I think everybody got sick of the endless stream of self-important whiny songs from Sufjan Stevens. But he has a new album coming out which allegedly turns from the whiny direction. You can listen to one track here. Maybe we can look forward to endless airy synthesizer music instead. As with old Sufjan, I’m sure I’ll be able to take these songs in small and infrequent, but quite pleasurable, doses.
“I think I derive more meaning from my relationship with Frodo and Sam than from many human beings.”
- Trent Dougherty
Here.
Victor Reppert links to Roger Pearse who discusses the claim that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Pearse suggests that this has become an unquestioned assumption by atheists (and, apparently, librarians…). He thinks that what this claim is really getting at is a bias to require extraordinary evidence “for whatever we prefer not to believe.”
I think this dismissal of the principle is too quick. There is indeed something more “extraordinary” about the claim that a man rose from the dead than the claim that there are more than 100 universities in Boston. Both claims are, perhaps, surprising, but we require (or, at least, desire) stronger evidence for the former. While “extraordinary” isn’t a technical term, I think it gets at what the issue is.
But this made me think. There is a sense in which any evidence for an extraordinary claim is, as such, extraordinary. In a sense, Pearse is correct that we only have one set of what counts as evidence. There isn’t a special kind of evidence which is only required of extraordinary claims. Perhaps there is just a special amount of evidence required. But consider that we generally expect extraordinary claims to have no evidence, or only clearly spurious evidence. I think one goal of Christian apologetics is to show that the evidence (for, say, the resurrection) is not spurious, however limited in quantity. And if it is not spurious, how extraordinary then is that evidence!
Upon reflection I realize that this is in fact what I require of apparently extraordinary beliefs I don’t hold. I have friends, for example, who accept contrarian views on a number of matters, from the collapse of the world trade centers to intelligent design. It’s not quite right to say that I demand extraordinary evidence. Rather, I just (or should) demand genuine evidence of the usual sort. If there is genuine evidence for a contrarian proposition, no matter how limited in quantity that evidence is, this fact itself is extraordinary and begs for explanation.
Yes. But John Loftus, or the writing by John Loftus on religion, is problematically annoying (the actual human named John Loftus might be pleasant). Here is a recent example of badness.
[Background: Loftus has been having a tortured exchange with Victor Reppert on whether religious belief is the result of preference (e.g. here, here, here, here, and here.]
Loftus’ starting point/conclusion is characteristically overgeneralized, trivial if taken literally, or false if taken more rhetorically. For example, here’s one that he has been repeating over and over again on his blog:
People believe and defend what they prefer to be true. This is an obvious and non-controversial fact. That’s who we are as human beings. That’s what we human beings do. That’s what psychological studies have repeatedly shown us over and over.
Maybe “people” believe and defend what they prefer to be true insofar as they prefer to have what they take to be accurate beliefs. But that is trivial and probably not what Loftus means. He probably means that they/them/people/the humans believe certain things (or all things?) because they prefer them. Their preference is either the psychological cause or the conscious reason for their beliefs. Judging by Loftus’ citing of, evidently, “Psychology,” we can assume he thinks the preferences of the humans cause them to have certain beliefs, which are conveniently correlated to the beliefs that Loftus currently thinks are false.
So Loftus thinks this “fact” about each human or some humans and each, or some, or most, or the set of, their beliefs, is “obvious and uncontroversial.” Loftus thinks he knows this partly because of worthless and probably tautological evidence like “That’s who we are as human beings,” and the reciprocally superfluous “That’s what we human beings do.” (Mother of God, he’s such a bad writer…). His other evidence is “psychological studies.” It is impressive that Loftus has gained the expertise to conduct a literature survey of psychological research papers in his free time. It might be even more amazing that he has found any psychological research papers at all that make a claim as general as that “people believe and defend what they prefer to be true.” In my knowledgeable survey of all working scientists, done during my two-year blogging sabbatical, I have discovered that psychological and other scientific research actually makes much narrower claims than these. In fact, it is only in science tabloids like Psychology Today or Scientific American that you might get a scientist inferring, perhaps in a casual interview, something this general from studies on narrow particulars. That’s because they have to sell copies of their magazines to popular audiences, who like shallow but sensational content.
So that epitomizes the number one reason why Loftus is so irritating to review, or engage with at all. His most basic claims are frequently outlandish or just exaggerated. Some of them are trivially true but without the implications he deduces from them. Furthermore, his presentation seems like it is conceptually sloppy and poorly organized on purpose. Almost as if his goal isn’t the acquisition and promotion of clear thinking, but something else. Perhaps “overwhelming the believer,” a non-truth-oriented goal Loftus has admitted, and I have cheerily critiqued as involving the sacrifice of basic truisms of intellectual integrity and virtue, here.
In Loftus’ most recent post on how we prefer to believe, he asserts several times, without utility, that he (and “people”) find the “Christian story” very compelling. Loftus writes things like this:
Who needs Christian apologetics with a story like this? Who needs to defend such a story at all? The story itself provides the only evidence people need to believe. Just tell the story. Claim it as a properly basic belief. Tell us the Holy Spirit testifies to this story through an inner witness. After all, it does resonate with us.
While this paragraph might have psychological pull designed to “overwhelm the believer,” consider how confused it is. The function of Christian apologetics is more or less twofold:
(1) To promote the truth of Christian belief and
(2) To defend Christian belief against objections to its truth
Except in rare cases, Christian apologetics has nothing to do with showing that the story is or is not “compelling,” which is something more relevant in the context of evangelism. So in no sense is the telling of the story even a possible replacement for Christian apologetics. In any case, many people don’t accept the story based on its emotional components – in fact, like John Loftus, many people don’t accept the story at all. So it is just irrelevant from both perspectives that the story has some happy things in it. Then Loftus says “Claim it as a properly basic belief,” apparently unaware that this claim is itself a product of Christian apologetics, linked to the sister claim, elaborated by apologists, about the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. Responding to confusions such as these, while it provides some psychological pull in the form of easy intellectual self-satisfaction, is ultimately boring.
Then Loftus lists several pleasing truth-claims believed by many people, some of them Christians. For example, “We want to believe there is divine help when in trouble.” Loftus could have added, “We want to believe that there is no morally significant genetic differences between races or sexes.” Or, “We want to believe that it is possible to curtail the potentially catastrophic effects of global warming.” Or, “We want to believe that knowledge is possible.” The list could go on forever.
The point is, Loftus’ statements here are just worthless. It is so trivially true that many of our beliefs are preferable to their denial that there is nothing significant left to do with this fact. We should, perhaps, be most critical of incoming claims that sound nice to us. But “people,” as surely Pychology, Astrophysics, and Entomology have shown, are quite adept at resisting being duped by happy stories. In fact, it is commonly believed that we can’t make ourselves believe based on preference for happy stories. In fact this is one of the common attacks on one reading Pascal’s Wager, where some see Pascal as saying we should believe for practical, not epistemic, reasons.
It would be interesting to note which happy beliefs are worth accepting, or isolating what intellectual tools sort out happy false from happy true, but that is territory uncharted by Loftus’ excursions into this non-topic.
Then, characteristically, Loftus adds on some non-sequiturs, just listing without comment some of the Christian things he doesn’t believe. Undoubtedly, this is meant to “overwhelm the believer.” For example, he writes without utility, “Nevermind the fact that we haven’t a clue as to how a child could be 100% God and 100% human with nothing left over.” I’m not sure what this adds to discussion other than obfuscation. What does “nothing left over” even mean? Does Loftus understand the orthodox doctrine of the trinity to be a proposition in mathematics? Even if it was, what relation does this have to believing for emotional reasons? Is anyone made happy or comforted by the abstruse idea that Jesus has two 100%’s inside of him?
But there is truly no point in pursuing Loftus’ non-sequiturs, since his goal is not accurate portrayal and engagement with religious concepts, but is to “overwhelm the believer.” It is indeed overwhelming to chase down every flippant, poorly educated non-sequitur. That kind of overwhelming, no one needs.
Loftus then issues a number of mutually exclusive caricatures of supposedly apologetic responses to him (putting your brain on a shelf, finding reasons, appealing to omniscience, all at the same time?). This is another reason why Loftus, the self-proclaimed former insider, is so tedious to engage. He doesn’t even bother constructing straw men, but instead constructs single-sentence caricatures that prove their own silliness. So, to take one example, a respondent would have to go through and explain how, like any type of argument, “appealing to omniscience” is sometimes reasonable and sometimes not reasonable; this is a very tempered but accurate assessment, perhaps not suitable for online theatrics.
Loftus finishes with some happy talk about himself. The most excruciating and histrionic of these is “I have nothing more to offer but knowledge and understanding.”
For a final reason why it is annoying to engage Loftus, consider this line: “But I’m here to tell Christians their faith is a delusion. They reject and attack me for telling them this.”
Sometimes Christians read atheist books, have some corroborating set of experiences, and become atheists. Sometimes atheists do the opposites of those things. Like many of the true statements that correct for Loftus’ sloppiness, these are barely worth saying, perhaps not worth saying at all. In any case, some people disagree with Loftus and express their disagreements because they genuinely think he is incorrect, not for “telling them” they are delusional (who cares if John Loftus calls you delusional?) but in his opinions on certain topics.
Lastly, it is very annoying and tedious engaging Loftus when he imputes motives to his interlocutors without basis or utility. Loftus telling his opponents that they have angry-crazy motives for “attacking” him is about as useful as me saying Loftus promotes the Outsider Test because last night he had a dream about potatoes. I can’t possibly know this. But even if I did know this, it would have no relevance to evaluating the Outsider Test, or Loftus’ arguments. It would be, in function, subterfuge. Loftus has proudly admitted that his tactics are subterfuge, intended to “overwhelm the believer.”
There is at least one hypocritical element of my post. I observe that Loftus is highly disorganized (I should say, even in his published work, ostensibly overseen by editors). Yet, this post is itself somewhat disorganized. While this is partly because in responding to Loftus one has to make one’s own structure, it is also because I am not putting very much care or effort into this post. But I thought that it might be nice, even fun, to have an interim condescending critique of Loftus, while my hundreds of thousands of readers await the continuation of my highly scholarly review of his collection of other people’s aphorisms, Why I Became an Atheist. My review, I might add, is supported and corroborated by the composite literature in all academic subjects.
My blog is a little bit better now. A substantive update could be any minute now, or perhaps infinite days from now.
I seem to have destroyed my blog, by activating the latest update. I’ll get around to fixing it. But I’ll also get around to reviewing the rest of Loftus’ book. So you know what I mean by “get around to.”
Janet Radcliffe-Richards writes a good post explaining why recent research showing that the fetus doesn’t feel pain in the first two trimesters shouldn’t threaten the pro-life groups that dispute it. The reason is that most pro-life arguments, e.g. arguments based on the “sanctity of life,” are unaffected by whether or not a fetus feels pain (we are not valuable in virtue of our physical sensations!). Richards concludes that the relevance of fetal pain to the pro-life movement must be primarily political, as a tool of deception. Finally, a nice discussion follows about how we only know the political relevance of “facts” if we know the particular values of policy-makers.
I think there are two subtleties to note here. First, if a fetus feels pain during an abortion, we would be morally compelled by practical principles such as “We shouldn’t cause pain to others.” In other words, even if a pro-choice advocate doesn’t accept a “sanctity of life” principle, perhaps a principle of not causing pain (and painful death) is more compelling. So this research at least precludes the possibility of that sort of argument, which is not fundamentally deceptive.
Second, we generally do believe that painless death is preferable to painful death, which is why pain medication can be important in a person’s final days. However, it seems to me that any pro-choice attempt to exploit this research along those lines would be somewhat depraved. We don’t use pain medication so that we can take a life, or to make us feel better for having taken it; we use it to make the inevitable more palatable.
B’Tselem is probably the leading Israeli human rights organization. Here is a press release detailing the annual report on the Palestinian conflict. Their website is generally a very good resource, including the handy statistics page.
The ever-growing Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has published an article on Ayn Rand. Rand is generally ignored in academic philosophy, except when she is being mocked. “Objectivists” exist in order to show that libertarians are not as obnoxious, or evil, as it gets. But perhaps by reading this article, at some point in the near future, I will transcend my inherited scorn.
The nomination of libertarian ophthalmologist Rand Paul to run as the Republican candidate in the 2010 Kentucky senatorial race has generated lots of fun media events, like this interview with Rachel Maddow. There has simultaneously been some coincidental public discussion of libertarianism, e.g. from the always-too-snarky Paul Krugman. Recently the Washington Post publicized a letter-to-the-editor [Rand] Paul wrote to the Bowling Green Daily News. The excerpt that is causing the most controversy is this:
[A] free society will abide unofficial, private discrimination, even when that means allowing hate-filled groups to attack people based on the color of their skin.
I have almost nothing interesting to add to either the common expressions of disgust in response to political/economic libertarianism, nor the intellectual arguments against it. I’ve enjoyed some recent posts on this by Matt Yglesias.
Nothing to add except…
I think the ambiguity about the concept of “freedom,” which is highlighted by Yglesias and others, is a serious problem for libertarians. Just take the Paul quote. It is not clear what distinguishes his statement from something like: “A free society will abide unofficial, private assault, even when that means allowing hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin.”
I take it that libertarians, and probably many of us, make a distinction between whatever is being violated in the case of assault, and whatever is being violated in the case of discrimination. Likewise, we might locate the relevant distinction between what is being protected in each case. So you get people giving principles like, the government is responsible for protecting citizens from physical harm, and radical conclusions like the government’s sole responsibility is protecting freedom[?] and providing military defense.
It is obvious that we can make distinctions of this sort. Surely there is a distinction between, as Paul says, public and private establishments. And we can make distinctions between notions like “positive” and “negative” liberties, or rights.
Sadly, in political discourse, it is often sufficient just to make conceptual distinctions without giving any justification for why they should matter. And first principles like “The government shouldn’t tell business what to do” are non-starters, because they are make-believe. I think they are just as make-believe as their liberal enemy principles, such as “governments should provide all essential services to its citizens.” I would advocate a more pragmatic, consequentialist approach to public policy. I’d start with something like, “What are the pros and cons of enforcing non-discrimination at lunch counters?” After the pros massively swamp the cons, I then wonder, “Okay, I don’t have the power to beat up all the racists up every time they discriminate, and they’re too dumb to accept arguments, so what kinds of tools do we have around here to achieve this?” In the case of 1964, we had a Congress, a president, a judicial system, police, and so on.
Descriptive claims like “Restaurants, unlike state capitals, are private” are about as relevant to the non-discrimination question as “Restaurants, unlike state capitals, are social hubs.” I’m sure restaurants are all kinds of things, but the case for enforcing non-discrimination at lunch counters was overwhelming.
This blog post hints at a fairly nihilistic belief of mine that I rarely express, which is that political principles are mostly make believe. I think that communities, including states, should be constituted according to standard moral principles. If you think political philosophy is autonomous from ethics and can still give us normative principles, explain yourself. If you hold the more common view that political philosophy is some sort of extension or application of ethics, then I agree that this is what political philosophy should be. However, in that case I think blanket statements about the role of “government” – an institution admitting of infinite variety – fail to count as political philosophy.
I recently came across this handy and short piece by Stephen Walt, professor of International Affairs at Harvard. The whole post is interesting, but here’s the little set of data:
GDP: United States — 13.8 trillion
Iran –$ 359 billion (U.S. GDP is roughly 38 times greater than Iran’s)Defense spending (2008):
U.S. — $692 billion
Iran — $9.6 billion (U.S. defense budget is over 70 times larger than Iran)Military personnel:
U.S.–1,580,255 active; 864,547 reserves (very well trained)
Iran– 525,000 active; 350,000 reserves (poorly trained)Combat aircraft:
U.S. — 4,090 (includes USAF, USN, USMC and reserves)
Iran — 312 (serviceability questionable)Main battle tanks:
U.S. — 6,251 (Army + Marine Corps)
Iran — 1,613 (serviceability questionable)Navy:
U.S. — 11 aircraft carriers, 99 principal surface combatants, 71 submarines, 160 patrol boats, plus large auxiliary fleet
Iran — 6 principal surface combatants, 10 submarines, 146 patrol boatsNuclear weapons:
U.S. — 2,702 deployed, >6,000 in reserve
Iran – Zero
Here is my most recent post on The Armchair Symposium.
Following the apparition of the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, there has been an article in the New York Times just about every morning. For example, this morning.
During a conclave with reporters, the NYT reports, the Pope gave a “direct condemnation” of “the sexual abuse crisis.” Playing its own Devil’s Advocate, the article immediately refutes itself, showing how the Pope issued nothing but non-sequitur. Raising the Christian persecution complex to new institutional levels, Ratzinger portrayed “the church” as a victim. Indeed, the Church is attacked “not only from outside,” but also from inside. That is to say, the anti-Catholic media and the clergy who molest children share a common victim: “the church.” Ratzinger thinks the church must “relearn” “conversion, prayer, penance.”
What is so obnoxious about these statements is that they amount to changing the subject. The object of public outrage is divided into a couple of areas: (1) the disturbingly frequent occurrence of child molestation and rape even at very high levels and (2) the cover-ups, transfers, and delays issued in response to the crimes when they were first brought to supposed spiritual authorities, including Ratzinger, now the “Vicar of Christ on Earth.” Will he ever address those topics with anything other than obscurantist generality? Notice that everything he says about this scandal would be true without it. When does the Church not need to relearn “conversion, prayer, penance”? Such fluffy theological language always applies. When is there not sin in the Church? Etc.
There are of course extra theological embarrassments, e.g. that Ratzinger is Pope partly due to getting some of the child rapist vote. In general, claims that the Catholic Church makes for itself and its Pope are so inflated that perhaps this scandal is what will put wavering Catholics over the edge. But lucky for Catholicism, much of its inflated membership is constituted by cultural Catholics, Catholics who show up once or twice a year, and so on.
I will end by stating the morally obvious: There are indeed identifiable victims; they are children who have been molested, raped, and psychologically damaged for the rest of their lives by Catholic clergy, including at the highest levels. Victim status actually can be shared by some outside parties – namely, the parents of the children. The Catholic institutions of authority and humans who populate them are the opposite of victims. Some of them are direct molesters and rapists, others are culpable for protecting and advocating for molesters and rapists (for the good of the “church”), others are culpable for looking the other way, others were ignorant of the whole affair, and the last group includes those who tried and failed to do something about the issue. Ratzinger, an accomplishment of whose is forgiving child rape (on behalf of …? did someone molest the church?), now says that “justice” is important. Therefore, he should take everyone in the first three groups above, including himself, and submit to civil authorities in the relevant domains. This ultimate fate, common for poor offenders, for cults, etc., will not befall Catholic officials.
The issue here is not some general spiritual combat involving the church. The problem is very particular, involving identifiable individuals and events. The only broad or general implication is that these individuals and events were supported and protected within the Catholic institutional structure. But unless you think that the church and its authorities are magical, it doesn’t strictly matter that it is the church. The same issues and objections would arise for any other institution founded and sustained by humans (say, the Red Cross, the Boy Scouts of America, or the United Nations). But the Catholic Church and its leadership, who are now making morally grotesque public statements with regularity, are so colossally arrogant that they can’t think of themselves in this lowly way.
This week Hamid Karzai will meet with officials in Washington, after a long period of so-called gaffes and tense relations. One of the chief issues to be discussed is the prospect of negotiation with the Taliban. Karzai already plans a jirga in Afghanistan where this issue might be decided. Some interpretations say that Washington wants unity with Karzai before this meeting occurs.
In multiple news venues, including NPR, Reuters, and the New York Times, Karzai’s visit is presented as an attempt at a much-needed “mending.” The mending is needed, because Karzai has been making “anti-Western” statements, including his stupidly misrepresented joke that he might join the Taliban, which has tried to assassinate him. Another outrage has been Karzai’s repeated denunciations of military operations that cause civilian casualties.
Some additional context is important. First, insurgent groups have presented an outline for peace talks, although the Taliban has distanced itself from that proposal. The second, and much more important piece of context is that a majority of Afghans, including a majority of women, support negotiation with the Taliban. Relevant polling data can be downloaded here. Support for negotiation with the Taliban has been standardly described as a debate between the Obama administration and Karzai himself, when in fact the former opposes the majority opinion in Afghanistan. Interestingly, widespread Afghan endorsement of negotiation is not an endorsement of the Taliban itself, as a majority have favored the removal of the Taliban, consider the insurgents the greatest security risk, and so on. A thorough discussion of this issue is here, and an annoying but accurate polemic in defense of Afghan democracy is here.
Stephen Biddle of the Washington Post has different ideas about democratic processes, suggesting that the U.S. provide the right “incentive” structure in Afghanistan. Biddle is not subtle in his suggestion that the Obama administration should leverage its aid and support to force Karzai to violate the will of the people who elected him. Such an anti-democratic approach is unlikely to benefit Afghans, even if it provides opportunity for tough political posturing by Obama. Removal of military support would clearly favor the very insurgents U.S. policy hopes to thwart, and removal of humanitarian support would constitute fostering starvation, disease, etc., in order to force U.S. policy preference down the throats of unwilling Afghans. Biddle laments that if Karzai were more “effective,” such an approach would not be necessary. There are plenty of political structures where such “effectiveness” could be achieved, none of them democratic.
Obama celebrates annual breaking of campaign promise to 1.5 million Armenian Americans
On the 24th Obama participated in the annual rhetorical exercise where U.S. Presidents avoid calling the Armenian genocide a genocide. I expressed irritation about the same event last year.
The recent NYT article reinforces my failure to understand this American policy position. I’ll succinctly express my confusion by grouping the following items:
(1) Every year, the President marks the occasion by using phrases like “one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century” when “1.5 million Armenians were massacred or marched to their death.”
(2) Often, before he is elected, the President has made unequivocal statements. In the case of Obama as late as January 2008: “the Armenian genocide is not an allegation, a personal opinion, or a point of view, but rather a widely documented fact.”
(3) The president does not renounce previous statements. Obama has said explicitly he agrees with his previous statement: “I have consistently stated my own view of what occurred in 1915, and my view of that history has not changed.”
(4) Every year, Turkey expresses outrage at the president’s language despite the fact that he hasn’t used the word genocide. This year: “Third countries neither have a right nor authority to judge the history of Turkish-Armenian relations with political motives.”
(5) This year, Congress passed a resolution in March condemning the genocide, over protests of the Obama administration. Turkey’s response? “Turkey briefly recalled its ambassador from Washington in protest.”
I do not see the credibility of foreign policy concerns over Turkey’s reaction to American acknowledgement of the genocide. They evidently are happy to maintain relations with the United States when the man holding the presidency has acknowledged the genocide, the Congress has officially acknowledged it, the President has agreed with his own previous statements, and so on. We do not sugarcoat the crimes of the Soviet Union or the Nazis in order to placate Russia and Germany, respectively. Why do we sugarcoat crimes in this case? The alleged political fallout would be slightly more credible if the President avoided talking about the genocide at all; but how is it that he can describe literally what happened, but just can’t use the word genocide? Are there legal ramifications? What does Turkey credibly leverage over us? Etc.
Probably when you become President, you learn some secret knowledge about how the world will blow up if you discuss this particular event. Maybe someday the National Security Archive will publish relevant documents, but I doubt it.
Lastly, isn’t it bizarre that 1.5 million is both the size of the Armenian-American voting bloc and the number of people massacred by the Turks?
In 2006 P.Z. Myers coined the term “The Courtier’s Reply” to describe a type of criticism commonly issued toward recent atheist literature, especially Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion. Luke at Common Sense Atheism has two good summaries and brief discussions of this and two other common critiques of atheists, here and here.
The term “Courtier’s Reply” is a reference to the fable of the emperor who has no clothes. In defending the emperor, so Myers’ fiction goes, the courtier challenges critics to consider all kinds of detailed theory and sophisticated writings regarding fabrics, etc. Clearly, however, these things aren’t relevant to the critics if the emperor just has no clothes. This is supposed to be analogous to those who condemn Dawkins and other atheist authors for not engaging the most sophisticated forms of Christian theology. It seems to me that Luke, linked above, couldn’t have chosen better examples than these excerpts from Terry Eagleton:
Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology
…
What, one wonders, are Dawkins’s views on the epistemological differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus? Has he read Eriugena on subjectivity, Rahner on grace or Moltmann on hope?
Luke understands the problem with such Courtier’s Replies as being that they just don’t matter – “If no Creator God exists, then no theology of grace or salvation is true.” In this way the Courtier’s Reply is characterized as a kind of straw man. “Sure,” you might say, “Moltmann’s account of hope is compelling; but my argument shows that God doesn’t exist.”
In his more recent post Luke quotes some other people who argue not that the Courtier’s Reply is a straw man, but that it evidences a kind of hypocrisy. Luke quotes one commenter who says:
[Believers] have no problem with rejecting… all other religions [without studying them]. Apparently, they and we can reject all those out of hand, but their’s must be given serious consideration, and we are not to stop considering it until we accept it.
Luke ends his post with five questions that are really illustrations of one question, which is: Why is it that religious believers can reject all other religions, and plenty of other beliefs, without embarking on a scholarly investigation?
That should be enough introduction. Here are two responses to the two versions just described, respectively.
(1) I agree with Luke that theological writing, insofar as it is descriptive of purported theological facts that assume the existence of God, is immediately undermined if God does not exist. If an atheist argues that, say, the existence of evil precludes or makes unlikely the existence of God, it won’t do to reply that David Bentley Hart is sophisticated and worthy of reading. Up to this point, the thesis seems trivially true.
But I doubt very much that many replies of this sort can be found. Certainly Eagleton can’t be accused on these grounds; he is just applying a truism of intellectual responsibility, that one should engage positions at their strongest. There is also an ancillary principle, which is that one should interpret opponents charitably. To illustrate the first major principle, suppose the target is the existence of God. You should start by asking: What are the strongest arguments for God’s existence? It doesn’t matter if most religious people don’t read, understand, or even agree with academic works on this matter. Unless your point is merely to (de-)convert large numbers via the abandonment of standard intellectual virtues, you should hold yourself to this (less rhetorically satisfying) standard. But in the current environment, especially on the Internet, that’s a pretty easy “should” to ignore. Few polemicists, and fewer of their followers, seem to care at all about truisms of intellectual honesty. The second principle, that one should interpret opponents charitably, can be followed even if you slack off on the much harder prior principle. To interpret an opponent charitably, figure out what the strongest possible formulation is of the most plausible statement of her view, then attack that view, charitably attributing it to your opponent as you proceed.
So: It’s not that Dawkins has to study Moltmann’s theology of hope before giving his Boeing argument. Rather, before developing the Boeing argument Dawkins should study the best design arguments; before he criticizes the idea of atonement, he should study it; before condemning the God of the Old Testament he should read representative interpretations; etc.
(2) The other criticism of the Courtier’s Reply says that religionists are hypocritical for not deeply investigating the claims of the myriad views they reject. This critique has a kind of prima facie plausibility. The basic structure of The Courier’s Reply seems to be:
(a) Atheist rejects X
(b) Atheist hasn’t considered the best formulations of X
Therefore, either
(c1) Atheist is not worth responding to
or
(c2) Atheist is unjustified
But it seems like each step can be rewritten by replacing “Atheist” and “X” with “Christian” and “Greek Mythology” respectively.
Notice that we should be suspicious of this objection, since it seeks to undermine a pillar of epistemic virtue. So either religious believers are just being hypocritical in their correct criticism of Dawkins, or special considerations have arisen. First, there is a crucial contextual element of Courtier’s Replies missing from such formulations – namely, that atheist authors are (1) publishing widely-read polemics and (2) purporting to be authorities on the topic they are writing about. These facts, conjoined with truisms of intellectual virtue expressed above, confer an especially strong obligation to investigate. I say especially strong simply because the truisms of intellectual virtue apply even if someone is not publishing books or purporting to be an authority. They become even more stringent if we do engage in these activities. If we are morally and intellectually serious, we will hold ourselves to such standards.
The implication here, which I readily accept, is that if religious believers want to speak publicly and authoritatively on, say, Islam, especially if they are trying to convince people away from Islam, they are obligated to become familiar with the best arguments, most compelling presentations, the most genuine and rich forms of Islamic life, etc. The same goes for Greek Mythology, Flat-Earthers, etc. If I want to publish a refutation of Flat-Earthers, I have to familiarize myself with their best arguments.
Certainly I don’t want to publish or speak at all on Flat Earth; nor do I accept the theory; nor do I read the best literature! Is there hypocrisy here? Clearly there is not, because I’m not claiming to refute any arguments or positions. I have some kind of loose argument of the form: I learned some stuff I don’t remember in school that was convincing, I trust scientific consensus, etc., therefore I think Flat Earth is false. Something akin to this is permissible in the atheist case. The atheist can say, “I have found atheist arguments convincing, I have no particular reason to investigate Christian claims, I infer from my atheism that Christian theism is false.” That’s a fine way to go. But once you’ve decided to engage arguments and positions in debate, and especially once you’ve decided to publish and speak as an authority, you are no longer welcome to this leisurely approach.
Yesterday the New York Times reported that an amendment to a 1969 Israeli order will take effect on Tuesday. The original report can be read here, and the amendment is here. The order provides the legal framework for deporting, imprisoning, and/or fining “infiltrators” in the West Bank. The original order is astounding in its wickedness – e.g. someone without the requisite (Israeli-issued) papers who has entered from a bordering state and who is “armed” (where this includes any “device or material” which can cause sever injury), or who is even “in the company” of such an “armed” person, is subject to a life sentence. If not armed, you are luckily eligible for only up to fifteen years in prison.
The new amendment reduces the “life sentence” to twenty years. In general the amendments to punishments appear to be reductions. However what worries human rights groups is the expansion of the legal definition of “infiltrator.” Previously the order had a definition that at least corresponded to commonsense: someone knowingly entering “the Area” (=West Bank) illegally. Now the word “infiltrator” includes anyone found who doesn’t have (Israeli-issued) paperwork. Indeed, an infiltrator into the West Bank can be someone born and raised in the West Bank.
This comes in the midst of two other noteworthy events in Israeli policy. The first was the announcement of continued expansion of illegal settlements during Biden’s visit. This elicited pretended rage on the part of American officials, who follow nearly every criticism of Israel with affirmation of how “special” and “strong” their relationship is. More recently, Netanyahu decided not to attend Obama’s nuclear conference, consistent with Israel’s longstanding defiance of international norms and refusal to acknowledge what everyone has known since the 70′s.
UPDATE: On the amendment, There is a more detailed report by Amira Hass in Haaretz (widely considered Israel’s leading newspaper). Today the Haaretz editors also published a brief critical statement. The editorial points out an obvious contrast that I missed: “While all Jews can settle wherever they wish, in Israel or in the territories, Israel is trying to deprive the Palestinians of even the minimal right to choose where to live in the West Bank or Gaza.”
There’s a thing called the Manhattan Declaration. In England some people got jealous and so they released the 2010 Westminster Declaration. Charles Foster has a passionate and critical response.
Characteristically, the “Declaration” has a preoccupation with contemporary hot topics that rotate around sexual reproduction – marriage, homosexuality, abortion, and “embryo-destructive research,” all of which inspire disparate but genuinely “Christian” viewpoints. How far we’ve fallen from real declarations.
Foster addresses various conceptual problems in the post linked above. One sentence I find problematic is this one: “We believe [marriage] is divinely ordained, the only context for sexual intercourse, and the most important unit for sustaining the health, education, and welfare of all.” First, if the relationship some people describe with the term “marriage” is divinely ordained, is state-sponsorship of that relationship divinely ordained? Are legal definitions divinely ordained? I’d strongly doubt both propositions. Second, the idea that a marriage is “the most important unit” for sustaining “welfare for all” is a little ridiculous. As far as I know, marriage has been present and culturally pervasive in virtually ever modern society, from the most oppressive to the most virtuous. I’m much happier with other sources of welfare, such as just laws, democratic institutions, etc. Moreover, in contemporary societies of apparently high levels of wellbeing, particularly in Western Europe, marriage rates are declining, and allegedly evil scourges like cohabitation are on the rise.
In any case, I can’t better Foster’s post; here’s the link again.
I am reviewing Why I Became an Atheist, by John W. Loftus. Previous posts are here.
Chapter 10: The Self-Authenticating Witness of the Holy Spirit
In this chapter Loftus exclusively takes issue with a statement made by William Lane Craig, which has been much-discussed in the blogosphere, that were he to go back in time and see Jesus not rise from the dead, he would assume he had been tricked. Craig’s reason for thinking this is twofold.
(1) Had Jesus not risen from the dead, Craig wouldn’t have the Holy Spirit within him; Craig does have the Spirit; therefore, Jesus must have risen from the dead.
(2) The inner witness of the Holy Spirit is in some way (apart from the previous syllogism) epistemically stronger than all other kinds of evidence.
Craig adds the caveat that if he knew Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, he would not be a Christian.
This fact about Craig bothers Loftus, so he spends a chapter on it. I can decipher a few separate difficulties Loftus perceives. First, Loftus “see[s] no reason why the evidence cannot trump [Craig's] belief in the witness of the Spirit. … There is no way the witness of the Holy Spirit can be more reliable than his own two eyes if he went back in time and saw for himself, but that’s what he said.”
A second problem Loftus perceives is that people in competing faiths claim to have comparable experiences. Loftus cites Craig and William Alston as holding that people in other religions may have an experience of God “as the Ground of Being on whom we creatures are dependent, or as the Moral Absolute from whom values derive, or even as the loving Father of mankind.” Loftus in response quotes Michael Martin, who says that “To accept Craig’s thesis one must believe an outrageous and outlandish hypothesis: namely, that billions of people now and in the past were not telling the truth when they claimed that they never had such an experience.” This is a most curious response, since the claim that everyone has had an experience of God is not under discussion. The issue hasn’t arisen in this chapter; why does Loftus offer a response to it? Loftus should have completed a philosophical education, or at least had better people edit his book and arguments, before publishing.
Loftus goes on to point out, and quote others as saying, that Craig’s personal experiences don’t constitute third person evidence. Such experiences, while perhaps constituting good evidence for the person having the experience, are limited in their ability to convince others.
Loftus then offers a dual criticism, that there’s no account of how the inner witness teaches Craig specific doctrines, and furthermore that Christians have disagreements about doctrine.
Loftus ends by claiming that Craig can’t distinguish between emotional feelings and the Spirit, and furthermore that there are better explanations of religious experience, such as “wish fulfillment.”
Some criticisms:
(1) The chapter’s main project is pointless, because no one in apologetics or philosophy generally seeks to convince other people based on their personal experiences, however veridical. Craig certainly doesn’t do this – why spend time attacking his psychological disposition?
(2) Loftus’ non-sequitur regarding other religions was noted above. In any case, competing religious experiences do not provide defeaters for someone without additional premises, such as reason to think the experiences are equally credible, comparably strong corroborating evidence, etc.
(3) The point about specific doctrines and characteristics of God seems like a non-starter to me. First, there are plenty of other items which motivate specific doctrines and other beliefs – e.g., philosophical considerations, historical facts, etc. Second, there aren’t any conceptual grounds for thinking that God could not reveal specific doctrines to someone directly. I certainly don’t think Christian doctrines have been revealed to me, but autobiography is not relevant.
(4) Loftus’ point about better explanations for religious experience at least goes beyond the irrelevant topic of the chapter. But unfortunately it also constitutes a non-starter. Unreliable mechanisms can generate any number of experiences and beliefs (e.g. visual hallucinations, feelings of paranoia, etc.). But this is not evidence that our visual apparatus, or reasoning, is generally unreliable. The same observation applies to any cognitive faculty, including faculties involved in religious experience. The widespread confusion on this issue annoys me.
(5) A general point here is needed: So-called “Holy Spirit epistemology” plausibly takes two contemporary philosophical forms. The first is “presuppositional apologetics.” I have nothing favorable to say about this philosophical method, as it is weirdly postmodernist in its allowing personal perspective and narrative to dominate our critique of outside ideas. Maybe interesting worldviews can be constructed on the basis of presupposed theological resources (e.g. the Bible), but usually that is not the question of interest. A second, more substantive form of “Holy Spirit epistemology” really just involves what would be true if the Holy Spirit were active. In Plantinga’s application of his epistemology to Christian belief, for example, he argues that, in virtue of epistemological mechanisms including the Holy Spirit, Christian belief, if true, is very likely warranted, warrant being that quality enough of which turns true belief into knowledge. A warranted belief is produced by properly functioning cognitive faculties in a congenial epistemic environment with a design plan successfully aimed at truth. Because Christian theism (specifically the so-called “Aquinas/Calvin model”) posits, among other things, the “internal instigation of the Holy Spirit,” its truth will very likely result in the corresponding beliefs being warranted. Loftus either misunderstands the use of the Holy Spirit in Christian epistemology, or deliberately distorts it. Very likely he actually as no interest in it, nor should he, given his non-truth-oriented goal to merely “overwhelm the believer.” But it seems to me to be a matter of course that if the spirit of God is present within a person, other forms of evidence will and should be unconvincing. Yet Loftus arbitrarily limits the theoretical ability of God to provide a self-authenticating witness.