Servile Conformist

A successful response from Dr. Peoples

After a pleasant and thoughtful exchange with Dr. Peoples in e-mail, I’ve come to the conclusion that the two concerns I raised in my previous post have been addressed more than adequately. Concerning my comments on (P1), Dr. Peoples had this to say*:

Glenn Peoples and the Moral Argument for Theism

Here is a version of the Moral Argument for Theism (hereafter MAT) from Dr. Glenn Peoples (PhD Otago), over at his blog 'Say Hello to My Little Friend’:

Welcome to Philosophy Carnival #134!

Welcome Welcome, My blog is relatively new and I’m excited to be hosting this edition of the Philosophy Carnival here at Servile Conformist, my meager home. As you can see, most of my scribbling online has something to do with religion, but there have been quite a few carnivals focused on the topic of Philosophy of Religion in the past, so I made an effort to provide material not related to religion. I only got 1 serious submission (really surprised at how many submissions I got about the power of positive thinking and advice from life coaches), so I hope you find something interesting! We do not yet have a host for the next carnival, so if you think you might be interested, head on over to the Carnival's website to check it out.

There are some great interviews out right now available for listening that I wanted to draw people’s attention to. First, the BBC interviewed Philosophers Stephen Mulhall, Beatrice Han-Pile, and Hans Johann-Glock about the so called “Continental-Analytic split” in Philosophy. Second, comes from the University of Chicago, where Professor Peter Kail discusses the legacy of David Hume.

A blast from the past, I’ve discovered some mp3 lectures of my all time Favorite philosopher Walter Kaufmann. He has lectures available on Existentialism, from Heidegger and Jaspers to Kierkegaard and Sartre! Fantastic stuff in my opinion.

 

Speaking of Sarte, Jared Smith of Philosophy and Polity has a two part discussion on Existentialism and Compatibilism, where the topic ranges from the general understanding of freedom in existential literature, some metaphysical mistakes Sartre makes in his own version of Compatibilism and Nietzsche and Camus’ own solutions to freedom in the face of determinism.

On the topic of Freedom, Professor Eddy Nahmias has an interesting piece on Neuroscience and Free Will, the comments section has some interesting developments, where Professor Nahmias comments as well.

As a companion to Professor Nahmias 's piece, Serife Tekin provides some excellent commentary on what it means to have a Philosophy that in empirically-informed.

Justin Smith (who blogs much less than he should) provided a short excerpt from his upcoming work 'Language and Animals', where he takes up David Foster Wallace and Louis Agassiz request to, "Consider the lobster".

Ben Saunders is looking for comments on his thoughts about this question:

Suppose we have two propositions, P and Q. P is true. Q is a more extreme version of P. Does it follow that Q is false? Or that we have reason to believe P rather than Q?

Professor Edward Feser has been reviewing Alex Rosenberg’s book  The Atheist's Guide to Reality. Here are the first three installments: I, II, III

Over at the Prosblogion, Alexander Pruss posted an interesting argument for Theism by Emanuel Rutten of VU University in the Netherlands. I found the first metaphyscal principle that Professor Rutten mentioned ("If it is impossible to know that p, then p is necessarily false".) was fertile ground for further exploration.

Helen De Cruz posts some observations on John Schellenberg's Divine Hiddenness agrument, which prompted Clayton Littlejohn to comment further.

Over at the Secular Outpost, Philosopher Graham Oppy has been in discussion with Christian apologist JP Moreland about the argument from consciousness, which started in the European Journal for Philosophy of Religion and continues online.

Ockham, Tense, and Coyne

Daniel Fincke's blog post on Jerry Coyne caught my eye. Now normally, I don't pay much attention to Coyne, the Evolution VS Intelligent Design context isn't my thing (For the record, I think ID is tarted up creationism that is trying to legislate itself into credibility) and I don't find Coyne to be particularly insightful. At any rate, Coyne and his fan boys n girls were taking shots at a certain post-doc getting money from the Templeton Foundation,  and Dan wanted to highlight the reasons why their shot taking was misguided.

What bothered me most was a post Dan linked to from Verbose Stoic, who I think did a very insufficient job of explaining why that particular post-doc was useful. So I thought I'd take a crack at it myself.

Let us take these two symbolic statements:

(1) O(J) --> L(W(J))

and

(2) O(J) --> W(L(J))

Now let us understand the variables as:

O: it is now the case that…

W: it was the case that…

L: it will be the case that…

J: Jerry made a blog post on October 27^th.

(1) tells us that once Jerry made a blog post on October 27^th, it will always be the case thereafter that Jerry made a blog post on October 27^th. (2) informs us that since Jerry now made a post on October 27^th, it was always the case that Jerry made a blog post on October 27^th.

(1) Is obvious enough, that should pass without argument and most people today would affirm (2) without a problem, and guess what? So would William of Ockham, and so would most people who affirm either A or B theories of time. Had no idea there was an A or B theory of time? Don’t worry, I’m willing to bet that Jerry had no idea about it either when he made that blog post.

But there is a problem here, some seriously smart people would disagree with (2), and armed with tense logic, they’d make a strong case for it, showing that our actual natural use of language shows that we don’t really mean (2). If we understand the word “will” with any sort of predictive use, we find ourselves running into trouble. If I say, “Tomorrow the sun will set in the west.” do I mean that the sun setting in the west merely does occur, or that it must occur? Is the sun’s rising causally inevitable or am I saying that the chances of the Sun not setting tomorrow are so ridiculously high that it’s just common sense to state that it sets in the west?

If you agreed with, “the chances of the sun not setting tomorrow are so ridiculously high that it’s just common sense to state that it sets in the west”, to be consistent, you’d have to deny (2) as well.

And this is an example of why the Metaphysics of Time are an important topic, If you are like most physicists who affirm a tenseless theory of time (that’s B theory of time for you Coyne fans), denying (2) simply isn’t an option. Why is there a disconnect between how we speak and what Special Relativity strongly points to? Interesting question. And what does God have to do with it? Well, any description of time, A or B theory, requires us to use a God’s eye view of time to explain it. How counter intuitive is it to say one needs to step outside of time to even describe what’s going on? What does it even mean to be outside of time? I fail to see why the term “God” is somehow more “incoherent” than saying, “ I’m outside of time and I’m looking at a 4 dimensional cube that represents my universe”

Typically, if you preface a comment with, "This is an area about which I’m completely ignorant...", it helps to not comment at all.  Ahhh well:

 

 

Faith of the Gaps

I picked up a new book recently from my local used book store, by Alister McGrath and I came across this [1] startling passage:

The atheist believes that there is no God, but his position is a matter of faith rather than fact. He cannot prove beyond all reasonable doubt that God does not exist, just as the Christian cannot prove with total conviction that God does exist: Both are positions of faith.

I hate comments like this, I really do, and it pains me even more when a person with McGrath’s education makes it. This is not something a theologian should ever put into print.

I call this line of observation the “Faith of the Gaps” and it usually crops up when someone reflects on the disputations that go on between Atheists and Christians, and it usually comes from the Christian camp. I think it is a terrible mistake, it seems like Christians like McGrath are trying to level the playing field by attributing faith to the Atheist like faith is something to be ashamed of, or like faith some kind of concession of defeat for the Atheist.

In any case, McGrath makes some serious epistemological presumptions here without ever drawing his reader’s attention to them. First, he uses language that almost seems to suggest infallibilism when it comes to knowledge, but more charitably, I think he just intended a high level of justification, something akin to mathematical or very strong scientific proof, whatever belief does not reach this level of justification must cover the remaining distance with faith.

I was under the impression that faith (well placed, in any event) was a virtue within the body of Christ, and McGrath equates both positions as one of faith, but fails to make any sort of qualitative distinction between the faith in the risen Jesus Christ, the Living God and faith in the negation of the metaphysical position of Theism (and let’s be fair, that is all Atheism strictly entails).

From a biblical perspective, I would think that there is more to faith than mere intellectual assent to some body of propositions, but the intimacy with God reflected by both paragons of faith within the Hebrew Bible, Abraham and Job.

What is more troubling, if faith is to be a virtue and it operates as McGrath stated, then it would be more virtuous for a person to be less knowledgeable about sacred things, so the amount of their faith could increase. I’m sure that is not what McGrath intended with this passage, but it is a sad consequence of his own words.

 

 

　

[1]Studies in Doctrine, page 131 under ‘God and His Critics’, 1997 Zondervan Publishing.

 

 

 

Thoughts from class: Cultural Anthropology

    I was sitting in my Cultural Anthropology class the other day, and the professor asked the class how many of us are feminist, and only two people raised their hands. The Professor was shocked, and openly wondered why so many of her students (the majority female no less) were not feminists.  I had suggested that perhaps the term had become too saturated and no one in here felt comfortable enough to profess a belief in something they didn’t properly understand. The Professor gave me an incredulous look that signaled her assessment of my explanation, and had a student look feminist up in the dictionary, which yielded the following, “the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men” . She asked again, “Why aren’t you all feminists?”

    I thought she made my point rather well, but I didn’t pursue it further. There is a tendency for activists of any cause to distill their ideals down to its barest simplicity, and reframe the position in terms that just about any person can identify with. A classic example is the position of Pro Life in the abortion debate, that position is described in a such a way that the negation of it is to be Pro Death or in the very least, against life itself. Those are not the kind of terms people wish to associate themselves with, while just about anyone, despite their views on abortion would identify as Pro Life.

    As the class progressed, the Professor began unpacking what exactly it means to be a feminist, and how this commitment to feminism begins to color how one begins to critically assess their own culture in terms of gender and sex equality. She could not have explained a hermeneutic of suspicion more clearly, with even a discussion of how one might perceive male hegemony in even women wearing high heels.

    I thought her examples were great and that they reaffirmed my own sneaking suspicion that feminism isn’t so simple, and that the concept requires much more unpacking than what a dictionary provides. A person might consider themselves feminist with their own notions of what kind of equality they’d like to see, but I don’t doubt that same person might outright reject a feminist understanding of social criticism or literary theory.

    For me, all this raises meta-questions about the discipline of cultural anthropology. Are there meta-discussions about the methods one is supposed to use in studying one’s own culture? It’s one thing to study gender issues in small populations that exist on the edges of dominant cultures, but surely those same methods fall short when applying them to our own culture. Durkheim thought one could study religion without judging it, but I think the enlightenment project of reaching objectivity in the social sciences is long since dead, and it is much more fruitful to take a careful inventory of the baggage one brings to a study, instead of leaving it at home. How much more does that apply to the study of the culture you exist in and identify with? 

 

Scholars Misbehaving: Dawkins

No matter how you feel about Richard Dawkins, you can’t deny he plays an important role in the contemporary public discourse about religion and that his book ‘The God Delusion’ (hereafter, TGD) is an important text to understanding that discourse.

Personally, I find Dawkins’ books about biological science to be wonderful. As someone who doesn’t have a great education in the physical sciences, I find him to be invaluable resource in that respect. Sadly, I cannot repeat that praise for TGD, even though it is arguable that TGD is his most important work.

Whenever the TGD comes up in conversation, I usually express my dislike for the book, which in turn, causes people to challenge me to articulate what I find wrong with TGD, so this (and other upcoming) blog posts is a result of that.

On page 2, in the Preface to TGD, Dawkins states the following:

“Perhaps you have been taught that philosophers and theologians have put forward good reasons to believe in God. If you think that, you might enjoy Chapter 3 on ‘Arguments for God’s existence’ - the arguments turn out to be spectacularly weak.”

Now this is a strong claim, one that I wouldn’t make. I may be an atheist and remain unconvinced by theistic arguments, but I would never judge them to be spectacularly weak. Also note he singles out both philosophers and theologians, which means Dawkins intends to engage the best arguments from the professionals.

The arguments addressed in chapter 3 are: Thomas Aquinas’ Five Ways, Ontological Argument, Argument from Beauty, Argument from personal experience, argument from scripture, Argument from admired religious scientists, Pascal’s Wager, Bayesian Arguments, the chapter is 32 pages long (77-109).

What immediately jumps out to me is the actual lack of modern arguments. For example, one of the most famous philosophers of religion is Richard Swinburne, who not only is a theist, is also a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church. He taught at Oxford from 1985 till 2002, a published highly influential books defending the coherence and rationality of theism.

What I don’t understand, is why Dawkins doesn’t deal directly with Richard Swinburne? He obviously knew of him, knew he’s a philosopher and a faithful Christian to boot. He mentions Swinburne in the next chapter concerning Divine Simplicity, so I don’t see any excuse to omit his work from Chapter 3. Dawkins’ oversight does a disservice to the atheist readers he seeks to inform, because he essentially leaves his fans completely defenseless to any theistic thinker who bothered to read the modern literature (or taught by an apologist what to say in response).

In The ‘Existence of God’, Swinburne readily admits that the variety of traditional arguments for God’s existence, when considered alone and deductively, are not sound. Swinburne’s strategy is to asses the arguments for theism along inductive lines, using two categories for assessment: First is a C-inductive argument, which raises the probability of a hypothesis, and P-inductive argument, which makes a hypothesis more probable than not. Swinburne then picks out several arguments that he feels make a good C-inductive arguments, and the conjunction of these arguments make for a P-inductive argument for theism.

Swinburne’s strategy has been in print since 1979, and what even frustrates me even more, is that the probability calculus that Swinburne employs is Bayes’ Theorem, which is the last thing Dawkins addresses in Chapter 3, but instead of dealing with Swinburne, Dawkins’ target is Stephen Unwin. So…ignore the Oxford Philosopher with a strong reputation and target a risk management consultant? Really?

Chapter 3 is such a painful read, for example, on page 106 Dawkins observes:

“But of course that final estimate can only be as good as the original numbers fed in. These are usually subjectively judged, with all the doubts that inevitably flow from that.”

Anyone who has spent anytime closely examining arguments for theism from actual scholars (and not  apologists), you become use to their unassuming and modest attitude. Swinburne takes into account  subjectivity of the various evidentiary values, and even makes honest concessions (on page 289, my copy of The Existence of God comes from the revised 91 edition):

“All this so far is very imprecise, but, as we have seen we just do not have the criteria for very precise estimation of probabilities in science or history or most other fields. However I now suggest that it is reasonable to come to the following qualitative judgment about the force of the evidence so far considered…Theism does not have a probability close either to 1 [100%] or 0 [0%], that is, on the evidence considered so far, theism is neither very probable nor very improbable. It does not have a probability close to 1 because it does not have predictive power.”

Swinburne doesn’t make any radical claims, like Unwin apparently does, and spills much ink in justifying his values, and that deserves a fair treatment, if not a close and detailed one.

Dawkins is a total let down:

 

Physicalism not falsifiable?

Over at the provocative blog The Warfare Is Mental, cl makes an observation that rocked my world a bit.  I’ll reproduce it here:

The same goes for the doctrine of physicalism. To date, all definitions of physicalism I’ve seen lead to meaningless philosophical gibberish. There is nothing, even in principle, that could reliably differentiate between a physical and non-physical cause.

This struck me rather hard for two reasons; the first is that it’s simple and two, I’ve been neglecting this problem when formulating my own metaphysical Naturalism. I don’t have an immediate answer for this, but something is in the works.

Navigating with uncertainty

“Hermeneutics is the task of bringing about the presence of God” My Reb spoke boldly, while gesturing with as much gusto. He continued, “How do you apply Divine Law to the present, when the Law is outside it’s own context of Revelation?” Of course I can’t answer the question, and Reb keeps silent, running his hand over his beard and looking intently at me. He erupted again, shifting in his chair and using his hands to emphasize his words, “ People ask questions, questions keep hermeneutics going BUT!” he emphasized that last word by raising his voice and pointing his finger to the ceiling, “ The Bible, Torah, the Divine Law is closed. There are no more prophets to say, ‘Thus sayeth the Lord’ and no more Priesthood to offer the sacrifice. How do you open the canon back up? How do you bring this Divine Law, the experience and relationship of Revelation, into the present and maintain authority?!?” This last question was followed by his busy hands dropping into his lap and a sheepish grin on his face. Not only was I stumped, but was reeling from the insights gained, and Reb knew it.

This is how I’m going to spend my Wednesday mornings for the rest of the semester, and already I’ve been given a feast for thought. While this independent study has just begun, this morning was just another lecture in the ongoing lesson I’ve been receiving from my Reb. We make an odd pair; me being a non-traditional student and veteran of three deployments, a cynical gentile whose love of Anglophone (so called ‘analytic’) philosophy makes me into a tedious, some time arrogant, nonbeliever who enjoys discussing religion far too much. Him, a product of the 60s, where he spent his time as a young radical at Berkeley, a scholar whose taken lectures from Abraham Heschel and  Paul Ricoeur , worked with such figures as David Tracy and Martin Marty, and is a retired congregational rabbi now turned Professor.

Yet we are not so different. Reb has struggled for years in trying to work with ultra-orthodox Jewish groups on social issues, not to mention his years of experience in inter-faith dialogue. My own struggles mimic his, but to a smaller degree, but my counterparts are no less bombastic. My recent exchange with John Loftus and his followers, has left me wondering how I should deal with my fellow atheists who have more in common with their ideological opponents than with me.

I am suspicious of certainty and those who like to offer it, and I think Reb shares this suspicion as well. Certainty may be achievable, but it is not easily gained. One needs to feel comfortable navigating in uncertainty, doubt is just as much part of the human experience as a broken heart from unrequited love. We tend to put our epistemic abilities on a pedestal, confident that our dearly held principles are immune to critics. It makes me recall an aphorism spoken by Reb in class that I’ve taken to heart these past few weeks, “Any principle you have that isn’t challenged isn’t a principle at all, but a fetish.” I think some of my fellow atheists make a fetish out of their skepticism.

It’s this fetish that turns a conversation between the nonbeliever and believer into a contest, an exchange dominated by polemics. Instead, the conversation should become an engagement, an exercise in introspection and an exchange between two or more fellow human beings. When it comes to the bible, between the nonbeliever and believer have the same text, all they ever have is the text, and this text has a context, and in that context we find a texture. I’m as much as a biblical minimalist as Israel Finkelstein or Thomas Thompson, but this shouldn’t prohibit me from enjoying and learning from what the text is trying to convey? Instead of exhausting a thesaurus trying to convey my disdain for the God of Joshua, why not focus on the genocide itself, what does it teach? As sad as it is, genocide is part of the collective human experience. Nonbelievers are not immune to hate, fear, and the sweet taste of revenge, the rush of pure rage at an injustice inflicted on one of your own. There is much more in the text, context, and texture, than just ammo for justifying your metaphysical beliefs.

So I’m left wondering how I am to navigate in a virtual world, where the John Loftus and P.Z. Meyers types. They enjoy their certainty, and hide behind the shallow Courier’s Reply or the Outsider Test of Faith.

Dr. Rauser responds

Below are Dr. Rauser’s comments on my attempted rehabilitation of Dr. Gericke’s argument. The comments have been edited slightly to remove some content not pertaining to the subject at hand.

Unfortnately, I didn’t see an argument in your article for why a Christian should think that when they write “Yahweh” they are referring to something different than the ancient Israelites were. You do reiterate Gericke’s point that there is a lot of change over time in the meaning of “God” and “Yahweh” within the Judeo-Christian doxastic communities. And for the person who is already inclined to find whatever defeaters to Christianity that they can, that may be enough to persuade them. But I have no reason to accept that this change is sufficient to establish failed reference.

Consider for the moment, how a term like “the universe” has changed over the last centuries.

“The universe” in 1500 = planet earth surrounded by several crystalline spheres and perhaps 10,000 years old.
“The universe” in 1900 = the Milky Way galaxy of indeterminate age.
“The universe” in 2000= 130 billion galaxies and a whole lotta empty space and 14.3 billion years old.

These are radical shifts in meaning. But when you are ready to argue that Copernicus was not talking about the same thing as Carl Sagan, you let me know.

In the case of Yahweh the reference is securely fixed through time by affirming the biblical narrative: Yahweh as creator, deliverer in the Exodus, et cetera et cetera.

A couple minor points in closing.

First, modern theology does not hold to a “Neo-Platonist God”. Philosopher John Leslie does, but he’s not a Christian theist.

Second, Christians disagree over whether God “transcends space and time”.