
4. Universal forms are the basis of knowledge. Forms are
a. Objective
b. Unavailable to the senses
c. Universal
d. Unchanging
e. Grounded in a rational understanding
5. Knowledge comes through recollection
a. Before we were born we had access to the forms
b. When we became encased in fleshly bodies we lost that knowledge
c. Knowledge of the forms can be recovered through a process of recollection.
d. Slave boy argument-Socrates by questioning a slave boy leads him to prove a mathematical theorem. Since Socrates didn’t pump anything into his head, he had to have had the knowledge inside all along, waiting to come out.
6. The divided line
a. Imagination or conjecture-knows shadows, images and reflections
b. Belief-knows things and objects
c. Thinking-knows lower forms
d. Rational intuition or pure knowledge, knows the higher forms.
More Plato Notes
I. Plato’s theory of knowledge
A. The nature of the forms
1. They are universal objects
2. They are not in space and time
3. they are objective, unavailable to the sense, universal, unchanging and grounded in a rational understanding
4. Circular objects, for example, have the Universal of Circularity in common
B. They are known through a process of recollection
1. Dialectical reasoning triggers the recollection of the Forms
C. The divided line
D. The form of the good
II. Plato’s metaphysics
A. The reality of the forms
B. The problem of change
1. Platonic dualism: The realm of particulars is subject to change
2. The realm of forms is not
C. Particulars and forms
1. The forms are what is most real
2. Particulars are real insofar as they resemble the forms
3. Therefore some things can be more real than others
D. The Allegory of the Cave
1. People are like the slaves who see only shadows on the cave wall
2. If someone were to somehow be thrust outside the cave s/he might come to see that the people inside the cave are living in illusion; thinking that the particular occurrences of their lives represent ultimate reality, when they do not.
3. If s/he, out of compassion for the people inside the cave, were to go in and try to show them that they were living in an illusion, they might no like it. In fact, they might kill him (like they did Socrates).
III. Plato’s Moral Theory
A. Against moral relativism
1. In ethics we are concerned with the Form of Justice and the Form of the Good. For example, we might want to say that laws of Arizona in 2004 are more just in the area of racial equality than the laws of Alabama in 1954. What does this mean? What is the standard? For Plato, the standard would be the Form of Justice. The laws of Arizona in 2004 more closely resemble the Form of Justice than do the laws of Alabama in 1954, at least insofar as race is concerned.
2. What this means is that the question of justice is not settled because everyone in a culture thinks it’s just, or even if everyone in the world thinks it’s just. Suppose Hitler had won WWII and taken over the world, killing all of the Jews and having an annual holiday, with lots of celebrations, on the day the last Jew died. Everyone would agree that Nazi anti-Semitism and the Holocaust was a good thing, and, for Plato, everyone would be wrong.
B. Why be moral?
1. Would everyone be immoral if it were to their advantage to do so?
2. The ring of Gyges. Plato’s brothers asked whether everyone wouldn’t do wrong if they knew it would be advantageous to them to do so.
C. The three parts of the soul. The answer to this is found in an analysis of human nature. If a person is just the sum total of their appetites, then one should do what will satisfy those appetites. But there are three parts of the soul
1. Reason-the desire for the Form of the Good
2. The Spirited Part, which is the part of you that seeks interpersonal satisfaction.
3. The appetites
Plato argues that a soul is properly ordered just in case reason commands and spirit and appetite obey.
D. The Four Cardinal Virtues are wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice.
1. Wisdom is being controlled and guided by reason.
2. Under the influence of reason, the spirited part generates the virtue of courage.
3. If the appetites are under control, then the person possesses the virtue of temperance or self-control
4. Justice is being a properly ordered person, with reason in command and spirit and appetite in obedience
E. So why be just or moral? Once we understand how the person is put together, the question ends up sounding something like “Why be well as opposed to sick?” The only reason you wouldn’t want to be moral is if you were confused about what your true good is and thought that you could achieve that good by cheating others for the sake of satisfying one’s appetites. Not only does this harm others, but most importantly, it harms yourself.
A. The nature of the forms
1. They are universal objects
2. They are not in space and time
3. they are objective, unavailable to the sense, universal, unchanging and grounded in a rational understanding
4. Circular objects, for example, have the Universal of Circularity in common
B. They are known through a process of recollection
1. Dialectical reasoning triggers the recollection of the Forms
C. The divided line
D. The form of the good
II. Plato’s metaphysics
A. The reality of the forms
B. The problem of change
1. Platonic dualism: The realm of particulars is subject to change
2. The realm of forms is not
C. Particulars and forms
1. The forms are what is most real
2. Particulars are real insofar as they resemble the forms
3. Therefore some things can be more real than others
D. The Allegory of the Cave
1. People are like the slaves who see only shadows on the cave wall
2. If someone were to somehow be thrust outside the cave s/he might come to see that the people inside the cave are living in illusion; thinking that the particular occurrences of their lives represent ultimate reality, when they do not.
3. If s/he, out of compassion for the people inside the cave, were to go in and try to show them that they were living in an illusion, they might no like it. In fact, they might kill him (like they did Socrates).
III. Plato’s Moral Theory
A. Against moral relativism
1. In ethics we are concerned with the Form of Justice and the Form of the Good. For example, we might want to say that laws of Arizona in 2004 are more just in the area of racial equality than the laws of Alabama in 1954. What does this mean? What is the standard? For Plato, the standard would be the Form of Justice. The laws of Arizona in 2004 more closely resemble the Form of Justice than do the laws of Alabama in 1954, at least insofar as race is concerned.
2. What this means is that the question of justice is not settled because everyone in a culture thinks it’s just, or even if everyone in the world thinks it’s just. Suppose Hitler had won WWII and taken over the world, killing all of the Jews and having an annual holiday, with lots of celebrations, on the day the last Jew died. Everyone would agree that Nazi anti-Semitism and the Holocaust was a good thing, and, for Plato, everyone would be wrong.
B. Why be moral?
1. Would everyone be immoral if it were to their advantage to do so?
2. The ring of Gyges. Plato’s brothers asked whether everyone wouldn’t do wrong if they knew it would be advantageous to them to do so.
C. The three parts of the soul. The answer to this is found in an analysis of human nature. If a person is just the sum total of their appetites, then one should do what will satisfy those appetites. But there are three parts of the soul
1. Reason-the desire for the Form of the Good
2. The Spirited Part, which is the part of you that seeks interpersonal satisfaction.
3. The appetites
Plato argues that a soul is properly ordered just in case reason commands and spirit and appetite obey.
D. The Four Cardinal Virtues are wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice.
1. Wisdom is being controlled and guided by reason.
2. Under the influence of reason, the spirited part generates the virtue of courage.
3. If the appetites are under control, then the person possesses the virtue of temperance or self-control
4. Justice is being a properly ordered person, with reason in command and spirit and appetite in obedience
E. So why be just or moral? Once we understand how the person is put together, the question ends up sounding something like “Why be well as opposed to sick?” The only reason you wouldn’t want to be moral is if you were confused about what your true good is and thought that you could achieve that good by cheating others for the sake of satisfying one’s appetites. Not only does this harm others, but most importantly, it harms yourself.
The conceptualist argument
Chad Macintosh presents and defends the argument from abstract concepts to God, used by Plantinga and Craig but little discussed.
New C. S. Lewis Encyclopedia
The C.S. Lewis encyclopedia, in which I have two articles, is not available to order.
On Craig and Dawkins
Public debates are not always circuses. If the debaters are good representatives of their respective positions it is a good way of getting the pros and cons on an issue out on the table. At the same time, there are inherent limitations to the debate format. For example, I find it irritating when an issue that could be the subject of an entire debate by itself is tucked away as one of a bunch of arguments, so both sides deal with it superficially.
At the same time the debate setting is not for everybody. Just as everyone is not cut out to be a blogger, not everyone is cut out to be a debater. Dawkins could have appealed to the inherent limitations of the debate format as a reason for not agreeing to debate.
My problem with Dawkins is that he made this an issue of credentials. Now as an evolutionary biologist Dawkins is at the top of his field. But he has increasingly gotten involved an a crusade for atheism, becoming instead a philosopher of religion. And as a philoospher of religion he is a rank amateur. The most serious concern I have with Dawkins is that the theistic point of view has been very ably defended by philosophers like Plantinga and Swinburne, and William Lane Craig. In addition, there are people in the sciences like Collins and Polkinghorne and Kenneth Miller, who are Christians.
Dawkins has been audacious enough to call a widely held and well defended position, namely theism, a delusion. That's OK if he takes the time and effort to respond to the best theistic defenders in the business. J. L Mackie wrote The Miracle of Theism, (an equally insulting title) but in that book we find detailed critiques of Plantinga and Swinburne. From what I have seen of Dawkins, his book is not a worthy successor to Mackie.
At the same time the debate setting is not for everybody. Just as everyone is not cut out to be a blogger, not everyone is cut out to be a debater. Dawkins could have appealed to the inherent limitations of the debate format as a reason for not agreeing to debate.
My problem with Dawkins is that he made this an issue of credentials. Now as an evolutionary biologist Dawkins is at the top of his field. But he has increasingly gotten involved an a crusade for atheism, becoming instead a philosopher of religion. And as a philoospher of religion he is a rank amateur. The most serious concern I have with Dawkins is that the theistic point of view has been very ably defended by philosophers like Plantinga and Swinburne, and William Lane Craig. In addition, there are people in the sciences like Collins and Polkinghorne and Kenneth Miller, who are Christians.
Dawkins has been audacious enough to call a widely held and well defended position, namely theism, a delusion. That's OK if he takes the time and effort to respond to the best theistic defenders in the business. J. L Mackie wrote The Miracle of Theism, (an equally insulting title) but in that book we find detailed critiques of Plantinga and Swinburne. From what I have seen of Dawkins, his book is not a worthy successor to Mackie.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
The Four Acceptable Goals
The Four Acceptable Goals
I. Although for Hinduism Moksha, release from the cycle of birth and rebirth, is the ultimate goal. However there are four acceptable goals, Kama or pleasure, Artha or power and wealth, dharma or duty, and Moksha or release. Many people are uninterested in “religion” and have other fish to fry. Hindus don’t find this objectionable.
A. Kama or pleasure
1. Consider the response of the typical Christian to the life of a pleasure-seeker. For many Christians, someone who lives this way is living in sin, pursuing the wrong goal for one’s life. Such a life is in need of correction in order to avoid eternal punishment. Even in more secular circles, a life primarily devoted to pleasure-seeking is considered shallow.
2. However, in Hinduism the pursuit of pleasure is not regarded as necessarily a bad thing. Eventually a person will tire of worldly pleasure, to be sure. Enjoyment is, however a permissible goal, and pleasure-seekers need not go without guidance. Everyone’s favorite Hindu sacred book, the Kama Sutra, provides instruction on how to pursue pleasure. Someone who seeks pleasure is not criticized so long has he stays within moral rules. However, in this or some future existence he will come to realize that pleasure is not enough and that he needs something more deeply satisfying.
B. Artha, or power or substance—material possessions and social standing.
1. This is considered a legitimate aspiration and requires toughness and ruthlessness. Once again there is literature to guide people in their pursuit of this goal, the Arthasatras. But once again this is not supposed to be ultimately satisfying.
C. Dharma or duty-Being faithful in doing that duty required of a person based on that persons’s caste, sex, and stage of life. These are spelled out in the Code of Manu.
D. Moksha or release/ Negatively, this goal is release from the cycle of rebirth and redeath, positively it is pure freedom, liberation from both existence of existence and nonexistence. It is sometimes called Nirvana in Hindu literature; for the Buddhist tradition that is what it is always called.
I. Although for Hinduism Moksha, release from the cycle of birth and rebirth, is the ultimate goal. However there are four acceptable goals, Kama or pleasure, Artha or power and wealth, dharma or duty, and Moksha or release. Many people are uninterested in “religion” and have other fish to fry. Hindus don’t find this objectionable.
A. Kama or pleasure
1. Consider the response of the typical Christian to the life of a pleasure-seeker. For many Christians, someone who lives this way is living in sin, pursuing the wrong goal for one’s life. Such a life is in need of correction in order to avoid eternal punishment. Even in more secular circles, a life primarily devoted to pleasure-seeking is considered shallow.
2. However, in Hinduism the pursuit of pleasure is not regarded as necessarily a bad thing. Eventually a person will tire of worldly pleasure, to be sure. Enjoyment is, however a permissible goal, and pleasure-seekers need not go without guidance. Everyone’s favorite Hindu sacred book, the Kama Sutra, provides instruction on how to pursue pleasure. Someone who seeks pleasure is not criticized so long has he stays within moral rules. However, in this or some future existence he will come to realize that pleasure is not enough and that he needs something more deeply satisfying.
B. Artha, or power or substance—material possessions and social standing.
1. This is considered a legitimate aspiration and requires toughness and ruthlessness. Once again there is literature to guide people in their pursuit of this goal, the Arthasatras. But once again this is not supposed to be ultimately satisfying.
C. Dharma or duty-Being faithful in doing that duty required of a person based on that persons’s caste, sex, and stage of life. These are spelled out in the Code of Manu.
D. Moksha or release/ Negatively, this goal is release from the cycle of rebirth and redeath, positively it is pure freedom, liberation from both existence of existence and nonexistence. It is sometimes called Nirvana in Hindu literature; for the Buddhist tradition that is what it is always called.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Some more notes on Hinduism
Although Hinduism is referred to as a religion, it is often difficult to figure out just what is or is not Hindu. There is no gate-keeping institution that determines what is or is not a form of Hinduism. The religious perspectives of the Buddha, for example, seem clearly to stem from the Indian religious tradition, but are thought to be a distinct religion. Yet Hinduism seems not to define itself doctrinally. Hinduism seem to be defined as the religion that emerges from the subcontinent of India, and is formed around the Indian social system. (Buddhism’s deviation seems not to have been doctrinal, but rather has to do with the Buddhist rejection of the caste system).
However, there seems to be a certain flavor of character to Hindu religion, having to do with the doctrine of reincarnation. Old joke:
Christian: I’ve been born again.
Hindu: That’s nothing. I’ve been born again, and again, and again, and again, and again!
Exactly why Hinduism acquired the characteristics that it did is mysterious to me. What we know is that there was an indigenous culture in the Indus river valley, and that the Aryans invaded and became dominant. The features of the religion of the Vedas seem to be an unremarkable form of polytheistic religion, not much different from the Greek mythology. Vedic ritual included:
1) Sacrifices to nature gods
2) A hereditary priesthood
3) Outdoor fire altars
4) Memorized Vedic chants
5) Offering of food, drink, and animals to the gods
Yet, there seems to be a strand of critical reflection on this religious heritage even in the original religious writings of the Hindus, the Vedas. Rather than a confident statement about how the world was created, such as the biblical “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”, we instead get a passage about how the universe was formed from the God Purusha. But it is then stated that no one knows how this happed except Purusha, or perhaps, he doesn’t know either!”
The Axis was around 500 B. C. E. This was the time of the Buddha, Confucius, the Hebrew prophets, and the earliest Greek philosophers. In any event, a polytheistic world-view was beginning to be questioned. There were questions about the value of the Vedic sacrifices, and even the belief in many gods. Instead they sought a single divine reality that might be the source of everything. They spent a lot of time alone in the forest contemplating.
Also, these Hindus develops methods of altering consciousness (sitting for long periods of meditation, breathing deeply, fasting, avoiding sexual activity, practicing long periods of silence, going without sleep, using psychedelic plants, and living in dark caves).
The Upanishads were written at this time. The word means “sittings near a teacher” and were filled with teacher-student dialogues.
However, there seems to be a certain flavor of character to Hindu religion, having to do with the doctrine of reincarnation. Old joke:
Christian: I’ve been born again.
Hindu: That’s nothing. I’ve been born again, and again, and again, and again, and again!
Exactly why Hinduism acquired the characteristics that it did is mysterious to me. What we know is that there was an indigenous culture in the Indus river valley, and that the Aryans invaded and became dominant. The features of the religion of the Vedas seem to be an unremarkable form of polytheistic religion, not much different from the Greek mythology. Vedic ritual included:
1) Sacrifices to nature gods
2) A hereditary priesthood
3) Outdoor fire altars
4) Memorized Vedic chants
5) Offering of food, drink, and animals to the gods
Yet, there seems to be a strand of critical reflection on this religious heritage even in the original religious writings of the Hindus, the Vedas. Rather than a confident statement about how the world was created, such as the biblical “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”, we instead get a passage about how the universe was formed from the God Purusha. But it is then stated that no one knows how this happed except Purusha, or perhaps, he doesn’t know either!”
The Axis was around 500 B. C. E. This was the time of the Buddha, Confucius, the Hebrew prophets, and the earliest Greek philosophers. In any event, a polytheistic world-view was beginning to be questioned. There were questions about the value of the Vedic sacrifices, and even the belief in many gods. Instead they sought a single divine reality that might be the source of everything. They spent a lot of time alone in the forest contemplating.
Also, these Hindus develops methods of altering consciousness (sitting for long periods of meditation, breathing deeply, fasting, avoiding sexual activity, practicing long periods of silence, going without sleep, using psychedelic plants, and living in dark caves).
The Upanishads were written at this time. The word means “sittings near a teacher” and were filled with teacher-student dialogues.
Dawkins ducks Craig
Bill Craig sent me a newsletter in which he will be debating twice in the UK on "Is God a Delusion" but will not be debating Dawkins himself. Now that would be the debate to see! Having seen this, I wrote him saying "Oh drat! no debate with Dawkins!" He responded:
The coward! He said, "I've never heard of William
Craig. A debate with him might look good on his
resume, but it wouldn't look good on mine!"
Bill
The coward! He said, "I've never heard of William
Craig. A debate with him might look good on his
resume, but it wouldn't look good on mine!"
Bill
Six Concepts from the Upanishads
My History of World Religion classes are covering Hinduism, and these central concepts from the Upanishads are central to the Hindu tradition;
Six Concepts from the Upanishads
Brahman-The divine reality underlying all things. It is reality itself, pure consciousness, and bliss. It is the way thing are in the final analysis, when we see reality without illusion (maya). Unlike the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, The Hindu Brahman is not a transcendent creator and sustainer of the world but is the universe itself. It is beyond time and space, hence in the Hindu tradition space and time themselves are only the world as it appears to us, not the world as it is in itself.
Hence for the mainstream philosophical tradition of Hinduism, everything is one and everything is God. If I were to convene class and said “I am God” you would all think I was nuts, because our concept of God is a transcendent creator. In Hinduism no one would raise an eyebrow.
Atman: Called the self or soul, but really the deepest self. It is what is fundamental to me as an individual. However, in the last analysis, the Hindus teach that the deepest self really is God. One can achieve moksha, in some tradition, by realizing that atman is Brahman.
Maya is illusion, the root word is the same as the English root word for magic. The world, for the Hindu, is real but not what it appears to be. (I’m really God, but I appear to need glasses in order to see). It appears to be temporal, but it isn’t. It appears to be material, but it really is spiritual, it appears to be unconscious, but it is conscious. I appear not to have lived before, but I have.
Karma: The moral law of cause and effect. It is in accordance with the law of Karma that my past and future incarnations are determined. A bad life may result in my being reincarnated as a poor person or an animal.
Samsara is the cycle of birth and rebirth. Continuously being reincarnated again and again is considered to be a bad thing. As our reincarnations continue, we long to put a stop to the whole thing, to no longer be reincarnated.
Moksha is liberation from the cycle of birth and rebirth. According to the Upanishads this is the ultimate human goal. (It is not, as we shall see, the only goal worth pursuing.) It involves getting beyond one’s own ego and the limits of being an individual. Imagine what your day is like. You wake up, you want to get to work on time, you hope your boss is happy with your work and that you are successful, you come home and hope your relationships with your family go well, If you are dating, you hope that those relationships work out and you don’t have to break up, etc. But if you reach moksha you get beyond such concerns. Detaching yourself from pleasure and pain also helps lead to freedom.
Six Concepts from the Upanishads
Brahman-The divine reality underlying all things. It is reality itself, pure consciousness, and bliss. It is the way thing are in the final analysis, when we see reality without illusion (maya). Unlike the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, The Hindu Brahman is not a transcendent creator and sustainer of the world but is the universe itself. It is beyond time and space, hence in the Hindu tradition space and time themselves are only the world as it appears to us, not the world as it is in itself.
Hence for the mainstream philosophical tradition of Hinduism, everything is one and everything is God. If I were to convene class and said “I am God” you would all think I was nuts, because our concept of God is a transcendent creator. In Hinduism no one would raise an eyebrow.
Atman: Called the self or soul, but really the deepest self. It is what is fundamental to me as an individual. However, in the last analysis, the Hindus teach that the deepest self really is God. One can achieve moksha, in some tradition, by realizing that atman is Brahman.
Maya is illusion, the root word is the same as the English root word for magic. The world, for the Hindu, is real but not what it appears to be. (I’m really God, but I appear to need glasses in order to see). It appears to be temporal, but it isn’t. It appears to be material, but it really is spiritual, it appears to be unconscious, but it is conscious. I appear not to have lived before, but I have.
Karma: The moral law of cause and effect. It is in accordance with the law of Karma that my past and future incarnations are determined. A bad life may result in my being reincarnated as a poor person or an animal.
Samsara is the cycle of birth and rebirth. Continuously being reincarnated again and again is considered to be a bad thing. As our reincarnations continue, we long to put a stop to the whole thing, to no longer be reincarnated.
Moksha is liberation from the cycle of birth and rebirth. According to the Upanishads this is the ultimate human goal. (It is not, as we shall see, the only goal worth pursuing.) It involves getting beyond one’s own ego and the limits of being an individual. Imagine what your day is like. You wake up, you want to get to work on time, you hope your boss is happy with your work and that you are successful, you come home and hope your relationships with your family go well, If you are dating, you hope that those relationships work out and you don’t have to break up, etc. But if you reach moksha you get beyond such concerns. Detaching yourself from pleasure and pain also helps lead to freedom.
Note on the Plantinga review of Dawkins
Apparently the review of Dawkins was uploaded onto the internet by mistake and was not intended for widespread publication until it comes out in Books and Culture. The person who uploaded it has asked me to discourage further circulation until the relevant issue of B and C comes out.
Monday, January 22, 2007
A deleted passage from The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy, and a response to Ed Cook
I am responding to some comments by Ed Cook on the "Anscombe Legend." I think that Lewis did move away from apologetics after the Anscombe exchange and perhaps also partly because of it. Lewis did think that he was not the right man to engage the current philosophical climate, and no doubt the Anscombe exchange, and the Oxford reaction to it, may have helped him reach that conclusion. However, it is also evident from his response to Anscombe in the issue of the Socratic Digest where Anscombe's essay appeared, that he did not consider the argument itself to have been refuted, only his inadequate previous formulation of it.
When Lewis says "She obliterated me as an apologist" I think he means "in the eyes of some particular audience." He doesn't mean that he thought that she had shown his arguments to be bad per se. Some discussion of mine from a paper on the Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy helps in understanding my view.
This passage in my essay on the Anscombe Legend from the Philosophy and the Chronicles of Narnia volume got censored out by the general editor of the series. It should gave gone in just before the first full paragraph on p. 265. Apparently the general editor did not like my Derrida-bashing.
Second, one can come to think that one’s style of argument will fall on deaf ears in a particular intellectual or philosophical climate without thinking that one’s ideas are intellectually bankrupt. Suppose I were to discover tomorrow that the philosophical community of which I am apart has come to be overrun with, say, Derrideans. Derrideanism is a school of thought which, in my estimation, is irrationalist at its core, and which undermines the very possibility of civilized discourse, philosophical or otherwise. In this case I probably would find my way of doing philosophy very poorly suited to persuading most philosophers of much of anything. If I wrote philosophical apologetics prior to the period of Derridean domination but none afterward, it would not necessarily mean I thought the apologetics all wrong. I might decide, rather, that perhaps other people, with a better understanding of Derrideanism, might be better equipped to respond to the lamentable situation in which all my arguments are subjected to Derridean deconstruction instead of evaluated on their intellectual merits.
Lewis seems to have concluded that the new style of doing philosophy prevalent in the Oxford of the time was not conducive to the more classical approach to the discipline he had learned in his undergraduate studies. As the above discussion of Derrideanism indicates, I am not at all sure that this shows that something was wrong with Lewis; it might be that something was wrongheaded about the philosophy of the time.
J. R. Lucas, a distinguished Oxford philosopher who was a student during this period, has described the prevailing mindset of that era as follows:
The philosophical climate in which I grew up in Oxford was one of extreme aridity. The ability not to be convinced was the most powerful part of a young
Philosopher’s armory: a competent tutor could disbelieve any proposition, no matter how true it was, and the more sophisticated could not even understand the
meaning of what was being asserted. In consequence, concern was concentrated
on the basic questions of epistemology almost to the exclusion of other questions
of larger import but less easy to argue in black and white terms. The under-
graduate who wanted to write essays on the meaning of existence was told to confine himself to the logical grammar of ‘is,’ and was not even allowed to ask what truth was, or how one ought to live one’s life.
So if Lewis came to think he could not advance his apologetical arguments to the satisfaction of Oxford philosophers, that would not show his arguments were bad ones. Perhaps the methods of evaluating arguments typically employed by Oxford philosophers during this era, as well as their unduly narrow range of interests, were deficient instead.
The link here is to the Amazon entry on the Philosophy and Narnia volume.
When Lewis says "She obliterated me as an apologist" I think he means "in the eyes of some particular audience." He doesn't mean that he thought that she had shown his arguments to be bad per se. Some discussion of mine from a paper on the Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy helps in understanding my view.
This passage in my essay on the Anscombe Legend from the Philosophy and the Chronicles of Narnia volume got censored out by the general editor of the series. It should gave gone in just before the first full paragraph on p. 265. Apparently the general editor did not like my Derrida-bashing.
Second, one can come to think that one’s style of argument will fall on deaf ears in a particular intellectual or philosophical climate without thinking that one’s ideas are intellectually bankrupt. Suppose I were to discover tomorrow that the philosophical community of which I am apart has come to be overrun with, say, Derrideans. Derrideanism is a school of thought which, in my estimation, is irrationalist at its core, and which undermines the very possibility of civilized discourse, philosophical or otherwise. In this case I probably would find my way of doing philosophy very poorly suited to persuading most philosophers of much of anything. If I wrote philosophical apologetics prior to the period of Derridean domination but none afterward, it would not necessarily mean I thought the apologetics all wrong. I might decide, rather, that perhaps other people, with a better understanding of Derrideanism, might be better equipped to respond to the lamentable situation in which all my arguments are subjected to Derridean deconstruction instead of evaluated on their intellectual merits.
Lewis seems to have concluded that the new style of doing philosophy prevalent in the Oxford of the time was not conducive to the more classical approach to the discipline he had learned in his undergraduate studies. As the above discussion of Derrideanism indicates, I am not at all sure that this shows that something was wrong with Lewis; it might be that something was wrongheaded about the philosophy of the time.
J. R. Lucas, a distinguished Oxford philosopher who was a student during this period, has described the prevailing mindset of that era as follows:
The philosophical climate in which I grew up in Oxford was one of extreme aridity. The ability not to be convinced was the most powerful part of a young
Philosopher’s armory: a competent tutor could disbelieve any proposition, no matter how true it was, and the more sophisticated could not even understand the
meaning of what was being asserted. In consequence, concern was concentrated
on the basic questions of epistemology almost to the exclusion of other questions
of larger import but less easy to argue in black and white terms. The under-
graduate who wanted to write essays on the meaning of existence was told to confine himself to the logical grammar of ‘is,’ and was not even allowed to ask what truth was, or how one ought to live one’s life.
So if Lewis came to think he could not advance his apologetical arguments to the satisfaction of Oxford philosophers, that would not show his arguments were bad ones. Perhaps the methods of evaluating arguments typically employed by Oxford philosophers during this era, as well as their unduly narrow range of interests, were deficient instead.
The link here is to the Amazon entry on the Philosophy and Narnia volume.
David Wood's Problem of Evil Blog
David Wood, who also runs the Answering Infidels website, has a blog on the problem of evil.
Plantinga on the religious neutrality of science
Is evolution religiously neutral? Plantinga says no.
A. Evolution religiously neutral?
According to a popular contemporary myth, science is a cool, reasoned, wholly dispassionate attempt to figure out the truth about ourselves and our world, entirely independent of religion, or ideology, or moral convictions, or theological commitments. I believe this is deeply mistaken. Following Augustine (and Abraham Kuyper, Herman Dooyeweerd, Harry Jellema, Henry Stob and other Reformed thinkers), I believe that there is conflict, a battle between the Civitas Dei, the City of God, and the City of the World. As a matter of fact, what we have, I think, is a three-way battle. On the one hand there is Perennial Naturalism, a view going back to the ancient world, a view according to which there is no God, nature is all there is, and mankind is to be understood as a part of nature. Second, there is what I shall call 'Enlightenment Humanism': we could also call it 'Enlightenment Subjectivism' or 'Enlightenment Antirealism': this way of thinking goes back substantially to the great eighteenth-century enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant. According to its central tenet, it is really we human beings, we men and women, who structure the world, who are responsible for its fundamental outline and lineaments. Naturally enough, a view as startling as this comes in several forms. According to Jean Paul Sartre and his existentialist friends, we do this world-structuring freely and individually; according to Ludwig Wittgenstein and his followers we do it communally and by way of language; according to Kant himself it is done by the transcendental ego which, oddly enough, is neither one nor many, being itself the source of the one-many structure of the world. So two of the parties to this three-way contest are Perennial Naturalism and Enlightenment Humanism; the third party, of course, is Christian theism. Of course there are many unthinking and ill-conceived combinations, much blurring of lines, many cross currents and eddies, many halfway houses, much halting between two opinions. Nevertheless I think these are the three basic contemporary Western ways of looking at reality, three basically religious ways of viewing ourselves and the world. The conflict is real, and of profound importance. The stakes, furthermore, are high; this is a battle for men's souls.
Now it would be excessively naive to think that contemporary science is religiously and theologically neutral, standing serenely above this battle and wholly irrelevant to it. Perhaps parts of science are like that: mathematics, for example, and perhaps physics, or parts of physics-although even in these areas there are connections.7 Other parts are obviously and deeply involved in this battle: and the closer the science in question is to what is distinctively human, the deeper the involvement.
To turn to the bit of science in question, the theory of evolution plays a fascinating and crucial role in contemporary Western culture. The enormous controversy about it is what is most striking, a controversy that goes back to Darwin and continues full force today. Evolution is the regular subject of courtroom drama; one such trial-the spectacular Scopes trial of 1925-has been made the subject of an extremely popular film. Fundamentalists regard evolution as the work of the Devil. In academia, on the other hand, it is an idol of the contemporary tribe; it serves as a shibboleth, a litmus test distinguishing the ignorant and bigoted fundamentalist goats front the properly acculturated and scientifically receptive sheep. Apparently this litimus test extends far beyond the confines of this terrestrial globe: according to the Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins, "If superior creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our civilization, is: 'Have they discovered evolution yet?... Indeed many of the experts-for example, Dawkins, William Provine, Stephen Gould-display a sort of revulsion at the very idea of special creation by God, as if this idea is not merely not good science, but somehow a bit obscene, or at least unseemly; it borders on the immoral; it is worthy of disdain and contempt. In some circles, confessing to finding evolution attractive will get you disapproval and ostracism and may lose you your job; in others, confessing doubts about evolution will have the same doleful effect. In Darwin's day, some suggested that it was all well and good to discuss evolution in the universities and among the cognoscenti; they thought public discussion unwise, however; for it would be a shame if the lower classes found out about it. Now, ironically enough, the 'shoe is sometimes on the other foot; it is [he devotees of evolution who sometimes express the fear that public discussion of doubts and difficulties with evolution could have harmful political effects.8
So why all the furor? The answer is obvious: evolution has deep religious connections; deep connections with how we understand ourselves at the most fundamental level. Many evangelicals and fundamentalists see in it a threat to the faith; they don't want it taught to their children, at any rate as scientifically established fact, and they see acceptance of it as corroding proper acceptance of the Bible. On the other side, among the secularists, evolution functions as a myth, in a technical sense of that term: a shared way of understanding ourselves at the deep level of religion, a deep interpretation of ourselves to ourselves, a way of telling us why we are here, where we come from, and where we are going.
It was serving in this capacity when Richard Dawkins (according to Peter Medawar, "one of the most brilliant of the rising generation of biologists") leaned over and remarked to A. J. Ayer at one of those elegant, candle-lit, bibulous Oxford dinners that he couldn't imagine being an atheist before 1859 (the year Darwin's Origin of Species was published); "although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin," said he, "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist."9 (Let me recommend Dawkins' book to you: it is brilliantly written, unfailingly fascinating, and utterly wrongheaded. It was second on the British best-seller list for some considerable time, second only to Mamie Jenkins' Hip and Thigh Diet.) Dawkins goes on:
All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way. A true watchmaker has foresight: he designs his cogs and springs, and plans their interconnections, with a future purpose in his mind's eye. Natural selection, the blind, unconscious automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker (p. 5).
Evolution was functioning in that same mythic capacity in the remark of the famous zoologist G. G. Simpson: after posing the question "What is man?" he answers, "The point I want to make now is that all attempts to answer that question before 1859 are worthless and that we will be better off if we ignore them completely."10 Of course it also functions in that capacity in serving as a litmus test to distinguish the ignorant fundamentalists from the properly enlightened cognoscenti; it functions in the same way in many of the debates, in and out of the courts, as to whether it should be taught in the schools, whether other views should be given equal time, and the like. Thus Michael Ruse: "the fight against creationism is a fight for all knowledge, and that battle can be won if we all work to see that Darwinism, which has had a great past, has an even greater future."11
The essential point here is really Dawkins' point: Darwinism, the Grand Evolutionary Story, makes it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. What he means is simple enough. If you are Christian, or a theist of some other kind, you have a ready answer to the question, how did it all happen? How is it that there are all the kinds of floras and faunas we behold; how did they all get here? The answer, of course, is that they have been created by the Lord. But if you are not a believer in God, things are enormously more difficult. How did all these things get here? How did life get started and how did it come to assume its present multifarious forms? It seems monumentally implausible to think these forms just popped into existence; that goes contrary to all our experience. So how did it happen? Atheism and Secularism need an answer to this question. And the Grand Evolutionary Story gives the answer: somehow life arose from nonliving matter by way of purely natural means and in accord with the fundamental laws of physics; and once life started, all the vast profusion of contemporary plant and animal life arose from those early ancestors by way of common descent, driven by random variation and natural selection. I said earlier that we can't automatically identify the deliverances of reason with the teaching of current science because the teaching of current science keeps changing. Here we have another reason for resisting that identification: a good deal more than reason goes into the acceptance of such a theory as the Grand Evolutionary Story. For the nontheist, evolution is the only game in town; it is an essential part of any reasonably complete nontheistic way of thinking; hence the devotion to it, the suggestions that it shouldn't be discussed in public, and the venom, the theological odium with which dissent is greeted.
8Thus according to Anthony Flew, to suggest that there is real doubt about evolution is to corrupt the youth.
9Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (London and New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1986), pp. 6 and 7.
10Quoted in Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 1,
11Darwinism Defended, pp. 326-327.
A. Evolution religiously neutral?
According to a popular contemporary myth, science is a cool, reasoned, wholly dispassionate attempt to figure out the truth about ourselves and our world, entirely independent of religion, or ideology, or moral convictions, or theological commitments. I believe this is deeply mistaken. Following Augustine (and Abraham Kuyper, Herman Dooyeweerd, Harry Jellema, Henry Stob and other Reformed thinkers), I believe that there is conflict, a battle between the Civitas Dei, the City of God, and the City of the World. As a matter of fact, what we have, I think, is a three-way battle. On the one hand there is Perennial Naturalism, a view going back to the ancient world, a view according to which there is no God, nature is all there is, and mankind is to be understood as a part of nature. Second, there is what I shall call 'Enlightenment Humanism': we could also call it 'Enlightenment Subjectivism' or 'Enlightenment Antirealism': this way of thinking goes back substantially to the great eighteenth-century enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant. According to its central tenet, it is really we human beings, we men and women, who structure the world, who are responsible for its fundamental outline and lineaments. Naturally enough, a view as startling as this comes in several forms. According to Jean Paul Sartre and his existentialist friends, we do this world-structuring freely and individually; according to Ludwig Wittgenstein and his followers we do it communally and by way of language; according to Kant himself it is done by the transcendental ego which, oddly enough, is neither one nor many, being itself the source of the one-many structure of the world. So two of the parties to this three-way contest are Perennial Naturalism and Enlightenment Humanism; the third party, of course, is Christian theism. Of course there are many unthinking and ill-conceived combinations, much blurring of lines, many cross currents and eddies, many halfway houses, much halting between two opinions. Nevertheless I think these are the three basic contemporary Western ways of looking at reality, three basically religious ways of viewing ourselves and the world. The conflict is real, and of profound importance. The stakes, furthermore, are high; this is a battle for men's souls.
Now it would be excessively naive to think that contemporary science is religiously and theologically neutral, standing serenely above this battle and wholly irrelevant to it. Perhaps parts of science are like that: mathematics, for example, and perhaps physics, or parts of physics-although even in these areas there are connections.7 Other parts are obviously and deeply involved in this battle: and the closer the science in question is to what is distinctively human, the deeper the involvement.
To turn to the bit of science in question, the theory of evolution plays a fascinating and crucial role in contemporary Western culture. The enormous controversy about it is what is most striking, a controversy that goes back to Darwin and continues full force today. Evolution is the regular subject of courtroom drama; one such trial-the spectacular Scopes trial of 1925-has been made the subject of an extremely popular film. Fundamentalists regard evolution as the work of the Devil. In academia, on the other hand, it is an idol of the contemporary tribe; it serves as a shibboleth, a litmus test distinguishing the ignorant and bigoted fundamentalist goats front the properly acculturated and scientifically receptive sheep. Apparently this litimus test extends far beyond the confines of this terrestrial globe: according to the Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins, "If superior creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our civilization, is: 'Have they discovered evolution yet?... Indeed many of the experts-for example, Dawkins, William Provine, Stephen Gould-display a sort of revulsion at the very idea of special creation by God, as if this idea is not merely not good science, but somehow a bit obscene, or at least unseemly; it borders on the immoral; it is worthy of disdain and contempt. In some circles, confessing to finding evolution attractive will get you disapproval and ostracism and may lose you your job; in others, confessing doubts about evolution will have the same doleful effect. In Darwin's day, some suggested that it was all well and good to discuss evolution in the universities and among the cognoscenti; they thought public discussion unwise, however; for it would be a shame if the lower classes found out about it. Now, ironically enough, the 'shoe is sometimes on the other foot; it is [he devotees of evolution who sometimes express the fear that public discussion of doubts and difficulties with evolution could have harmful political effects.8
So why all the furor? The answer is obvious: evolution has deep religious connections; deep connections with how we understand ourselves at the most fundamental level. Many evangelicals and fundamentalists see in it a threat to the faith; they don't want it taught to their children, at any rate as scientifically established fact, and they see acceptance of it as corroding proper acceptance of the Bible. On the other side, among the secularists, evolution functions as a myth, in a technical sense of that term: a shared way of understanding ourselves at the deep level of religion, a deep interpretation of ourselves to ourselves, a way of telling us why we are here, where we come from, and where we are going.
It was serving in this capacity when Richard Dawkins (according to Peter Medawar, "one of the most brilliant of the rising generation of biologists") leaned over and remarked to A. J. Ayer at one of those elegant, candle-lit, bibulous Oxford dinners that he couldn't imagine being an atheist before 1859 (the year Darwin's Origin of Species was published); "although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin," said he, "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist."9 (Let me recommend Dawkins' book to you: it is brilliantly written, unfailingly fascinating, and utterly wrongheaded. It was second on the British best-seller list for some considerable time, second only to Mamie Jenkins' Hip and Thigh Diet.) Dawkins goes on:
All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way. A true watchmaker has foresight: he designs his cogs and springs, and plans their interconnections, with a future purpose in his mind's eye. Natural selection, the blind, unconscious automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker (p. 5).
Evolution was functioning in that same mythic capacity in the remark of the famous zoologist G. G. Simpson: after posing the question "What is man?" he answers, "The point I want to make now is that all attempts to answer that question before 1859 are worthless and that we will be better off if we ignore them completely."10 Of course it also functions in that capacity in serving as a litmus test to distinguish the ignorant fundamentalists from the properly enlightened cognoscenti; it functions in the same way in many of the debates, in and out of the courts, as to whether it should be taught in the schools, whether other views should be given equal time, and the like. Thus Michael Ruse: "the fight against creationism is a fight for all knowledge, and that battle can be won if we all work to see that Darwinism, which has had a great past, has an even greater future."11
The essential point here is really Dawkins' point: Darwinism, the Grand Evolutionary Story, makes it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. What he means is simple enough. If you are Christian, or a theist of some other kind, you have a ready answer to the question, how did it all happen? How is it that there are all the kinds of floras and faunas we behold; how did they all get here? The answer, of course, is that they have been created by the Lord. But if you are not a believer in God, things are enormously more difficult. How did all these things get here? How did life get started and how did it come to assume its present multifarious forms? It seems monumentally implausible to think these forms just popped into existence; that goes contrary to all our experience. So how did it happen? Atheism and Secularism need an answer to this question. And the Grand Evolutionary Story gives the answer: somehow life arose from nonliving matter by way of purely natural means and in accord with the fundamental laws of physics; and once life started, all the vast profusion of contemporary plant and animal life arose from those early ancestors by way of common descent, driven by random variation and natural selection. I said earlier that we can't automatically identify the deliverances of reason with the teaching of current science because the teaching of current science keeps changing. Here we have another reason for resisting that identification: a good deal more than reason goes into the acceptance of such a theory as the Grand Evolutionary Story. For the nontheist, evolution is the only game in town; it is an essential part of any reasonably complete nontheistic way of thinking; hence the devotion to it, the suggestions that it shouldn't be discussed in public, and the venom, the theological odium with which dissent is greeted.
8Thus according to Anthony Flew, to suggest that there is real doubt about evolution is to corrupt the youth.
9Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (London and New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1986), pp. 6 and 7.
10Quoted in Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 1,
11Darwinism Defended, pp. 326-327.
Is chess dangerous to your mental health
This is an interesting passage from Chesterton's Orthodoxy. I suppose chessplaying philosophers are double-duty candidates for the asylum. Dennis? Bill V? Help me out here. You must admit that the two American players who ascended to the pinnacle of chess (Morphy and Fischer) do now speak well of the salutory effects of the Royal Game for one's mental stability.
GKC: Let us begin, then, with the mad-house; from this evil and fantastic inn let us set forth on our intellectual journey. Now, if we are to glance at the philosophy of sanity, the first thing to do in the matter is to blot out one big and common mistake. There is a notion adrift everywhere that imagination, especially mystical imagination, is dangerous to man's mental balance. Poets are commonly spoken of as psychologically unreliable; and generally there is a vague association between wreathing laurels in your hair and sticking straws in it. Facts and history utterly contradict this view. Most of the very great poets have been not only sane, but extremely business-like; and if Shakespeare ever really held horses, it was because he was much the safest man to hold them. Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination. Artistic paternity is as wholesome as physical paternity. Moreover, it is worthy of remark that when a poet really was morbid it was commonly because he had some weak spot of rationality on his brain. Poe, for instance, really was morbid; not because he was poetical, but because he was specially analytical. Even chess was too poetical for him; he disliked chess because it was full of knights and castles, like a poem. He avowedly preferred the black discs of draughts, because they were more like the mere black dots on a diagram. Perhaps the strongest case of all is this: that only one great English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease, but the medicine; poetry partly kept him in health. He could sometimes forget the red and thirsty hell to which his hideous necessitarianism dragged him among the wide waters and the white flat lilies of the Ouse. He was damned by John Calvin; he was almost saved by John Gilpin. Everywhere we see that men do not go mad by dreaming. Critics are much madder than poets. Homer is complete and calm enough; it is his critics who tear him into extravagant tatters. Shakespeare is quite himself; it is only some of his critics who have discovered that he was somebody else. And though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators. The general fact is simple. Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion, like the physical exhaustion of Mr. Holbein. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into
GKC: Let us begin, then, with the mad-house; from this evil and fantastic inn let us set forth on our intellectual journey. Now, if we are to glance at the philosophy of sanity, the first thing to do in the matter is to blot out one big and common mistake. There is a notion adrift everywhere that imagination, especially mystical imagination, is dangerous to man's mental balance. Poets are commonly spoken of as psychologically unreliable; and generally there is a vague association between wreathing laurels in your hair and sticking straws in it. Facts and history utterly contradict this view. Most of the very great poets have been not only sane, but extremely business-like; and if Shakespeare ever really held horses, it was because he was much the safest man to hold them. Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination. Artistic paternity is as wholesome as physical paternity. Moreover, it is worthy of remark that when a poet really was morbid it was commonly because he had some weak spot of rationality on his brain. Poe, for instance, really was morbid; not because he was poetical, but because he was specially analytical. Even chess was too poetical for him; he disliked chess because it was full of knights and castles, like a poem. He avowedly preferred the black discs of draughts, because they were more like the mere black dots on a diagram. Perhaps the strongest case of all is this: that only one great English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease, but the medicine; poetry partly kept him in health. He could sometimes forget the red and thirsty hell to which his hideous necessitarianism dragged him among the wide waters and the white flat lilies of the Ouse. He was damned by John Calvin; he was almost saved by John Gilpin. Everywhere we see that men do not go mad by dreaming. Critics are much madder than poets. Homer is complete and calm enough; it is his critics who tear him into extravagant tatters. Shakespeare is quite himself; it is only some of his critics who have discovered that he was somebody else. And though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators. The general fact is simple. Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion, like the physical exhaustion of Mr. Holbein. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into
My lecture notes on Socrates
III. Socrates
A. Dialectical method
1. Starts conversation
2. Isolates key term, asks "What is X"
3. Asks for help defining X
4. Asks for clarification
5. Shows definition to be inadequate
6. Repeats process until it becomes evident the “victim” doesn’t know what he’s talking about
B. Theory of knowledge
1. Socratic dialogue presupposes that there is something quality or property that the term refers to. Universal definitions can capture the truth. A sophist would say that words mean whatever you can get them to mean, for the purposes of advancing yourself.
2. The midwife of ideas
3. Doctrine of innate ideas
C. Metaphysics
1. The soul is the most important part of the person, not just the accompaniment of the body
2. The soul is worth caring for independently of whether or not it will last for an eternity.
D. Virtue
1. The goal of life is not just living, but living well. To do what is immoral in order to preserve oneself, as Antiphon suggested is to defend one’s body by harming one’s soul.
2. Being virtuous is fulfilling our nature. The good life is not just the pleasant l life.
E. Knowing a doing
1. Socrates said that to know the good is to do the good. No one chooses to do evil knowingly.
2. What he means is that when people do wrong they often do so out of a misplaced idea of what is good. Ex. Willie Sutton the bank robber. Why do you rob banks, Willie? Because that’s where the money is.
3. Knowledge isn’t just possessing the information. It is more like wisdom. What is involved in knowing that smoking causes cancer. You can read on every pack of smokes that it does. But if you really knew what you were doing to yourself would you smoke? (The answer to all of this may not, on reflection, support Socrates’ contention. Aristotle, for example, rejected it).
F. Political philosophy
1. Social contract theory- Socrates refuses to escape because he has agreed his receiving the benefits of society means he should accept the penalties it metes out.
2. Natural law theory: There is a universal moral law that can be known through reason and experience, not created by governments. Governments are just insofar as their laws conform to the natural law.
A. Dialectical method
1. Starts conversation
2. Isolates key term, asks "What is X"
3. Asks for help defining X
4. Asks for clarification
5. Shows definition to be inadequate
6. Repeats process until it becomes evident the “victim” doesn’t know what he’s talking about
B. Theory of knowledge
1. Socratic dialogue presupposes that there is something quality or property that the term refers to. Universal definitions can capture the truth. A sophist would say that words mean whatever you can get them to mean, for the purposes of advancing yourself.
2. The midwife of ideas
3. Doctrine of innate ideas
C. Metaphysics
1. The soul is the most important part of the person, not just the accompaniment of the body
2. The soul is worth caring for independently of whether or not it will last for an eternity.
D. Virtue
1. The goal of life is not just living, but living well. To do what is immoral in order to preserve oneself, as Antiphon suggested is to defend one’s body by harming one’s soul.
2. Being virtuous is fulfilling our nature. The good life is not just the pleasant l life.
E. Knowing a doing
1. Socrates said that to know the good is to do the good. No one chooses to do evil knowingly.
2. What he means is that when people do wrong they often do so out of a misplaced idea of what is good. Ex. Willie Sutton the bank robber. Why do you rob banks, Willie? Because that’s where the money is.
3. Knowledge isn’t just possessing the information. It is more like wisdom. What is involved in knowing that smoking causes cancer. You can read on every pack of smokes that it does. But if you really knew what you were doing to yourself would you smoke? (The answer to all of this may not, on reflection, support Socrates’ contention. Aristotle, for example, rejected it).
F. Political philosophy
1. Social contract theory- Socrates refuses to escape because he has agreed his receiving the benefits of society means he should accept the penalties it metes out.
2. Natural law theory: There is a universal moral law that can be known through reason and experience, not created by governments. Governments are just insofar as their laws conform to the natural law.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Thursday, January 18, 2007
This is a link to the Plantinga review of Dawkins' The God Delusion
And further discussion by Clayton Littlejohn and others.
Am I missing something in defending Lewis's argument against naturalism?
There is a passage in Lewis's argment against naturalism. I'm inclined to think Lewis drops the ball here, but I was reading an e-mail from a frequent poster here who says that this passage is what makes Lewis's argument really dangerous. I discuss this in detail in this DI2 post.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Was King insane?
1. All Christians are mentally ill.
2. Martin Luther King was a Christian.
Therefore, Martin Luther King was mentally ill.
There's a valid argument for you. But I have trouble accepting premise 1. Some people on the Rational Responders seem to think that 1 is true, and are willing to accept the conclusion of this syllogism. Amazing.
2. Martin Luther King was a Christian.
Therefore, Martin Luther King was mentally ill.
There's a valid argument for you. But I have trouble accepting premise 1. Some people on the Rational Responders seem to think that 1 is true, and are willing to accept the conclusion of this syllogism. Amazing.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
G. E. Moore responds to Arthur Balfour: A precursor to the Lewis-Anscombe controversy
When I was researching my dissertation on Lewis's argument against naturalism, my advisor, Hugh Chandler, found this essay in a volume of G. E. Moore's early essays. It is available online through the JSTOR service if your library subscribes, but the essay is entitled "The Value of Religion." It came out in the International Journal of Ethics in 1901. In it is included a rebuttal to Balfour's argument from reason, which is found in The Foundations of Belief. Dr. Chandler noticed a similarity between Balfour's argument and Lewis's, and he also noticed a similarity between Moore's rebuttal and Anscombe's. Nowadays, Balfour's influence on Lewis is widely recognized.
C. S. Lewis and Political Conservatism
I am responding to some discussion in Spare Oom on Lewis and the Religious Right.
I think that Lewis's thought does reflect the acceptance of certain principles which are held dear by political conservatives. At the same time, terms like "conservativsm" and "liberalism" shift meaning from generation to generation. For example, is George W. Bush a real advocate of balanced budgets and limited government? Is nation-building in Iraq something that Barry Goldwater would approve of, if he were still alive? In the present day very often "conservatism" ends up being a matter of doing whatever benefits the big corporations, something I am sure Lewis would not support.
In the C. S. Lewis encyclopedia edited by John West and Jeffrey Schultz West has an entry on Lewis and political conservatism in which he point out a number of conservative prinicples Lewis defended but then pointed out that Lewis supported to system of socialized medicine in Britain! (Hillary take note).
Of course the term "Religious Right" is a highly loaded term which stands in need of definition. The attempt to ally Christianity with any political party or movement, however, is something Lewis criticizes devastatingly in his essay "Meditation on the Third Commandment." In fact, I consider that essay to be a pre-emptive demolition of the pretensions of the Moral Majority and its successors. I don't consider the idea that we need to enlist the government to defend the family to be an especially conservative idea, or an especially good idea either.
In short, there is a serious question to be asked as to what "conservatism" means. Once we clarify it, we will find that Lewis supports some but not all conservative principles. But the attempt to ally the fortunes of the Gospel with the fortunes of any political party or movement is something that Lewis condemned on no uncertain terms.
I think that Lewis's thought does reflect the acceptance of certain principles which are held dear by political conservatives. At the same time, terms like "conservativsm" and "liberalism" shift meaning from generation to generation. For example, is George W. Bush a real advocate of balanced budgets and limited government? Is nation-building in Iraq something that Barry Goldwater would approve of, if he were still alive? In the present day very often "conservatism" ends up being a matter of doing whatever benefits the big corporations, something I am sure Lewis would not support.
In the C. S. Lewis encyclopedia edited by John West and Jeffrey Schultz West has an entry on Lewis and political conservatism in which he point out a number of conservative prinicples Lewis defended but then pointed out that Lewis supported to system of socialized medicine in Britain! (Hillary take note).
Of course the term "Religious Right" is a highly loaded term which stands in need of definition. The attempt to ally Christianity with any political party or movement, however, is something Lewis criticizes devastatingly in his essay "Meditation on the Third Commandment." In fact, I consider that essay to be a pre-emptive demolition of the pretensions of the Moral Majority and its successors. I don't consider the idea that we need to enlist the government to defend the family to be an especially conservative idea, or an especially good idea either.
In short, there is a serious question to be asked as to what "conservatism" means. Once we clarify it, we will find that Lewis supports some but not all conservative principles. But the attempt to ally the fortunes of the Gospel with the fortunes of any political party or movement is something that Lewis condemned on no uncertain terms.
Discussion of Hasker on Dangerous Idea 2
I am starting a series if posts on William Hasker's critique of functionalism on Dangerous Idea 2.
This is the infidel radio link
I doesn't cost much, as Shogun pointed out. Just $1.25. But I think I will take up Laz's suggestion, once I get the chance. If anybody listened to the interview and has some feedback, let me know.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Note from Jim Lazarus on my interview
I'm having Richard send you a copy of the show. Unfortunately Reggie has decided not to let this show be a free podcast download -- but I should note that you have full distribution rights for this show, so you're free to post it anywhere you like and have people download it for free at their leisure.- Jim
Thursday, January 11, 2007
I was interviewed on Infidelguy by Richard Spencer
And it was fun. The podcast should be available in a day or two.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Is there a consensus in philosophy of mind in favor of materialism
In a DI2 post I discuss this question. Does dualism only survive because of religious motivations?
Lewis and Rational Inference
What, exactly, is involved in rational inference? Lewis thought that there were three elements: the reception of facts to reason about, the perception of a logical relation, and the arrangement of those facts to draw a fresh conclusion. The link is to a post on DI2 that contains some discussion of what Lewis thought reasoning is, including some material by Peter Williams which makes use of some passages in The Discarded Image, and some passages in Why I am Not a Pacifist.
On Saddam's execution
In response to some of the discussion I started on Saddam's execution, I would separate three questions.
1) Does Saddam deserve death, and does the Iraqi government have the right to our support in carrying out the execution. I'm no big fan of the death penalty, but I will accept, for the sake of this discussion, the rightness of execution for a mass murderer, and the claim that Saddam was a mass murderer. However, I would insist that the execution was at best a necessary evil, and not a cause for rejoicing.
2) Was the process leading to the execution a due process. This is where serious doubts emerge for me.
3) Was the execution of Saddam an act of justice or an act of vengeance? It looks to me to have been an act of revenge on the part of Shiites for years of repression under Sunni Saddam. Charles Krauthammer, who is a conservative columnists, explains my problems with the execution very well.
The most favorable explanation I can give for the invasion of Iraq (since the idea that Saddam was a threat to American security doesn't hold up) is that we hoped to bring a democracy to the Middle East so that people over there can see how wonderful freedom and democracy is and move in that direction. This, in my estimation, was insufficient to justify invading another country, but I think it also demonstrated a certain naivete about Islam and Iraq.
No democracy can succeed so long as the religious majority is unwilling to grant religious freedom to religious minorities. In Christian Europe this was hard enough to achieve, hence the wars of religion in the 17th Century. However, nothing about governing is built into the essentials of Christianity. What the NT says about government is "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's." It says nothing about what to do if you are Caesar. And to that I say,
"Praise the Lord!" At this point I am inclined to quote Alexander Campbell's slogan: "We are silent where the Bible is silent." Shoot, Christians went some 300 years before they had any political clout at all. So, so 1700-1800 or so years after being founded, Christian Europe was willing to accept the idea that the Church and the State could do different jobs.
Islam is a different kettle of fish. Islam began by governing, and the Qu'ran is all about what to do as the government. The idea of separation of church and state is antithetical to Islam. To make matters worse, Iraq if a country with a Shiite majority who believes that the essence of Islam was distorted in the early days after Muhammad and the people who should have been running things were murdered. Without religious freedom for religious minorities, the closest thing to democracy you can get is a tyranny of the majority. President Bush's attempt to evangelize the Middle East for democracy is therefore a pipe dream.
1) Does Saddam deserve death, and does the Iraqi government have the right to our support in carrying out the execution. I'm no big fan of the death penalty, but I will accept, for the sake of this discussion, the rightness of execution for a mass murderer, and the claim that Saddam was a mass murderer. However, I would insist that the execution was at best a necessary evil, and not a cause for rejoicing.
2) Was the process leading to the execution a due process. This is where serious doubts emerge for me.
3) Was the execution of Saddam an act of justice or an act of vengeance? It looks to me to have been an act of revenge on the part of Shiites for years of repression under Sunni Saddam. Charles Krauthammer, who is a conservative columnists, explains my problems with the execution very well.
The most favorable explanation I can give for the invasion of Iraq (since the idea that Saddam was a threat to American security doesn't hold up) is that we hoped to bring a democracy to the Middle East so that people over there can see how wonderful freedom and democracy is and move in that direction. This, in my estimation, was insufficient to justify invading another country, but I think it also demonstrated a certain naivete about Islam and Iraq.
No democracy can succeed so long as the religious majority is unwilling to grant religious freedom to religious minorities. In Christian Europe this was hard enough to achieve, hence the wars of religion in the 17th Century. However, nothing about governing is built into the essentials of Christianity. What the NT says about government is "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's." It says nothing about what to do if you are Caesar. And to that I say,
"Praise the Lord!" At this point I am inclined to quote Alexander Campbell's slogan: "We are silent where the Bible is silent." Shoot, Christians went some 300 years before they had any political clout at all. So, so 1700-1800 or so years after being founded, Christian Europe was willing to accept the idea that the Church and the State could do different jobs.
Islam is a different kettle of fish. Islam began by governing, and the Qu'ran is all about what to do as the government. The idea of separation of church and state is antithetical to Islam. To make matters worse, Iraq if a country with a Shiite majority who believes that the essence of Islam was distorted in the early days after Muhammad and the people who should have been running things were murdered. Without religious freedom for religious minorities, the closest thing to democracy you can get is a tyranny of the majority. President Bush's attempt to evangelize the Middle East for democracy is therefore a pipe dream.
I'm going to be on Freethought Media
This is either the infidelguy show or a successor to it. If the Lord wills, you can here me interviewed tonight.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Monday, January 08, 2007
Why C. S. Lewis is going to hell
According to one fundamentalist. HT: Jim Lippard.
#39, True Rating: 3.85
#39, True Rating: 3.85
|
"Here are a few reason why I won't be watching and won't endorse his books or movies. Did Lewis believe in life on other planets, or just write stories about it. And is it heresy to believe in life on other planets? Is it essential Christian doctrine to believe that we are alone in the universe? So belief in personal responsibility is heresy? Now, the future does not rest with us. In fact, God could do anything he wanted without a single soul on this earth. If Asylan is God, then he wouldn't be saying this. God's intentions does not rest on our courage. Plain and simple. So let's party! Nothing depends on our choices anyway! Why does this Bible verse support such a radical conclusion. I think it heretical to call any God-given faculty evil. |
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Why six arguments from reason?
This is a link to an repost onto Dangerous Idea 2 about the different versions of the argument from reason. I am attempting to organize and put together the DI2 blog to discuss the AFR exclusively, but I will continue to link those entries here.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Ding Dong Saddam is Dead
Are you glad? Jarrod Cochran wonders if it was really a good thing to kill this man. He also offers this essay, written by an Episcopal monk:
| A link to my article: And, an article from my friend, Episcopal Monk Brother Karekin Yarian: Saddam Is Dead Today we executed a near 70 year old man. A man, once of great power, whom we captured cowering in his underwear in a hole in the ground. A man who, without a doubt, was committed to evil and performed great sins against humankind... And yet a man who had been neutralized. A man who could have spent his life imprisoned for his crimes. Today, we executed a near 70 year old man... For crimes committed by countless others whom we continue to support and keep in power because it is expedient to our wishes. We executed him, like we execute so many others in our own country because we do not believe in God, despite our protestations to the contrary. No... we do not believe in God. We believe in vengeance and retaliation. Or that, if he did, he did so only for a privileged few that doesn't include Muslims. Especially near 70 year old Muslims caught cowering in their underwear in a hole in the ground because he realized that the gig was up and vengeance was at hand. Saddam went to the gallows with a copy of the Quran in his hands. I wonder if the executioner did the same... carried to the gallows whatever holy book gives him comfort and strength. I wonder if our Christian president bothered to take up his Bible and pray at all yesterday while awaiting news of the death his machinations had wrought against a near 70 year old man. Today I got a note from a friend wondering if we ought to pray for Saddam in church this weekend. Pray for your enemies and those who persecute you. But what do we care. The biggest fear we have when it comes to executing a near 70 year old man is whether his death will lead to more violence against us. Or whether, in an age of lies and deceit, we dare show a video of the execution to the world for fear people won't believe he's really dead. How graphic should the news dare to be? It really is, after all, just a question of taste. An evil man has died on the gallows, but a man nonetheless. Our own petty tyrant is more convincing than the petty tyrant just dispatched. We will hear about our savage victim over the next several days: How afraid he was. |
Dangerous Idea 2
I have decided to open Dangerous Idea 2, which is a blog dedicated to examining the argument from reason. I am going to be reposting a lot of the DI material over there, trying to do it in some kind of orderly fashion. The first thing I posted there was the first reply to Carrier that I did which had appeared on Bill Vallicella's blog before I started blogging. I am hoping to provide a more organized source for my ideas on the argument from reason for serious students of the argument. At the same time I will at least be linking my posts here when I post over there.
Friday, December 29, 2006
Response to Steve on Naturalism
Steve: As you know Lewis opposed reductionistic accounts of even physical phenomena. The "physical thing" we call the sunbeam has nonphysical properties which have to be siphoned off in order to make it a physicalistic account. The concept of the physical is supposed to be a) mechanistic, and b) closed and c) everything else has to supervene on that. At least that's the Hasker-Reppert definition of physicalism, which can be expanded to come up with an account of what naturalism is supposed to be. (We are happy to solve the physicalists' problem of defining themselves for them, and I have it on the authority of Blue Devil Knight that our definition is a good one).
If you look at even secular philosophers like Nagel who take the toolshed distinction seriously, we find that they push the limits of what is acceptable as physicalism. Nagel seems to have broken out of physicalism even if he hasn't found his way to theism (neither did Lewis when he accepted the argument), and while Searle tries to be a materialist, I think most people on both sides of the materialist debate think he fails to do so. The strongest physicalists like Dennett, Churchland, and company, including ordinary functionalists like the early Putnam try their best to explain the distinction away.
Materialism is an attempt to say that the world as analyzed by the senses and the method of science is the ultimate reality, and that everything else is a byproduct. Insofar as they are consistent materialists, they have to try to undercut Lewis's looking at-looking along distinction. you can't press it into the service of physicalism without begging the question.
If you look at even secular philosophers like Nagel who take the toolshed distinction seriously, we find that they push the limits of what is acceptable as physicalism. Nagel seems to have broken out of physicalism even if he hasn't found his way to theism (neither did Lewis when he accepted the argument), and while Searle tries to be a materialist, I think most people on both sides of the materialist debate think he fails to do so. The strongest physicalists like Dennett, Churchland, and company, including ordinary functionalists like the early Putnam try their best to explain the distinction away.
Materialism is an attempt to say that the world as analyzed by the senses and the method of science is the ultimate reality, and that everything else is a byproduct. Insofar as they are consistent materialists, they have to try to undercut Lewis's looking at-looking along distinction. you can't press it into the service of physicalism without begging the question.
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
My new chess blog
I thought that, when I get around to posting some chess stuff, I should put it in a different place. So I invented this chess blog. However, as Lloyd Bentsen would say, "Dennis Monokroussos was a friend of mine, and you're no Dennis Monokroussos."
Selmer Bringsjord defends the philosophical zombie argument
Mental states are often described as computational states, but could we have computation without real mental states? Could something function like a human but really be a zombie? Could something possess all the causal relationships of a human being but not be one because, where inner states are concerned, no one is home? Selmer Bringsjord thinks the answer to these questions is yes, and so do I.
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Is Eliminative Materialism a Misleading Term?
I usually don’t agree with Hiero5ant, but I think his comment based on what he heard Pat Churchland say is pretty significant. He said that Pat said that she would probably not call her position eliminativism if she were developing it today.
The point I am making here is that the Churchlands do propose to replace propositional attitude psychology with successor concepts, and that those concepts are intentional concepts. In fact, those successor concepts have play a role in propositional knowledge. Scientific knowledge is knowledge that f=ma, that humans evolved from primate ancestors, etc. Eliminativists think that they know that eliminativism is true. The challenge is to see how these successor concepts can really replace propositonal attitudes without being propositional attitudes.
The Churchlands wrote an essay entitled “Intertheoretic Reduction: A Neuroscientist’s Field Guide,” in On the Contrary: Critical Essays 1987-1997 (Cambridge, MIT Press, 1988) in which they distinguish three types of intertheoretic reductions: conservative, reforming, and eliminiative. The reduction of temperature in a gas to the mean kinetic energy of the gas’s molecules was a conservative reduction, in that it doesn’t require us to reconceive temperature in any radical way in order to view it as the MKE of the molecules. The secondary qualities of temperature, how it feels, are not denied, they are simply pronounced to be the way we react to temperature rather than something in temperature itself. If the concept of temperature was essential to the meaning of our lives, this type of reduction would not threaten us in any way.
The second type is a reforming reduction, which shows that an earlier theory had significantly misconceived the phenomena it covered. Newtonian mass is replaced in relativity theory with mass relative to a frame of reference, but we were not just dead wrong when we used the concept of mass.
The most radical is an eliminative reduction. In this, the old idea is so wide of the mark that it is simply deleted by the new theory. No single has does the work of phlogiston, but phlogiston is replaced by a theory that distinguishes between oxygen, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide.
Now, what I have trouble understanding is what sense it makes to say that any reduction of mental states is can possibly be eliminative, because whatever the replacement theory is going to do, it is going to have to do the work that propositional attitudes do in any account of propositional knowledge. Second, are there any hard and fast rules for determining whether a reduction is eliminative or reforming? Bill Ramsey, a former student of Stich who last I heard taught at Notre Dame, while willing to defend eliminativism against my self-refutationist attacks in an exchange in Inquiry in 1990-91, nevertheless doesn’t really embrace eliminativism himself because of this problem. Isn’t the term eliminativism here just misleading?
Hasker maintains that functionalism is quasi-eliminiativism, in the sense that it removes important parts of what we ordinarily understand our mental lives to consist in.
Go to church and win a car
I couldn't believe it when I heard this announced on K-LOVE as if nothing was wrong with it. How does that verse go? You cannot serve God and what?
HT: Ingrid Schlueter
HT: Ingrid Schlueter
Blasphemy and the Donatists
I think some light might be shed on the issue surrounding blasphemy against the Holy Spirit by looking at the Donatist controversy. That controversy concerned whether Christians who had denied their faith to avoid martyrdom could rejoin the Church once Constantine had become Emperor and public worship was now legalized in the Roman Empire. After all, where were these guys when the Church needed them to stand up for their faith? They chickened out and denied it in public, right? The Donatists said that they couldn't rejoin the Church, but that position was actually condemned.
Apparently renouncing or deny Christ (or even the Holy Spirit) was not sufficient to remove them from the possibility of receiving God's grace, according to the Church at that time.
Apparently renouncing or deny Christ (or even the Holy Spirit) was not sufficient to remove them from the possibility of receiving God's grace, according to the Church at that time.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
The Blasphemy Challenge
Just a lousy atheist video? You mean that didn't at least throw in a t-shirt that says "I blasphemed the Holy Spirit and all I got was an atheist video, and this T-shirt."
Really, some atheists just need to grow up.
More seriously, any reflections on the "blasphemy against the Holy Spirit" passage in Scripture.
HT: Eric Thomsen (ADA Blue Devil Knight).
Really, some atheists just need to grow up.
More seriously, any reflections on the "blasphemy against the Holy Spirit" passage in Scripture.
HT: Eric Thomsen (ADA Blue Devil Knight).
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Sunday, December 17, 2006
William Hasker on intentional content
I have been re-reading William Hasker's The Emergent Self (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1999), which I consider to be a contempoary classic in the philosophy of mind. This is his description in the first paragraph on our common-sense conception of the mental.
Let us begin with a modest proposal: there are intentinal conscious experiences. There are, that is to say, such episodes as a person wondering whether it is going to rain, or believing that this has been an unusually cold winter, or deciding to let the credit card balance ride for another month. In typical cases such as these the intentional content of the experience, what the experience is about, is something distinct from the experience itself, something that could exist or obtain (or fail to exist or obtain) regardless of whether or not the experience occurred. These episodes are consciously experiened; when we have them we are aware of having them, and there is "something it is like" to be having them.
Of course eliminative materialists think that none of this is true, but I think functionalists really are less than complete literalists about this as well. There is a good case to be made, in fact, for the claim that functionalism is really eliminative materialism disguised, and that there is a case to be made for taking one's eliminativism "straight" if you are going to take it at all.
Let us begin with a modest proposal: there are intentinal conscious experiences. There are, that is to say, such episodes as a person wondering whether it is going to rain, or believing that this has been an unusually cold winter, or deciding to let the credit card balance ride for another month. In typical cases such as these the intentional content of the experience, what the experience is about, is something distinct from the experience itself, something that could exist or obtain (or fail to exist or obtain) regardless of whether or not the experience occurred. These episodes are consciously experiened; when we have them we are aware of having them, and there is "something it is like" to be having them.
Of course eliminative materialists think that none of this is true, but I think functionalists really are less than complete literalists about this as well. There is a good case to be made, in fact, for the claim that functionalism is really eliminative materialism disguised, and that there is a case to be made for taking one's eliminativism "straight" if you are going to take it at all.
Saturday, December 16, 2006
David Lewis on epiphenomenalism
A serious difficulty with many kinds of non-reductive materialism in virtue of the fact that it denies a causal role to mental states. If physicalism is true, then only properly physical properties can play causal roles. David Lewis wrote the following, in an essay in defense of the identity theory:
[Epiphenomenalism] exploits a flaw in the standard regularity theory of cause. We know on other grounds that the theory must be corrected to discriminate between genuine causes and the spurious causes which are their epiphenomenal correlates. (The “power on” light does not cause the motor to go on, even if it is a lawfully perfect correlate of the electric current that really causes the motor to go.) Given a satisfactory correction, the nonphysical correlate will be evicted from its spurious causal role and thereby lose its status [...].
[Epiphenomenalism] exploits a flaw in the standard regularity theory of cause. We know on other grounds that the theory must be corrected to discriminate between genuine causes and the spurious causes which are their epiphenomenal correlates. (The “power on” light does not cause the motor to go on, even if it is a lawfully perfect correlate of the electric current that really causes the motor to go.) Given a satisfactory correction, the nonphysical correlate will be evicted from its spurious causal role and thereby lose its status [...].
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Monokroussos on Lewis and the occult
Finally, a thought about your posted link on CSL as the gateway to witchcraft. There’s plenty that’s ridiculous and objectionable about that particular page, but I’m not convinced the general concern is unconditionally crazy. I’ve read that interest in the occult and Wicca spiked when “Bewitched” was on TV (yes, correlation doesn’t prove causality, I know), and I think the same has occurred in the Harry Potter era. To the extent that CSL’s work is seen as an instance of that genre, it might help funnel some who wouldn’t otherwise go that route into an interest in the occult.
Must it? Obviously not, and I suspect that it happens pretty rarely. But I suspect it’s like drinking alcohol, trying cigarettes when young and smoking pot. Sometimes those activities lead to horrible outcomes – becoming an alcoholic, a smoker and a user of more serious drugs – but usually not. In those cases, the worry is serious enough that we try to steer kids clear of those dangers in various ways. Is there a difference that makes the website’s concern ludicrous? Is it that the link is more tenuous? That the Christian-ish aspects of the Narnia works are more likely to predominate?
I’m not really trying to defend that site, I don’t think there’s any causal link between CSL’s and JRRT’s work and the occult, and I think that on balance their works are far more likely to lead to positive effects than negatives ones. It’s also a mistake to proscribe good things because they could lead to bad results. I’m just suggesting that their concern isn’t either goofy or necessarily even trivial.
D.
Must it? Obviously not, and I suspect that it happens pretty rarely. But I suspect it’s like drinking alcohol, trying cigarettes when young and smoking pot. Sometimes those activities lead to horrible outcomes – becoming an alcoholic, a smoker and a user of more serious drugs – but usually not. In those cases, the worry is serious enough that we try to steer kids clear of those dangers in various ways. Is there a difference that makes the website’s concern ludicrous? Is it that the link is more tenuous? That the Christian-ish aspects of the Narnia works are more likely to predominate?
I’m not really trying to defend that site, I don’t think there’s any causal link between CSL’s and JRRT’s work and the occult, and I think that on balance their works are far more likely to lead to positive effects than negatives ones. It’s also a mistake to proscribe good things because they could lead to bad results. I’m just suggesting that their concern isn’t either goofy or necessarily even trivial.
D.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Is Postmodernism as old as the hills? Can it be Christian?
Should Christians embrace postmodernism? Some people seem to want to do just that. The following, which is a quotation from R. Wesley Hurd, suggests otherwise.
Hurd: Looking to man and not God, the optimism of modernism has proven itself ill-founded. The response has been postmodernism. The best Christian book on postmodernism that I have found is A Primer on Postmodernism by Stanley J. Grenz. In this article, however, I will have to describe postmodernism more briefly, which I will do by looking at five presuppositions inherent in the postmodern worldview:
(1) The quest for truth is a lost cause. It is a search for a "holy grail" that doesn't exist and never did. Postmodernists argue that objective, universal, knowable truth is mythical; all we have ever found in our agonized search for Truth are "truths" that were compelling only in their own time and culture, but true Truth has never been ours. Furthermore, if we make the mistake of claiming to know the Truth, we are deluded at best and dangerous at worst.
(2) A person's sense of identity is a composite constructed by the forces of the surrounding culture. Individual consciousness--a vague, "decentered" collection of unconscious and conscious beliefs, knowledge, and intuitions about oneself and the world--is malleable and arrived at through interaction with the surrounding culture. Postmodernism then, in stark contrast to modernism, is about the dissolving of the self. From the postmodernist perspective, we should not think of ourselves as unique, unified, self-conscious, autonomous persons.
(3) The languages of our culture (the verbal and visual signs we use to represent the world to ourselves) literally "construct" what we think of as "real" in our everyday existence. In this sense, reality is a "text" or "composite" of texts, and these texts (rather than the God-created reality) are the only reality we can know. Our sense of self--who we are, how we think of ourselves, as well as how we see and interpret the world and give ourselves meaning in it--is subjectively constructed through language.
(4) "Reality" is created by those who have power. One of postmodernism's preeminent theorists, Michel Foucault, combines the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's ideas about how those in power shape the world with a theory of how language is the primary tool for making culture. Foucault argues that whoever dominates or controls the "official" use of language in a society holds the key to social and political power. (Think, for example, of how official political "spin" control of specific words and phrases can alter the public perception of political decisions, policies, and events.) Put simply, Nietzsche said all reality is someone's willful, powerful construction; Foucault says language is the primary tool in that construction.
(5) We should neutralize the political power inherent in language by "deconstructing" it. Another leading postmodernist, Jacques Derrida, theorizes that the language we use when we make statements always creates a set of opposite beliefs, a "binary," one of which is "privileged" and the other of which is "marginalized," and the privileged belief is always favored. For example, if one says "Honey is better for you than white sugar," this statement of opinion has "privileged" honey over white sugar. In the arena of morals one might say "Sex should only happen in marriage," in which case the experience of sex in marriage is "privileged" and sex out of wedlock is "marginalized." Derrida argues that all language is made up of these binaries, and they are always socially and politically loaded. "Deconstruction" is the practice of identifying these power-loaded binaries and restructuring them so that the marginalized or "unprivileged" end of the binary can be consciously focused upon and favored.
VR: It seems to me that these theses of postmodernism are as opposed to Christianity as atheism. The difference, what really makes it dangerous, is that the postmodern can talk the talk of Christianity and walk the walk of postmodernism. That is, one can say all sort of things that sound very Christian, speaking a longuage of faith, all the while "deconstructing" their own conversation in such a way that it means nothing. That some Christians are buying in on postmodernism is, quite frankly scary.
In the public debate that I show to my World Religion classes it is Keith Parsons, the atheist in the debate, appeals to Paul's words that if Christ has not been raised, the gospel is null and void.
1 Corinthians 15:17-20: And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.
And while William Lane Craig disagrees with Parsons on a lot of things, the two of them, very importantly, agree on this critical matter. Both of them assume that Christianity is a claim that can be either true or false, and that if the resurrection really happened then it's true, and if it didn't then it's false.
Postmodernists will say that they each have their own "truth" and there is no reason to have a debate. Sometimes when I show this debate to students they react the way Rodney King did to the Los Angeles riots: Can't we all just get along?
I stand 100% with Craig and Parsons, and against the postmodernists. Christianity makes claims. They are either true or they are not. If they are, they determine for us the purpose of our existence. If they are false, then those who live on the basis of Christianity are misguided. Let's not be seduced into "getting along" in the wrong way.
One further point. Is postmodernism really a new idea, or is it really as old as the hills, or perhaps even as old as the devil. Way back in ancient Greece Protagoras, and the Sophists who followed him, said "Man is the measure of all things, of those that are, that they are, of those that are not, that they are not.
William Lawhead, in his introductory text on philosophy, claims that there were two main themes of Sophist philosophy: skepticism and success. Knowledge of the truth, they said, was unattainable. The second theme was success. He writes:
The second theme of the Sophists was that achieving success is the goal in life. Of knowledge is impossible, then it is useless to seek for what you can't find. Instead, you should just try to get along. The Sophists taught that you should not ask of an idea, "Is it true?" Instead, you should ask "Will advocating this idea help me." Don't ask of an action "Is it right?", Instead, you should ask "Will performing this action be advantageous to me." To the success-driven young people of Athens, the search for truth gave way to the marketing of one's opinions. The search for moral correctness gave way to promoting one's interests. Accordingly, the Sophists taught the skillls of rhetoric, debate, public speaking, and persuasion.
VR: The more things change, the more they remain the same.
Hurd: Looking to man and not God, the optimism of modernism has proven itself ill-founded. The response has been postmodernism. The best Christian book on postmodernism that I have found is A Primer on Postmodernism by Stanley J. Grenz. In this article, however, I will have to describe postmodernism more briefly, which I will do by looking at five presuppositions inherent in the postmodern worldview:
(1) The quest for truth is a lost cause. It is a search for a "holy grail" that doesn't exist and never did. Postmodernists argue that objective, universal, knowable truth is mythical; all we have ever found in our agonized search for Truth are "truths" that were compelling only in their own time and culture, but true Truth has never been ours. Furthermore, if we make the mistake of claiming to know the Truth, we are deluded at best and dangerous at worst.
(2) A person's sense of identity is a composite constructed by the forces of the surrounding culture. Individual consciousness--a vague, "decentered" collection of unconscious and conscious beliefs, knowledge, and intuitions about oneself and the world--is malleable and arrived at through interaction with the surrounding culture. Postmodernism then, in stark contrast to modernism, is about the dissolving of the self. From the postmodernist perspective, we should not think of ourselves as unique, unified, self-conscious, autonomous persons.
(3) The languages of our culture (the verbal and visual signs we use to represent the world to ourselves) literally "construct" what we think of as "real" in our everyday existence. In this sense, reality is a "text" or "composite" of texts, and these texts (rather than the God-created reality) are the only reality we can know. Our sense of self--who we are, how we think of ourselves, as well as how we see and interpret the world and give ourselves meaning in it--is subjectively constructed through language.
(4) "Reality" is created by those who have power. One of postmodernism's preeminent theorists, Michel Foucault, combines the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's ideas about how those in power shape the world with a theory of how language is the primary tool for making culture. Foucault argues that whoever dominates or controls the "official" use of language in a society holds the key to social and political power. (Think, for example, of how official political "spin" control of specific words and phrases can alter the public perception of political decisions, policies, and events.) Put simply, Nietzsche said all reality is someone's willful, powerful construction; Foucault says language is the primary tool in that construction.
(5) We should neutralize the political power inherent in language by "deconstructing" it. Another leading postmodernist, Jacques Derrida, theorizes that the language we use when we make statements always creates a set of opposite beliefs, a "binary," one of which is "privileged" and the other of which is "marginalized," and the privileged belief is always favored. For example, if one says "Honey is better for you than white sugar," this statement of opinion has "privileged" honey over white sugar. In the arena of morals one might say "Sex should only happen in marriage," in which case the experience of sex in marriage is "privileged" and sex out of wedlock is "marginalized." Derrida argues that all language is made up of these binaries, and they are always socially and politically loaded. "Deconstruction" is the practice of identifying these power-loaded binaries and restructuring them so that the marginalized or "unprivileged" end of the binary can be consciously focused upon and favored.
VR: It seems to me that these theses of postmodernism are as opposed to Christianity as atheism. The difference, what really makes it dangerous, is that the postmodern can talk the talk of Christianity and walk the walk of postmodernism. That is, one can say all sort of things that sound very Christian, speaking a longuage of faith, all the while "deconstructing" their own conversation in such a way that it means nothing. That some Christians are buying in on postmodernism is, quite frankly scary.
In the public debate that I show to my World Religion classes it is Keith Parsons, the atheist in the debate, appeals to Paul's words that if Christ has not been raised, the gospel is null and void.
1 Corinthians 15:17-20: And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.
And while William Lane Craig disagrees with Parsons on a lot of things, the two of them, very importantly, agree on this critical matter. Both of them assume that Christianity is a claim that can be either true or false, and that if the resurrection really happened then it's true, and if it didn't then it's false.
Postmodernists will say that they each have their own "truth" and there is no reason to have a debate. Sometimes when I show this debate to students they react the way Rodney King did to the Los Angeles riots: Can't we all just get along?
I stand 100% with Craig and Parsons, and against the postmodernists. Christianity makes claims. They are either true or they are not. If they are, they determine for us the purpose of our existence. If they are false, then those who live on the basis of Christianity are misguided. Let's not be seduced into "getting along" in the wrong way.
One further point. Is postmodernism really a new idea, or is it really as old as the hills, or perhaps even as old as the devil. Way back in ancient Greece Protagoras, and the Sophists who followed him, said "Man is the measure of all things, of those that are, that they are, of those that are not, that they are not.
William Lawhead, in his introductory text on philosophy, claims that there were two main themes of Sophist philosophy: skepticism and success. Knowledge of the truth, they said, was unattainable. The second theme was success. He writes:
The second theme of the Sophists was that achieving success is the goal in life. Of knowledge is impossible, then it is useless to seek for what you can't find. Instead, you should just try to get along. The Sophists taught that you should not ask of an idea, "Is it true?" Instead, you should ask "Will advocating this idea help me." Don't ask of an action "Is it right?", Instead, you should ask "Will performing this action be advantageous to me." To the success-driven young people of Athens, the search for truth gave way to the marketing of one's opinions. The search for moral correctness gave way to promoting one's interests. Accordingly, the Sophists taught the skillls of rhetoric, debate, public speaking, and persuasion.
VR: The more things change, the more they remain the same.
Monday, December 11, 2006
The Cosmological Argument and Falsification
Consider this version of the cosmological argument.
1. A contingent being exists.
2. This contingent being has a cause of its existence.
3. The cause of its existence is something other than itself.
4. What causes this contingent being to exist must be a set that contains either only contingent beings or a set that contains at least one noncontingent (necessary) being.
5. A set that contains only contingent beings cannot cause this contingent being to exist.
6. Therefore, what causes this contingent being must be a set that contains at least one necessary being.
7. Therefore, a necessary being exists.
If you accept this argument, how could the conclusion be falsified
1. A contingent being exists.
2. This contingent being has a cause of its existence.
3. The cause of its existence is something other than itself.
4. What causes this contingent being to exist must be a set that contains either only contingent beings or a set that contains at least one noncontingent (necessary) being.
5. A set that contains only contingent beings cannot cause this contingent being to exist.
6. Therefore, what causes this contingent being must be a set that contains at least one necessary being.
7. Therefore, a necessary being exists.
If you accept this argument, how could the conclusion be falsified
Some questions about the defense of Mormonism
I have some problems related to the defense of Mormonism based on DNA. Suppose it is successfully shown by Mormon defenders that the book of Mormon peoples could have existed in a limited area and did not make much of a ripple in the gene pool. (How that squares with the casualty numbers in the BoM is another matter). I take it that is the thrust of the Mormon defense on this issue. I don't see that this gets the Mormons out of the woods if, as is suggested by this statement by President Ezra Taft Benson (Eisenhower's secretary of agriiculture and the grandfather, I think, of Arizona Republic cartoonist Steve Benson), the authority of the living prophet is greater than that of the dead ones, and if prophet after prophet says that those people on the reservations running the casinos are Lamanites.
A Bayesian model for the historical case for Christianity
This is the first post in what I hope will be a series on the historical evidence for Christianity. The views on this are enormous in variation, from those who think Christianity completely unsupported by history to those who believe that the historical evidence for it is so strong that only someone suppressing the truth could remain an unbeliever. My view is in the middle. There is as positive historical case to be made for Christianity, but it depends on what's in the rest of a person's belief system whether that case is sufficient.
The model I’d like to use to discuss this is one using Bayes’ Theorem. I had trouble showing BT on my blog, so I am expressing it here.
P(B|A) =
P(B) x P(A|B)
Over P(A)
Let’s take B to be the thesis that the founding of Christianity involved action by God or some other powerful supernatural agent. Not-B, on the other hand, would be the view that Christianity was founded without the aid of any beings of superhuman power, that ordinary natural causation produced all the events which resulted in the spread of Christianity on earth. A would be the various pieces of historical evidence which can be brought forward to bear on this issue.
P(B) in this theorem would be the initial probability that the founding of Christianity was miraculous, before we examine the specific historical evidence. The problem here is that I know of no way to objectively measure the antecedent probability of anything. In fact, I am pretty much a subjectivist Bayesian. I think that people have personal prior probabilities and they ought to alter those initial probabilities as evidence comes in , but I don’t know of any way to actually prove that one set of initial probabilities is correct and another is not. Some people have maintained that it is possible to go from how frequently an event has occurred in the past to how antecedently likely it is to occur now, but the problem is that every singe event falls under a range of classes. Hume didn’t use Bayes’ theorem, but if he did he would have said that miracles are event-types that occur so infrequently in experience that the prior probability for them so low as to make belief unreasonable no matter what the other figures are. C. S. Lewis’s book Miracles was a book called Miracles: A Preliminary Study, meaning that his argument was designed to show that the antecedent probability for the miraculous should not be vanishingly low. I am going to presuppose that different people will have different priors for miracles.
P(A/B) is the likelihood that the pieces of evidence should exist on the assumption that God was involved in the founding of Christianity. If God were miraculously involved in, say the resurrection of Jesus, should we expect to find a new movement arising based on the claim, would it make sense of a Jewish group arising that changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday, etc.
P(A) is how likely it is that these event should have occurred whether or not there was any miraculous involvement. Is what happened in the life of Jesus and the founding of Christianity likely to have happened. Perhaps human gullibility and fallibility is such that people would have come up with something like this anyway, even without divine intervention.
I’m going to set aside the issue of prior probabilities and ask the question of whether P (A/B) is signiicantly greater that P/A. If it is, then there is a confirming argument for Christianity to be found in history, even if, according to many people’s credence function, it is insufficient to secure acceptance for Christianity. If it is not significantly greater, then there is no confirming argument for Christianity to he had from history.
This is a link to my Infidels essay on miracles, which should help understand the basic concepts.
The model I’d like to use to discuss this is one using Bayes’ Theorem. I had trouble showing BT on my blog, so I am expressing it here.
P(B|A) =
P(B) x P(A|B)
Over P(A)
Let’s take B to be the thesis that the founding of Christianity involved action by God or some other powerful supernatural agent. Not-B, on the other hand, would be the view that Christianity was founded without the aid of any beings of superhuman power, that ordinary natural causation produced all the events which resulted in the spread of Christianity on earth. A would be the various pieces of historical evidence which can be brought forward to bear on this issue.
P(B) in this theorem would be the initial probability that the founding of Christianity was miraculous, before we examine the specific historical evidence. The problem here is that I know of no way to objectively measure the antecedent probability of anything. In fact, I am pretty much a subjectivist Bayesian. I think that people have personal prior probabilities and they ought to alter those initial probabilities as evidence comes in , but I don’t know of any way to actually prove that one set of initial probabilities is correct and another is not. Some people have maintained that it is possible to go from how frequently an event has occurred in the past to how antecedently likely it is to occur now, but the problem is that every singe event falls under a range of classes. Hume didn’t use Bayes’ theorem, but if he did he would have said that miracles are event-types that occur so infrequently in experience that the prior probability for them so low as to make belief unreasonable no matter what the other figures are. C. S. Lewis’s book Miracles was a book called Miracles: A Preliminary Study, meaning that his argument was designed to show that the antecedent probability for the miraculous should not be vanishingly low. I am going to presuppose that different people will have different priors for miracles.
P(A/B) is the likelihood that the pieces of evidence should exist on the assumption that God was involved in the founding of Christianity. If God were miraculously involved in, say the resurrection of Jesus, should we expect to find a new movement arising based on the claim, would it make sense of a Jewish group arising that changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday, etc.
P(A) is how likely it is that these event should have occurred whether or not there was any miraculous involvement. Is what happened in the life of Jesus and the founding of Christianity likely to have happened. Perhaps human gullibility and fallibility is such that people would have come up with something like this anyway, even without divine intervention.
I’m going to set aside the issue of prior probabilities and ask the question of whether P (A/B) is signiicantly greater that P/A. If it is, then there is a confirming argument for Christianity to be found in history, even if, according to many people’s credence function, it is insufficient to secure acceptance for Christianity. If it is not significantly greater, then there is no confirming argument for Christianity to he had from history.
This is a link to my Infidels essay on miracles, which should help understand the basic concepts.
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Clark and company on the epistemology of Mormon religious experience
Clark and his interlocutors have carried on some of the discussion of religious experience, and in particular Mormon religious experience, on this page. Very nice discussion that can, of course, be applied outside of a Mormon context.
Part of what is behind some of Clark's arguments are the ambiguities in understanding a text. I don't know if he would subscribe to Nietzsche's dictum, "There are no facts, only the interpretations of facts." To which I would have said, had I been able to answer Nietzsche, "Is that a fact?"
But I would like to ask under what circumstances religious experience might fail to establish a claim. Under what circumstances might I want to say "Yeah, my feelings tell me p, but I really need to accept not-p." I'd have to scroll through a bunch of stuff to find it, but I thought Clark said that someone couldn't use religious experience to confirm a conviction that YEC is true, given the weight of the evidence against it. Of course one can, if necessary, accept all the scientific evidence for evolution and be a creationist, by accepting a version of Gosse's Omphalos. (God created the world in six days with fake evidence for evolution built in). So where are the limits on appeal to experience. I didn't think I saw anyone come in from that angle, so maybe that's a place for me to start.
Part of what is behind some of Clark's arguments are the ambiguities in understanding a text. I don't know if he would subscribe to Nietzsche's dictum, "There are no facts, only the interpretations of facts." To which I would have said, had I been able to answer Nietzsche, "Is that a fact?"
But I would like to ask under what circumstances religious experience might fail to establish a claim. Under what circumstances might I want to say "Yeah, my feelings tell me p, but I really need to accept not-p." I'd have to scroll through a bunch of stuff to find it, but I thought Clark said that someone couldn't use religious experience to confirm a conviction that YEC is true, given the weight of the evidence against it. Of course one can, if necessary, accept all the scientific evidence for evolution and be a creationist, by accepting a version of Gosse's Omphalos. (God created the world in six days with fake evidence for evolution built in). So where are the limits on appeal to experience. I didn't think I saw anyone come in from that angle, so maybe that's a place for me to start.
Comments by a Lewis fan and former student of John Beversluis
Anwyn, a former Beversluis student but an admrer of C. S. Lewis, has some things to say about her former teacher's views on Lewis. It supports my long-held contention that Beversluis projected a more harshly critical view of C. S. Lewis in his book than he actually accepts. Of course he doesn't think Lewis's apologetics work, but the idea that he thinks Lewis is just a blithering idiot is just not true. I think that his revised book may disappoint some people like S. T. Joshi, who wrote God's Defenders, and who does think that Lewis is a blithering idiot and uses Beversluis to support his position. Ditto for Austin Cline of atheism.about.com.
A link to excerpts from my book
This links to excerpts from my book, in case someone might be interested.
Monday, December 04, 2006
Mormonism and misquotataion
My attempt to come to grips with Mormonism has revealed how little expertise I have on Mormon theology. However, I think I can claim to be a C. S. Lewis expert, and the critics of Mormonism have this one right. Lewis's claims are distorted by Millet and company.
P. S I corrected the link. Thanks, Jeff.
P. S I corrected the link. Thanks, Jeff.
Christianity-bashing
Apparently Dawkins thinks theism can be laughed out of the intellectual marketplace. Sounds like the Horse Laugh fallacy to me.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Pascal's wager
According to Pascal's wager, (or at least the unvarnished version of Pascal's Wager), if yoi don't believe in God, you should get yourself brainwashed so that you can become a believer. The idea is this. There is either belief in God or the lack of belief in God, and God either exists or doesn't exists.
1. If you believe in God and God exists, then you get infinte joy forever in heaven.
2. If you believe but you got it wrong, then you become worm food.
3. But if you don't believe and got get it right, resisting all the evangelistic efforts of all those believers, you ...... become worm food.
4. If you don't believe in God and God does exist, then you spend eternity in hell.
Given the fact that they payoffs are the way they are, the smart person will surely bet of believing in God regardless of the evidence. Even if you there is a tiny chance that there is a God, you should nevertheless make a believer out of yourself so that you can have a shot at the brass ring, eternal life, or at least avoid eternal punishment. I mean, what do you give up by believing in God? Premarital sex? Pornography? 10% of your income? Whatever it is, it has to be a flea bite compared to the eternal salvation or eternal punishment. Right???
1. If you believe in God and God exists, then you get infinte joy forever in heaven.
2. If you believe but you got it wrong, then you become worm food.
3. But if you don't believe and got get it right, resisting all the evangelistic efforts of all those believers, you ...... become worm food.
4. If you don't believe in God and God does exist, then you spend eternity in hell.
Given the fact that they payoffs are the way they are, the smart person will surely bet of believing in God regardless of the evidence. Even if you there is a tiny chance that there is a God, you should nevertheless make a believer out of yourself so that you can have a shot at the brass ring, eternal life, or at least avoid eternal punishment. I mean, what do you give up by believing in God? Premarital sex? Pornography? 10% of your income? Whatever it is, it has to be a flea bite compared to the eternal salvation or eternal punishment. Right???
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Steve Davis replies to Exapologist
Steve Davis responds to the argument from the delay of the Parousia. Assuming that Christ invested the Church with an immanent expectation of the Parousia, was that impression just plain false. Think about it. Everyone who dies experiences a personal "Parousia" in which they meet God face to face. Most of us presuppose, wrongly, that we will go on and on for a long time, especially if we are young. Are we guaranteed a 70+ year life span, or can we be taken at any time? Jesus explicitly says, right in the same paragraph as the infamous "this generaation statement," not only that WE don't know the day or they hour, but also that He doesn't, only the Father does. So how could Christ be deceiving us when he himself said he didn't know? Christ gave us an immanent expectation, not a statute of limitations.
SD: Hi Victor, I could not read all of it--just the initial brief essay. I am basically with Tom Wright. There is no doubt that the earliest Christians thought that Jesus' return was imminent, indeed, that itwould occur in their lifetimes. And there are things that Jesus says in the Gospels that can be interpreted along those lines. But I think even in Jesus own teachings that idea is muted somewhat. For example, I think the parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins is a cautionary tale that is all about the delay of the parousia. Keep in mind that we know from Scripture that Jesus was not omniscient. When asked about the date ofthe end time, he said "I do not know, the angels do not know, only the Father knows." But I think Wright is correct that much of what Jesus wastalking about when he spoke of the coming kingdom did indeed occur atthe crucifixion/resurrection/Pentecost event. By the way, I think the church must always hold that Jesus' return is imminent. We must hold to that even if he waits another twenty centuries.
Steve
SD: Hi Victor, I could not read all of it--just the initial brief essay. I am basically with Tom Wright. There is no doubt that the earliest Christians thought that Jesus' return was imminent, indeed, that itwould occur in their lifetimes. And there are things that Jesus says in the Gospels that can be interpreted along those lines. But I think even in Jesus own teachings that idea is muted somewhat. For example, I think the parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins is a cautionary tale that is all about the delay of the parousia. Keep in mind that we know from Scripture that Jesus was not omniscient. When asked about the date ofthe end time, he said "I do not know, the angels do not know, only the Father knows." But I think Wright is correct that much of what Jesus wastalking about when he spoke of the coming kingdom did indeed occur atthe crucifixion/resurrection/Pentecost event. By the way, I think the church must always hold that Jesus' return is imminent. We must hold to that even if he waits another twenty centuries.
Steve
Why do Christians argue against Mormonism
A few posts back Jeff G, who is an atheist but someone with some real sympathy with the Mormon Church, wanted to know why Christians sometimes argue against, and in some ways vehemently oppose, Mormonism. Now one answer to all of this might be that Christians care, and care very much, whether or not their beliefs are true. This, of course might explain why Christians are motivated to argue against Calvinism or Arminianism, or Protestantism against Catholicism, or whatever way they disagree about religion.
But is is true that, for example, I am disinclined to get into a Catholic vs. Protestand debate. I considered Catholicism in my early twenties and decided not to become one; however at least with respect to the Catholics I know I was sure that what I agreed with them on was far, far, more important than our disagreements. Given the fact that debating that issue strained some of my closest friendships, I don't feel terribly comfortable getting into the pros and cons of Rome with Catholics. Though I suppose a really easygoing exchange of ideas about Catholicism might be interesting. I subscribe to a C. S. Lewis discussion group that occasionally gets into C v. P issues, which are called the Creed Wars, ,but I've never posted on the subject there.
With Calvinism, I'm a little more motivated, because I really do think that Calvinism undermines confidence in the goodness of God. But I would not want to put Calvinism outside the pale of Christian orthodoxy. I also might show my teeth when religious relativism is brought into Christianity.
With Mormonism, the Mormons present themselves as followers of Christ, but then so did the Gnostics in the early days of Christianity. But when I am told that what man is,God once was, and what God is, man may become, I can't help concluding that what Christians and Mormons are talking about when they are talking about God and Christ are two different things. That would mean that there can be, and no doubt will be more than one god, if there is not more than one already. And to be saved is not to be brought into a right creaturely relationship to God, it is to become a god oneself.
Also IF (and I emphasize if) they are saying that if they have a certain kind of feeling, that the fact do not matter, then that is a cause of concern for me.
Sometimes orthodox Christians say Mormonism is a cult. I'm not sure that phrase means anything anymore. What I will say is that I don't sense the kind of common Christian ground with Mormonism that I have with Calvinists, despite having a strong antipathy toward the doctrine of predestination.
But is is true that, for example, I am disinclined to get into a Catholic vs. Protestand debate. I considered Catholicism in my early twenties and decided not to become one; however at least with respect to the Catholics I know I was sure that what I agreed with them on was far, far, more important than our disagreements. Given the fact that debating that issue strained some of my closest friendships, I don't feel terribly comfortable getting into the pros and cons of Rome with Catholics. Though I suppose a really easygoing exchange of ideas about Catholicism might be interesting. I subscribe to a C. S. Lewis discussion group that occasionally gets into C v. P issues, which are called the Creed Wars, ,but I've never posted on the subject there.
With Calvinism, I'm a little more motivated, because I really do think that Calvinism undermines confidence in the goodness of God. But I would not want to put Calvinism outside the pale of Christian orthodoxy. I also might show my teeth when religious relativism is brought into Christianity.
With Mormonism, the Mormons present themselves as followers of Christ, but then so did the Gnostics in the early days of Christianity. But when I am told that what man is,God once was, and what God is, man may become, I can't help concluding that what Christians and Mormons are talking about when they are talking about God and Christ are two different things. That would mean that there can be, and no doubt will be more than one god, if there is not more than one already. And to be saved is not to be brought into a right creaturely relationship to God, it is to become a god oneself.
Also IF (and I emphasize if) they are saying that if they have a certain kind of feeling, that the fact do not matter, then that is a cause of concern for me.
Sometimes orthodox Christians say Mormonism is a cult. I'm not sure that phrase means anything anymore. What I will say is that I don't sense the kind of common Christian ground with Mormonism that I have with Calvinists, despite having a strong antipathy toward the doctrine of predestination.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
The Mark Smith anti-Craig site
To provide a background as to how Mormonism is being used against WLC, see this. Of course, it's full of over the top rhetoric that I unrecommend.
Dennis Monokroussos on the DNA challenge to Mormonism
As soon as I find it, I will also post a link to the FAIR response to this argument.
Craig's response to the Mormon Objection
The most significant objection to such a religious epistemology, as several respondents observe, arises from the diversity of the religious claims supported by religious experience. Since these claims are logically incompatible in many cases, the experiences cannot ground them all as properly basic with respect to warrant (assuming that truth is not pluralistic and person-relative, but is one and objective). Either at least some of the experiences are non-veridical or else veridical experiences of the divine have been conceptualized in false propositional claims. For example, while the Christian theist may claim to know the great truths of the Gospel through the inner witness of the Holy Spirit, the Mormon polytheist will claim to know the truth of the Book of Mormon through the 'burning in the bosom' he experiences as he reads it. Does not the presence of the confident claim of the Mormon to know the truth of LDS doctrine based on religious experience serve to undercut the claim of the Christian to know the Gospel truth via a similar religious experience?
This is far from obvious. It is clear, I think, that false claims to an experience of God do absolutely nothing to undermine the veridicality of a genuine experience of the Spirit's witness, any more than the insistence of a colourblind person that there is no difference in colour between a red object and a green object undermines my veridical perception of their difference in colour. Even if I were utterly at a loss to show him that his faculties are not functioning properly or that mine are, that inability in no way affects the veridicality of my experience. So what the detractor of religious experience owes us here is what Plantinga calls a de jure objection to theistic belief: an objection, in this case, to the rationality or warrantedness of theistic belief even given the veridicality of my religious experience. (William Lane Craig and Antony Flew, Does God Exist: The Craig-Flew Debate, Stan N. Wallace(ed.), Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2003. P. 180.)
This is far from obvious. It is clear, I think, that false claims to an experience of God do absolutely nothing to undermine the veridicality of a genuine experience of the Spirit's witness, any more than the insistence of a colourblind person that there is no difference in colour between a red object and a green object undermines my veridical perception of their difference in colour. Even if I were utterly at a loss to show him that his faculties are not functioning properly or that mine are, that inability in no way affects the veridicality of my experience. So what the detractor of religious experience owes us here is what Plantinga calls a de jure objection to theistic belief: an objection, in this case, to the rationality or warrantedness of theistic belief even given the veridicality of my religious experience. (William Lane Craig and Antony Flew, Does God Exist: The Craig-Flew Debate, Stan N. Wallace(ed.), Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2003. P. 180.)
Monday, November 27, 2006
On critiquing Mormonism
Where I live Mormons are vastly more numerous than atheists, and I get Mormon students quite often in my classes. So understanding why the believe what they do, and why they seem uninterested in the evidential issues surrounding the book of Mormon has been something I want very much to understand.
I also did say that, in some contexts, a "feeling in the heart" might provide a reason for belief. I specifically indicated several contexts in which some kind of intuitive appeal might be used to defend one's religious beliefs. I even talked about the "outgunned" believer who is confronting a better informed opponent but doesn't give up his or her faith on that account. Such a person, I argued, can be rational. Christians do believe in the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit.
The question is what the limits and parameters are on the use of this "testimony." Could we tell a perplexed high school student who comes home from school having been given evidence for evolution to "take the first chapter of Genesis, read it, pray over it, and if God gives you a conviction that it's literally true, then you can know that world was created in 6 days 6000 years ago, in spite of what your hell-bound blasphemin' science teacher says."
Clark says no, that would be an abuse of the appeal to religious experience, and I agree. Where I differ with him is in the fact that in my view the weight of the evidence against the Book of Mormon, at least in my mind, is about as strong as the evidence against YEC. Yes, there is the defensive Mormon apologetics from groups like FAIR, but there is also the Answers in Genesis defense of YEC.
Second, it looks like the people in the Mormon hierarchy, including apostles like Oaks and Packer, think that the testimony supports the Mormon religion regardless of the facts.
I am also going to be considering a criticism of William Lane Craig in which he has been criticized for saying that the "inner witness of the Spirit" constitutes sufficient reason for believing in Christianity even if all the other arguments turned out bad. His claim has been compared unfavorably to the position of Mormon epistemologists. I actually think there is some justice in these criticisms, and I am going to be considering them in a subsequent post.
Finally, I think that there is a substantial case to be made for the Christian miracles. I don't think it's sufficient to prove the irrationality of the skeptical position, but I do think it creates problems for the skeptic in ways that the Mormon case does not. I think most people who reject Mormonism can pretty substantially agree on how Mormonism got started without divine intervention. Where the founding of Christianity is concerned, I think that if we ask the question "If Christianity isn't true, then how DID it get founded, and then try to go through all the theories of what might have happened instead of what Christians say happened, we find that no theory looks very good. (Hallucination, theft, swoon, wrong tomb, legend, etc.). I realize that you can disbelieve in a miracle without knowing how the miracle report was caused, and how it came to be believed so widely. But I think the skeptic is left with a conundrum here that I have not seen adequately resolved.
I do think that Mormons are caught up in a set of false beliefs and that the falsity of their beliefs is such as to do them harm.
I also did say that, in some contexts, a "feeling in the heart" might provide a reason for belief. I specifically indicated several contexts in which some kind of intuitive appeal might be used to defend one's religious beliefs. I even talked about the "outgunned" believer who is confronting a better informed opponent but doesn't give up his or her faith on that account. Such a person, I argued, can be rational. Christians do believe in the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit.
The question is what the limits and parameters are on the use of this "testimony." Could we tell a perplexed high school student who comes home from school having been given evidence for evolution to "take the first chapter of Genesis, read it, pray over it, and if God gives you a conviction that it's literally true, then you can know that world was created in 6 days 6000 years ago, in spite of what your hell-bound blasphemin' science teacher says."
Clark says no, that would be an abuse of the appeal to religious experience, and I agree. Where I differ with him is in the fact that in my view the weight of the evidence against the Book of Mormon, at least in my mind, is about as strong as the evidence against YEC. Yes, there is the defensive Mormon apologetics from groups like FAIR, but there is also the Answers in Genesis defense of YEC.
Second, it looks like the people in the Mormon hierarchy, including apostles like Oaks and Packer, think that the testimony supports the Mormon religion regardless of the facts.
I am also going to be considering a criticism of William Lane Craig in which he has been criticized for saying that the "inner witness of the Spirit" constitutes sufficient reason for believing in Christianity even if all the other arguments turned out bad. His claim has been compared unfavorably to the position of Mormon epistemologists. I actually think there is some justice in these criticisms, and I am going to be considering them in a subsequent post.
Finally, I think that there is a substantial case to be made for the Christian miracles. I don't think it's sufficient to prove the irrationality of the skeptical position, but I do think it creates problems for the skeptic in ways that the Mormon case does not. I think most people who reject Mormonism can pretty substantially agree on how Mormonism got started without divine intervention. Where the founding of Christianity is concerned, I think that if we ask the question "If Christianity isn't true, then how DID it get founded, and then try to go through all the theories of what might have happened instead of what Christians say happened, we find that no theory looks very good. (Hallucination, theft, swoon, wrong tomb, legend, etc.). I realize that you can disbelieve in a miracle without knowing how the miracle report was caused, and how it came to be believed so widely. But I think the skeptic is left with a conundrum here that I have not seen adequately resolved.
I do think that Mormons are caught up in a set of false beliefs and that the falsity of their beliefs is such as to do them harm.
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