Philipse on Theism - Revealed or Natural Theology?

In God in the Age of Science?: A Critique of Religious Reason, Herman Philipse examines what he considers to be the best arguments for God today. As we saw in his preface, he plans to examine Richard Swinburne's arguments for God.

In Chapter 1, though, he wants to establish 'that for religious believers, natural theology has an epistemological priority over a revelation and revelation theology' (p.3). Natural theology is the approach that Swinburne takes.

Philipse draws the common distinction between natural theology and revealed theology. Natural theology can be examined through evidence available to everyone, non-believers included. As the SEP explains, it 'aims to adhere to the same standards of rational investigation as other philosophical and scientific enterprises, and is subject to the same methods of evaluation and critique'. Philipse defines revealed theology as 'the endeavour by believers to interpret and systematize the contents of texts that are considered divine revelations, such as the Bible, the Koran, the Vedas, or the Book of Mormon' (p.3).

Richard Swinburne himself points out that there is another notion that is now considered popular, particularly among Protestants:

Religion, they will tell us, is a matter not of affirming creeds, but of a personal relationship to God. The religious man may tell us that he knows that he at any rate has such a relationship, and that he knows what he means when he says that he has this relationship; on these points he ‘cannot be mistaken’. (The Coherence of Theism, p.6)

Philipse examines perhaps the most well-known defence of this sort of position, Alvin Plantinga's Reformed Objection, in Chapters 3 and 4.

Philipse notes that most believers come to their belief because they are brought up in a religious tradition; the truths of it are a given. But these days we are exposed to scientific knowledge that often contradicts such received opinions, and are also made aware of the full diversity of other received opinions. Consequently, it is necessary to appeal to the arguments of natural theology if one aims to be rational and reasonable.

Establishing the epistemological priority of natural theology is also important so that non-believers can engage on a level playing field with believers; that is, they should both be approaching the subject using the same tools to analyse and justify their beliefs. This is not to exclude the possibility that divine revelation occurs and people may know something about God apart from natural theology. But it is to suggest that when we justify our beliefs in public discourse, we do not need to appeal to that divine revelation, and, in fact, the knowledge derived from natural theology is better in some way than other methods. For example, someone may know that they haven't murdered someone, but if accused of murder they must defend them-self in court by appealing to methods that everyone can access; simply appealing to their inner knowledge that they are innocent will be insufficient.

Philipse gives 6 reasons for thinking that natural theology has epistemological priority over revelation, which I summarise as:

(A) There are contradictions within revealed texts.
(B) Many revelations are shown by science to be untrue.
(C) Many revelations are based on sources and cultures that are not considered divinely inspired, leading to...
(D) Revelations contain nothing that could not have been established without divine assistance.
(E) Revelations contain moral norms which many of us now find unacceptable.
(F) The revelations of other religions provide a potential defeater for a believer in divine revelation.

I would endorse this list, although in my experience (A) is pretty hard to categorically establish. With a narrative like the Bible the language is ambiguous enough to prevent the establishment of a formal contradiction. Just consider Philipse's first example; the supposed contradiction between Paul describing Jesus' resurrection as spiritual rather than corporeal, as maintained by subsequent Christian tradition:

Paul seems to deny that Jesus was resurrected with his earthly or physical body, arguing that he was raised with a new, spiritual and heavenly body (sooma pneumatikon), since ‘flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God’. (p.5)

 Paul's words 'sooma pneumatikon' and 'flesh and blood' allows for multiple interpretations; see this discussion by William Lane Craig, which includes this quote from Robert Gundry:

The soma denotes the physical body, roughly synonymous with 'flesh' in the neutral sense. It forms that part of man in and through which he lives and acts in the world. It becomes the base of operations for sin in the unbeliever, for the Holy Spirit in the believer.

And 'flesh and blood' is considered synonymous with 'frail human nature'! Craig concludes that 'we have seen that Paul's evidence serves to confirm the gospels' narratives of Jesus's bodily resurrection'. So clearly he sees no contradiction here, and one might expect similar analysis from apologists on other claimed contradictions.

Generally, though, I think the accumulation of Philipse's reasons gives us good reason to doubt revelation. To counter this general conclusion, I think I would point to the vital role that testimony plays in our knowledge creation, and that biblical revelation cannot be dismissed any more than can be the many non-biblical revelations that are handed down to us. For example, we have established a sophisticated education system which pre-supposes the validity of handing down common knowledge, mostly documented in textbooks; we don't expect anyone to literally support all these 'revealed' truths.

I think, however, that we should have to justify this knowledge if it turned out that around the world we were teaching different truths from radically different textbooks. The project of science has been to universalise knowledge, so that textbooks converge. If natural theology were any better than revealed theology, one might expect it to achieve a greater convergence too. I think that, in the sense that the conclusions of natural theology are more modest than those of revealed, perhaps it does. A discussion for another time, maybe.

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Philipse on Theism - Preface

In God in the Age of Science?: A Critique of Religious Reason, Herman Philipse examines what he considers to be the best arguments for God today.

In the preface he notes that the arguments produced in analytic philosophy of religion in the last fifty years are worthy of consideration. His reasons for addressing religion are:

1. The world's population is growing, and the demographics are against the secularist. The non-theist minority is getting smaller and smaller, in global terms.
2. Globalisation means that cultures are mixing more, and this brings incompatible beliefs together more. The cognitive dissonance this produces causes more religious conflicts than we have seen in the past.

He also sets out his approach; he will be considering beliefs, not rituals; he doesn't want to be accused by believers of not attacking the best cases for theistic belief, so he will consider some of the arguments of D. Z. Phillips and Alvin Plantinga. He will spend most time, however, looking at the arguments for 'bare theism' by Richard Swinburne. This is because:

1. The monotheism that Swinburne defends is common to the three great Judaeo-Christian religions.
2. Swinburne's strategy seems the most promising to Philipse, since Swinburne pursues a natural theological approach to the question (compared with, for example, the foundationalist approach of Plantinga). As Philipse puts it, 'If he exists, that god is a divine person with many kinds of causal powers, whose existence can best be argued for on the basis of his alleged empirically detectable doings' (p.xiii).

Swinburne eschews a proof of God, but considers his existence highly probable.

Philipse notes that many religious beliefs have been refuted by modern science, such as origin of Earth stories, which means the 'intellectually responsible believer' cannot rely solely on scripture. For the believer, three interlocking dilemmas, he says, arise:

1. Between (a) cognitive and (b) non-cognitive interpretations of religious beliefs. For example, does 'God exists' amount to a proposition that can be assessed for truth or falsity, or not? For an interesting discussion of non-cognitive approaches (often called Wittgensteinian), see this post by Stephen Law.
2. If (a) is chosen, then between (c) evidential/rational support for beliefs, and (d) a non-evidential/rational approach. Under (d), Philipse will consider what he thinks is the most promising approach, offered by Plantinga, of a basic warrant for religious belief.
3. If (c) is chosen, then between (e) following a method of gathering evidence and reasons that is 'quite unlike the methods used by scientists and scholars when they investigate a factual hypothesis of existence' (p.xv) and (f) following a method like the scientific methodology.

Philipse thinks that Swinburne offers the most sophisticated solution to dilemma 3 above, and, given the title of his book, this seems to be the best place to consider religious belief 'in the age of science'.

Part 1

In Chapter 1 he argues that religious faith can only be grounded by natural theology (that is, on the basis of natural facts).

In Chapter 2  he summarises the history of natural theology.

In Chapters 3 and 4 he addresses Plantinga's 'reformed objection' to natural theology.

In Chapter 5 he investigates the type of rationality in which natural theology should engage.

In Chapter 6 he considers if religious faith can be refuted, or not.

Part 2

Chapter 7 explores the problems that analogical language introduces for the religious believer.

Chapter 8 examines the properties of the putative monotheistic god.

In Chapter 9 considers the predictive power of the god hypothesis.

In Chapter 10, he sees if theism has predictive power, can it avoid being refuted?

Part 3

Chapter 11 examines the problems that face a Bayesian like Swinburne.

Chapters 12 to 14 consider the accumulative probabilistic arguments for theism.

In Chapter 15 he assesses the argument from religious experience.

The Conclusion then attempts, based on what has been discussed, to answer the question 'which view concerning religious matters has the best credentials: theism, agnosticism, some version of atheism, or perhaps a polytheistic creed?' (p.xvi).

What I think is excellent about the book is that, like a bus driver late for his dinner, Philipse relentlessly drives the reader towards a particular destination. This destination is atheistic, of course, as might be expected (he makes no bones about arguing from this viewpoint). This is probably a weakness too, since I'm sure many a theist reader will insist on stopping the bus and heading off down another road. For example, Jim Slegle in his review of the book accuses Philipse of not just adopting an atheistic approach, but a scientistic one, and of 'taking the unreflective, knee-jerk reaction to religious claims, ‘informed’ by the biases and urban myths of contemporary culture'. This seems an uncharitable interpretation to me, especially considering that Philipse is quite open about the project of assessing god based on modern science, which approach surely Swinburne and many theists would concur, to a degree?

More reasonably, Father Andrew Pinsent suggests that in discrediting the methods of theology Philipse is in danger of discrediting the sciences of more complex phenomena, such as biology and zoology, and the humanities in general. Which would include philosophy and presumably Philipse's own book too! Well, perhaps, and I know of a few atheists who would agree that philosophy should be jettisoned too, but I still think that rational analysis of concepts allied with an acknowledgement of the power of science can yield results, even if it struggles to be falsifiable (not the defining criterion of science, in my opinion). 

Pinsent concludes that Philipse attempts too much, and that may be a valid criticism. I found his reasons for the tight focus mostly convincing, so the book should still give theists pause to consider carefully the route they have followed in the past, and the one they follow in the future.

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Angry at God

Philosopher Stephen Maitzen has an excellent piece, called Perfection, Evil, and Morality, which will appear in a forthcoming volume edited by James P. Sterba. It details some of the reasons atheists find incompatible the existence of a perfect god with the suffering all too evident in the world around us. In particular it highlights how obligated such a perfect being would be to prevent the suffering we see. I recommend it.

One response he has seen suggests that morality has a significance in and of itself. But as he points out it's not something that needs to exist or is worth saving, because it only exists because suffering exists. No suffering, no morality. There is no morality required in a universe populated by senseless rocks.

At the end Maitzen mentions something else that is worth highlighting; the notion that atheists complaining about the problem of evil are somehow "angry at God"; Maitzen writes:

Living in a society still dominated by an inherited theistic outlook, atheists like me are not infrequently accused of being “angry at God” and venting our anger in the form of arguments such as those I’ve offered here. The accusation is patronizing, question-begging, and false. Any atheist who can think straight knows that anger at God makes no sense. I’m no more “angry at God” than I’m angry at Santa Claus for failing to relieve me of the burden of Christmas shopping. If I’m angry at anyone, it’s at those of my fellow human beings who (to extend the metaphor) would say morally outrageous things in order to defend the Santa Claus story as true and to excuse Santa Claus for repeatedly failing to do what the story makes it clear he ought to do. 

That summarises well how absurd that particular accusation comes off to me, and I think he is right to blame some of this on an 'inherited theistic outlook'. It still puzzles me that theists don't see how abhorrent their attitude to suffering is. For just one example, consider the discussion thread here. A theist called CodyGirl824 (I presume not a Poe) says, in response to an atheist discussing the problem of evil:

The fact that only humans are capable of evil, because evil requires formulation of intent and acting on that intent. So every evil act is an act of free will. Without free will, there can be no evil. If God were to choose to "prevent" every evil act of any and every human being, He would take away all free will, since God can't just intervene when an evil act is about to occur without obliterating that evil-doer's free will, and the consequences thereof. Without free will, there can be no love. Love is God's purpose in creation. (The Bible tells us so). So we people of faith understand perfectly why there is evil in the world as it exists. As we learn from the metaphorical, allegorical, mytho-poetic narrative of Adam and Eve, all acts of evil are acts of disobedience of God. We really do have all of the atheists' and naturalists objections covered. They simply refuse to recognize this fact.

...and continues in much the same vein despite her many errors being pointed out repeatedly. A sterling job done by her responders on that thread.

Now, to be fair, we cannot judge all theists on one rather obtuse example, but the appearance of callousness in this response does seem to recur in many a theist's response to the problem. What I find callous is the acceptance of suffering in their accounts, when we are taught, and perhaps know, that we should ameliorate it. They are explaining why suffering is necessary, when we (surely) know that it's not.

At least, a suffering-free world appears to be logically possible, and it is surely what is anticipated in heaven, or what existed before this vale of tears was supposedly created. One would expect our world to reflect its maker, if its maker were perfect, and it's simply not. This doesn't strike me as a particularly difficult notion to grasp, and repeated attempts at theodicy suggest that many theists do grasp it.

In the end something must give; their god's perfection, or the wrongness of suffering. Too many refuse to give up their god's perfection.

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Concluding Comments - 2014 Greer-Heard Forum

A panel discussion concluding the Greer-Heard Forum.

Excellent response by Tim Maudlin to William Lane Craig's assertion that moral objectivity requires theism, @ c30mins, who also makes a good point about blind luck in his concluding comments.

"Let a thousand flowers bloom", Craig says in his concluding comments, which I tend to agree with, although theism does not have a good record on that score!

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The Problem of Theistic Philosophers of Religion

Roman Catholic Dr Tim Stanley has written a paranoid piece attacking Richard Dawkins and 'atheist trolls' who constantly mock his beliefs. He writes:

When you insult my faith you go right to the heart of what makes me me. When you're trying to convince me in 140 characters of sub-GCSE philosophical abuse that God doesn't exist, you're trying to take away the faith that gets me up in the morning, gets me through the day and helps me sleep at night. You're ridiculing a God without whom I suspect I might not even be alive, and a God that I prayed to when my mother was going through cancer therapy. You're knocking a Church that provides me with compassion and friendship without asking for anything in return – perhaps the greatest, most wonderful discovery of my adult life. You see, people don't generally believe in God for reasons of convenience or intellectual laziness. It's usually fulfilling a deep need – filling a soul with love that might otherwise be quite empty and alone. In short, when you try to destroy someone's faith you're not being a brilliant logician. You're being a jerk.

Well, maybe not so paranoid. He has a point, does he not? If Stanley is typical of theists, and I suspect he may be, then they invest much more emotionally in their faith than non-believers do in their belief systems. Attacking their beliefs is an attack on them, if they identify so closely and emotionally with them. This is not to say that non-believers are not passionate about science, or truth, or rationality, or even humanism, but they appear to be typically less emotionally invested in them. They might 'pray' to science to help their mother get through cancer therapy, but that prayer would lack the personal element that marks out theism.

Stephen Law has written in his book Believing Bullshit about the emotional factor in forging people's beliefs:

...you might harness the emotional power of iconic music and imagery. Ensure people are regularly confronted by portraits of Our Leader accompanied by smiling children and sunbeams emanating from his head (those Baghdad murals of Saddam Hussein spring to mind). Ensure your opponents and critics are always portrayed accompanied by images of catastrophe and suffering, or even Hieronymus-Bosch-like visions of hell. Make people emotional dependent on your own belief system. Ensure that what self-esteem and sense of meaning, purpose and belonging they have is derived as far as possible from their belonging to your system of belief. Make sure they recognise that abandoning that belief system will involve the loss of things about which they care deeply.

Such practices have been part of atheistic ideologies, of course, but they are the bread and butter of religion.

So it seems obvious to me that theists operating in philosophy are going to struggle to do philosophy when it touches on their faith beliefs. If such a philosopher ring-fences their faith beliefs, and has a heavy emotional investment in them, this automatically biases their work, and the less bias a philosopher can bring to their analysis, the better the philosophy. I questioned the coherence of 'Christian Philosophy' here, whilst accepting it as a term for philosophy conducted by Christians. This does not mean that I think Christians, or theists, cannot be good philosophers. Clearly they can. But just as scientists use the scientific method to counteract the problems even the best of them have investigating reality, so it would benefit philosophers to adopt practices that counteract their biases. This also applies to non-believers, but more so to believers.

Paul Draper and Ryan Nichols have a piece in the latest issue of The Monist, called Diagnosing Bias in Philosophy of Religion. Ryan Nichols writes about it here, for those who want to read some more about it. The abstract says philosophy of religion is:

... too partisan, too polemical, too narrow in its focus, and too often evaluated using criteria that are theological or religious instead of philosophical. Our diagnosis is that, because of the emotional and psychosocial aspects of religion, many philosophers of religion suffer from cognitive biases and group influence.

The piece investigates some evidence that supports my intuitions about theistic philosophers. I don't think it's an open and shut case, but it is suggestive, I think. As per the abstract, they discuss four symptoms of poor health in philosophy of religion:

[I]t is too partisan, too polemical, too narrow in its focus, and too often evaluated using criteria that are theological or religious instead of philosophical.

Partisanship seems obvious, on both sides. The polemicism they worry about includes the sort of language that is often used: the language of conflict and opposition. On focus, they write:

Typically, religion is unreflectively equated with some form of theism or even classical theism, and atheism is equated with naturalism or even physicalism, ignoring the broad and plausible territory between those extremes. Alternatives like "generic theism" (that is, theism combined with a rejection of all alleged special revelations), pantheism, ietsism, and deism are rarely mentioned, and when they are mentioned they are usually dismissed as positions that very few people hold, which is not only spectacularly false, but hardly an appropriate constraint on philosophical inquiry. Even worse, it is often just assumed that the only viable forms of theism are Muslim, Christian, or Jewish.

This is very true. William James dismissed Islam as a live option for belief and, of course, in a similar way most religious believers do not take other religious beliefs as seriously as those they have faith in. I mean, they do not invest the time and emotional energy in the many religious beliefs from around the world that theists in those countries take as seriously as their own. This means that many possible philosophical positions are dismissed out of hand because of pre-existing beliefs. This is a problem for everyone, not just believers, of course, but one would expect a religious believer's emotional investment to make it a bigger problem for them.

Then they point out that too often positions are criticised based on religious beliefs, such as incompatibility with scripture:

Reinforcing such behavior is the fact that the motto of one of the premier journals in the field is "faith seeking understanding." This motto echoes the belief of some of the most influential philosophers of religion (e.g. Plantinga 1984) that philosophers who happen to be Christians should take the truth of Christian doctrines (as they happen to interpret them) as a starting point for philosophical inquiry.

They look at psychological studies to see if they support these contentions. They note that for confirmation bias:

...the strongest effects were among sophisticated, smart participants, and participants with strong prior commitments about the issues.

So if stronger prior commitments are reflected in those with more emotional investment in a belief, they would suffer the strongest confirmation bias:

We have several reasons to think that similar results are sure to be found when the above experiments are replicated with arguments about religion, especially when using philosophers of religion as participants. First, philosophers are emotional creatures like other humans. Second, professional philosophers of religion would score high on tests of sophistication about arguments in philosophy of religion as opposed to control participants. Third, many religious philosophers of religion, having committed their whole lives to a body of religious doctrine, have strong emotions about their religious beliefs. The last two observations set religious philosophers of religion apart from other groups of  philosophers —from, say, four-dimensionalist metaphysicians.

I think there is some truth to this, although there seem to be many controversies in philosophy that raise high emotions and are not exclusively religious. Consider the existence of objective morals, the free will debate and the hard problem of consciousness, for example. But many theists, like Stanley, make a point of highlighting the importance of their faith, suggesting it is more deeply held than non-belief. I'm inclined to agree with them. If a theist holds this position then they would have to agree, if they accept the studies cited, that they are more prone to certain biases. Draper and Nichols continue:

There are good reasons to believe that the emotional attachments that many religious philosophers have to their religious groups are exceptionally strong. 

Among the group memberships a professional philosopher might have, few if any compete with religion for social, emotional, behavioral, and cognitive importance.

If religious philosophers of religion have social and psychological tendencies at all similar to those found in religious people in general, then symptoms like excessive partisanship and narrowness of focus, and perhaps even the blurring of religious and philosophical criteria of evaluation, are to be expected.

Echoing Stanley's sentiments, they point out:

The attachment system operates in Christianity, for example, by making Jesus, God, or Mary functional attachment figures and fictive kin.

For religious persons, including religious philosophers of religion, who are attached to God the Father and who have an emotional conviction that their Father loves them, reading an argument that their Father does not exist primes negative emotional responses (whether above or below levels of conscious awareness).

They caution:

Bias is no doubt a problem in all areas of philosophy, but given the large percentage of religious believers in philosophy of religion, the emotional depth of religious attachments, and the strong connection between bias and the emotions, there is good reason to believe that it is much more damaging to inquiry in philosophy of religion than to inquiry in most other areas of philosophy. 

I think that most theists would agree that they have a more emotional attachment to their beliefs than non-believers, so I think they should agree with this diagnosis. Draper and Nichols make some strong recommendations to counteract any bias:

Our first recommendation is for philosophers of religion to distance themselves in every way possible from apologetics, whether theistic or atheistic.

This seems sensible, and may be why I sense that quite a few non-believing philosophers of religion are antipathetic to 'new atheism'. They may consider it too polemical, too atheistically apologetic.

Second, we recommend that philosophers of religion use argument construction less often as a method for making cases for the positions they hold, and more often as a method of testing those positions.

This is a fascinating recommendation, and a difficult one to pull off; but when a philosopher puts forward a really good argument against their own position, you know that good philosophy is occurring. I know I'm not very good at it! But I admire those who are.

A third recommendation is to make a conscious effort to allow, as J.L. Schellenberg puts it, the voice of authority to grow dim.

Indeed. Argue the case; don't defer to Aquinas or Descartes. I realise I say this in a blog citing Draper and Nichols, but then, I am no philosopher!

Finally, our fourth recommendation, which is the hardest of all to follow, is to make a conscious decision to accept genuine risk.

I really think that this is where many with faith would draw the line. The point of faith, I think, is to separate doctrine and dogma, to put them beyond risk. This is counter to this recommendation.

Even if a scientist is sure of some cherished hypothesis, testing that hypothesis by experiment is (in many though admittedly not all cases) inherently risky. Apologetics by comparison is very safe insofar as pursuing it is very unlikely to result in the apologist rejecting any of the central doctrines of the religious community he or she serves. Philosophy should be riskier - the philosopher of religion must be prepared to abandon cherished beliefs.

Theists can risk their beliefs, however, or none would ever lose their faith. Draper and Nichols compare the contrasting attitudes of Rudolf Otto and Gary DeWeese.

Otto says, "The earth disappeared from under my feet. That was the result of my studies at Erlangen. I went there not so much to quest for truth, but more to vindicate belief. I left with the resolve to seek nothing but the truth, even at the risk of not finding it in Christ" (Almond 1984, 12). Although Otto remained throughout his career a theologian by title, he was an exemplary philosopher of religion in many ways. He is famous, of course, because he wrote one of the greatest works in the history of the philosophy of religion, namely. The Idea of the Holy. It is abundantly clear that, had Otto not rejected apologetics in favor of a more philosophical approach to religious inquiry, he would not and could not have written this masterpiece.

DeWeese:

As Christian scholars we are of course free to entertain all manner of "what if" questions, some heterodox, some heretical.... While we're free to entertain such thoughts, I believe we are constrained by our faith to answer them in certain ways. If it seems to me that if a particular claim is well-argued but it contradicts a significant tenet of the faith . . . , then I should seek to refute rather than defend it.

I think theistic philosophers might argue that non-believers are as susceptible to the problems outlined by Draper and Nichols. In this piece, for example, Christian philosopher Randal Rauser considers the naturalist response to Thomas Nagel's recent book as indicative of something:

What happens if you violate naturalism? Here I’ll be brief because the fallout from Thomas Nagel’s book Mind and Cosmos has been well documented elsewhere. Just consider Andrew Ferguson’s fascinating article “The Heretic: Who is Thomas Nagel and why are so many of his fellow academics condemning him?” It is no surprise that scholars are heaping insults on Nagel, a worldclass philosopher and atheist, for daring to challenge philosophical naturalism. After all, this ain’t just mere epiphenomenalism. This is a theory that goes to the very foundations for many of these folk. Kind of like challenging the incarnation at a Christian school, eh?

I'm not sure this is a true analog with religious belief, but it may be. And if it is, then the religious will have to give up any claim to special respect for their beliefs, à la Stanley. Either they claim they have a more emotional connection to their beliefs than non-believers, and accept the psychological consequences of that, whatever they turn out to be, or they agree that non-believers can treat their religious beliefs as any other non-religious belief; Dawkins and 'atheist trolls' are free to attack them without believers claiming a 'special' identity with their beliefs.

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Authentic Theist Calls Atheists 'Sub-human'

My attention was drawn by my friend Quine to a post by Father Dwight Longenecker, who has a blog called Standing on my Head at Patheos. Father Longenecker is an American who has travelled the long (?) road from evangelical Christianity in his childhood to Catholic priesthood in his adulthood, via the Isle of Wight.

I cannot link to the actual post, which was originally here, because it has been taken down. The piece was called The Authentic Atheist, and went like this:

Not surprisingly, the bigoted nature of this did not go down well with many people, including some right-thinking theists. I responded to the last section by posting this comment:

It’s interesting that we could assert “These are the authentic theists. They plod through life eating, working, shopping, breeding and sleeping, and God never leaves their consciousness. Members of this sub-species may be sparkling sophisticates or ill-bred boors. They may be the decent and moral folks next door, or they could be despicable murderers. In a frightful way, it doesn’t matter. If they exist, perhaps they have bred and spread like the alien bodysnatchers, and exist in our midst like spiritual zombies—indistinguishable in the teeming mass of humanity except to those few who see them and tremble.”, and it would have as much traction as the original. Which is to say, none. (‘Spiritual zombies’ is amusingly ambiguous.)

My point was to draw attention to the bigoted nature of the Father's comments. In this short piece, he inspires prejudice against a group of people that he calls 'authentic atheists', describing them as a 'sub-species'. To say the same about 'authentic theists' would clearly be bigoted, I hoped he would see, and unjustifiable.

The priest was dissatisfied with the response the post received, so deleted it and all the comments. This is bad netiquette, imo, but since it's his blog, he has that right. He explained that the snippet had been taken out of context; as we can see from the screencap, it's an extract from a forthcoming book. Well, fair enough, but who took it out of context?

Once again my friend Quine uncovered an earlier piece that throws some light on this passage. Apparently written in 2003 and called In Search of the Authentic Atheist, in this he says something similar about the 'authentic atheist', and then talks about 'truly secret Atheists' (if we forgive the typo). Next he says:

My imagination is too vivid. I am spinning stories and jesting to make a point. Because people laugh and cry I'm sure all humans have souls, even if they neglect them.

So if we are being charitable, these characterisations are not meant to be taken seriously. Ha ha, he's just jesting. He's drawing attention to the hilarious stereotypical views some have of atheists. Well, that's all right then; the context is all, and we were too quick to judge him a bigot.

Unfortunately, the article continues with:

But if my hunch is right that some people never give God a thought, then they are the best evidence that such a thing as an atheist might exist after all. If such people exist then we are witnessing a radical and tragic decline in the human race, for it is sub-human to exist without a god of any kind. Real religion is a universal part of the human condition. In every culture and language — from primitive tribesmen who grunts at the stars to sophisticated technicians who grunt at computer screens — the troublesome religious instinct persists in a most stubborn and triumphant way.

So the Father sticks his neck out and calls it sub-human to live without a god. Of any kind! Literally, he would judge a person more human if they worshipped a god of any kind. They could worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or Satan, and they would be more human than an atheist. Remember, it's a god of any kind, so evil ones are preferable to none at all. But in the absence of an irrational worship of an invisible being,  a person becomes sub-human, a spiritual zombie, Father Longenecker thinks.

The Father commits Hume's classic 'is-ought' fallacy when he declares that how things have been in human society so they should be. 'Real' (not sure why he qualifies religion with this adjective) rape and murder are a universal part of the human condition, but we don't think it should be, I hope he agrees. He wonders where the 'universal, tender and mysterious instinct to fall on our faces and before our immense and intimate maker' comes from, but, of course, this is a far too simplistic view of humanity. Religious behaviour is extremely diverse, and appears to spring from a number of our evolved features. To reduce it to the features of the Father's favourite religion enfeebles humanity.

This is reminiscent of Cormac Murphy-O'Connor's comments that atheists are 'not fully human', so is perhaps to be expected from a Catholic priest. It's not enough that the Church promotes the repression of women around the world, denies rights to homosexuals, and protects child abusers within its ranks. Now, one of its representatives wants to draw atheists as 'sub-human'. Well, in light of their other crimes, this is small beer, and perhaps it's a good sign that they are aiming at atheists now, rather than persecuting heretics of any hue (remember, he's happier with folk who worship gods of any kind).

Nevertheless, I'd like Father Longenecker to wind his neck in and start treating everyone as a human being.

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As Good as Gnu

Julian Baggini has complained about new atheists before, saying:

In any case, my [negative] opinions are not so much about these books as the general tone and direction the new atheism they represent has adopted. This is not a function of what exactly these books say, but of how they are perceived, and the kind of comments the four horsemen make in newspaper articles and interviews. All this, I think, has been unhelpful in many ways. In short, the new atheism gets atheism wrong, gets religion wrong, and is counterproductive.

He goes on to attack new atheism because it is anti-theistic, and parasitic on god-belief, whereas he proffers an atheistic world view. It seems obvious to me that these two are not in conflict with one another, and Baggini is simply mistaking his distaste for new atheism's political goals with a pertinent point. Later he says:

The practices of religion may be more important then the narratives, even if people believe those narratives to be true.

But those practices are not more important than the belief that the narratives are true, as his own investigations have shown, in a piece called The myth that religion is more about practice than belief:

My own research shows that the vast majority of Christians appear to take the orthodox doctrine at face value.

But now he makes another tone attack on a certain type of atheist, and one can only conclude he means the new atheists, given his form. He cites this article by Jeffrey Myers, to illustrate how atheists protest about being called out for their tone, and then says:

Accusing someone of being aggressive, nasty or shrill can be a neat way of avoiding the meat of the matter while also appearing to occupy the moral high ground. That's true, but tone does matter, and it's often more connected with substance than it might seem.

But the linked piece doesn't say that tone does not matter. It says "Our tone does not matter". This is a vital distinction, and gets to the nub of how very wrong Baggini is on this issue. Myers points out that:

Because the reality is that our tone is NOT the problem. Our tone doesn't matter. Because it doesn't matter how polite we are, how eloquent we are, how articulate or respectful we are. It is not our tone that theists reject - it is our existence.

And Baggini and other accommodationists should know this, because they themselves are regularly accused of the same crimes as the new atheists - just read the comments section to Baggini's attempts to bridge the gap between theism and atheism in The Guardian. In this latest article, Baggini notes:

"Tone" actually crops up in two guises in this debate. It not only refers to the mode of argumentation but also to the alleged way in which many atheists are "tone deaf" to religion.

Fair enough, it is 'alleged'. But is it true that 'atheists' are tone deaf?

(And which ones? Is that a trait that they have as a group? As often when it comes to this sort of accusation, no evidence is linked to support Baggini's position. To be clear, I don't doubt that the occasional atheist might make a tone-deaf pronouncement. I object that atheists are characterised as a group with this clumsy stereotype, and I object that the four horsemen, and gnus, are too)

In fact, the opposite is true, is it not? It is many theists who are tone deaf to atheistic writing because they respond no differently to Julian Baggini's supposedly nuanced approach than they do to Richard Dawkins's supposedly tone-deaf approach. Consider these comments:

Julian Baggini
I think one of the biggest obstacles to progress here is your inability to resist your obsessive-compulsive desire to use space in your own articles to denigrate religious belief and instead use them to propound the primacy of your own atheist ones. A lot of religious people may draw from that that your claims of respectful discussion are somewhat akin to a wolf in sheep's clothing. CatholicAndy

The most troubling thing about this piece is the aggressive idea of 'acceptable' religion; as if giving an ultimatum to all religious believers. Baggini doesn't reveal which authority gave him the right to define how religion should be in the 21st century, nor does he give any consideration to libertarian values, like the freedom of expression or belief.
With this article Baggini, despite all his claims to occuyping a middle ground, has shown himself to be as intolerant and supremacist as the militant atheists he claims to descry. iphedia

And there are many more - there we have it in black and white.

Russell Blackford wrote an excellent piece on this a while back:

The problem is likely to be that a lot of discussion of tone is just not very intelligent - how many reviews of The God Delusion have you read that show a tin ear for Dawkins' control of tone? Many reviews don't show any sensitivity at all for the varied tones: the humour; the quiet thoughtfulness and introspection; or the comical intoxication with language itself in Dawkins' famous denunciation of the Old Testament deity. Generally speaking, the reviewers just don't "get" it. But the cure for that isn't less discussion of Dawkins' tone; it's more intelligent discussion of Dawkins' tone. A hackneyed adjective such as "strident" doesn't cut the mustard.

Spot on. Dawkins's writing and pronouncements are thoughtful and witty and insightful - maybe not as profound as some of our better philosophers, but he's not talking to academia. He's talking to the general public, and his tone is entirely appropriate for that. The cry from gnu atheists is not that tone is unimportant, it's that the tone argument is being used dishonestly and prejudicially against them.

The response to Baggini's own writing shows that to be true. Whether he likes it or not, he's as good as gnu in the eyes of many a theist.

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Are Atheists Bullies?

The recent kerfuffle at UCL prompted by overly sensitive religious sentiment has caused a number of folk to say that atheists are bullies, often comparing them to religious fundamentalists. At RichardDawkins.NET there was a rather incoherent poster called Griswold Grim who made the 'bullying' claim, but he never substantiated it, beyond railing against ridicule.

I witnessed a Twitter spat (which I want to call Twat, but had better not) between P.Z. Myers and a statistician called Andrew Dalby. P.Z. had posted a video depicting dreadful intimidation of Irshad Manji by Muslim fundamentalists, pointing out the deep distinction between militant theists and militant atheists. Incredibly, blind to the evidence of his own eyes, Dalby tweeted this:

Once again, my gast is flabbered by someone in the ongoing debate between believers and non-believers. Displaying breathtaking bigotry against a whole raft of people, Dalby says that P.Z.'s post shows that 'the atheists are just the same sort of bullies as the fundamentalists'. So that post is the equivalent of instigating a riot, or demanding someone be executed, or demanding that a book be banned. It's a remarkable claim, and Dalby doesn't appear to be a theist, so much as someone who thinks he's found a way to be superior to both atheists and theists. P.Z. called his lack of critical assessment stupid, to which he replied:

...which made me giggle. Never a good thing to proclaim one's own genius, I find. Or perhaps that's just me, since my inability to 'out intellectual' and 'out science' people has been proved regularly! He followed up with this gem:

That deserves a ROFL. Does he mean lecturers in statistics at Oxford University are automatically correct in any discussion, regardless of the subject? I mean, sure, in a discussion on statistics, P.Z. should probably defer, but in this discussion? It's not clear what relevance this factoid has to Muslim fundamentalism, or handbagging for that matter! Anyway, back to the Twitter spat, and Dalby offers:

So apparently Santayana (and only Santayana?) is foundational to humanist principles? Santayana is all well and good, and wrote much that modern day atheists would agree with, but he was famously sympathetic to Catholicism (presumably because of his background) and few modern day atheists would agree with him on that score. Of course, many theist thinkers would disagree with him on that score too! A pointless appeal to bogus philosophical authority, then. Toleration of religious belief does not entail its immunity from criticism.

I wasn't sure what had upset Dalby so much about P.Z.'s post, but it became clear in his follow up tweets:

The bit that Dalby does not like appears to be this:

...there might be much to admire in her [Manji's] work, as she’s another theist who has taken a step away from the dogma and tribalism of fundamentalism, but she hasn’t yet had the courage or intellectual integrity to take another step and free herself of the folly of faith.

So the accusation of a lack of courage and intellectual integrity is beyond the Pale, Dalby thinks, and it's wrong to tell people what to believe and that they are inferior or wrong. You will notice that he is pragmatically self-refuting here, since, among other things, he is telling P.Z. it's wrong to tell people they're wrong. Of course it's not, and we would not have morality if it were, since our morals not only guide us in our behaviour but we also feel they have a prescriptive effect on others, as Dalby demonstrates. It then becomes clear how this muddle headed thinking arises:

Oh dear; radical scepticism rears its ugly head and we're heading for the barren plains of relativism, where no-one is right and no-one is wrong. Because he's not sure what's true, nothing is true. This would be a strange philosophy if anyone lived by it, but of course no-one does.

Well, obviously objectivism exists as much as any idea does - he presumably means there is no objective truth. An unsustainable pomo position, as the exchange demonstrates, since his own entreaties would have no weight, if it were true. A tweeter called Austin Cline calls him out:

To which, of course, he has no answer, other than 'thinking is always bad for us'! It's lucky we're not all lecturers in statistics at Oxford University, else none of us would think. The ultimate source of his anger is clear, I think, from this tweet:

If there's one thing that new atheists have achieved, it's a wider acceptance that religion and faith are not privileged over other beliefs. Folk such as Dalby demonstrate that even many non-believers cling to an unthinking acceptance of this privilege that religion and faith demand. Of course we tell each other what to think about many things, and there is no good reason to exclude religion and faith from that list of things.

But finally, the outrageous equating of good faith criticism from atheists with genuinely extreme religious bullying has to be called out for the bogus comparison it is. When these sorts of befuddled accusations stop, then it might be that we're getting somewhere in reducing religious privilege.

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Rhyme or Reason?

Richard Dawkins suggests that Rowan Williams and other sophisticated theologians are being poetic about their beliefs - perhaps that they are metaphorical. I'm pretty sure that Williams thinks, however poetic he gets, that there is an underlying real truth behind what he says. And this is surely true of most senior Anglicans, despite the suspicion some have (or had, like Julian Baggini?) that they don't really believe in the unlikely things they say they believe in. Consider this, from Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester, in the Daily Telegraph:

The proper relation of religion to science is also vital. Young people must be taught to appreciate both the experimental methods of science and the ultimate values which religion offers. Such a conversation must take place in the classroom if we are not to continue being divided by “scientistic” and religious fundamentalists.

Mr Cameron reminded us that inalienable human dignity is founded on the biblical idea that we are made in the image of God. But to whom does this extend? And are there circumstances when a person might lose such dignity?

Nazir-Ali implies that we have sources of reliable knowledge other than science, with his false opposition between scientism and fundamentalism, then notes that human dignity is based on 'the biblical idea that we are made in the image of God'. This is very debatable, of course, but, further, is 'made in the image of God' a literal truth or a poetic metaphor? Science shows that we are inextricably a part of the animal kingdom with no need for such a notion, so should we not conclude a contradiction between science and religion here? I think we should, but liberal theists might say that I am being too scientistic and literal in my interpretation of the teaching; lacking poetry, perhaps? 

As an aside, read Russell Blackford's discussion of scientism, and other things, here, which explains well how the charge of scientism lacks teeth - anyone who appeals to a worldview based on reason and evidence  (practically everyone, I should think) is automatically not scientistic; but that does not allow anyone to claim truths in opposition to science.

Nevertheless, Nazir-Ali clearly wants public policy based on this 'idea', linking it to the 'special nature of the human embryo' which suggests he, at least, thinks it's a literal truth that we are created in the image of God, in opposition to the huge weight of scientific evidence:

It was for these reasons that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act recognised the special nature of the human embryo and established an authority to regulate scientific work involving embryos. I support the Coalition’s desire to trim the quangos, and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority is not perfect. But we need a body, perhaps modelled on the US President’s Council, that can consider the moral implications of developments in bioethics.

If he doesn't think it's a literal truth, should we base such decisions on ancient metaphors? I think metaphors could be useful if they highlighted an underlying truth revealed by our explorations of reality, but the image of God and the special nature of the human embryo would need to be connected by something more than a biblical idea, since biblical ideas have a wretched record in the marketplace of ideas and, in any case, they should not be grounds for public policy in a secular, multi-cultural world, unless they can be supported by secular, multi-cultural arguments and evidence. Even good poetic reasons would not suffice, in my opinion.

The moral implications of developments in bioethics should be considered, but, like all morality, they should be considered by us all, in a mature group negotiation that considers all the facts as we understand them, in concert with mutually acceptable values.

Bizarrely, Nazir-Ali also says:

As Mr Cameron reminded us, the value of equality comes from the biblical teaching, confirmed by science, of the common origin of all humans.

He appears to blind himself to the evolutionary view which shows our common origin with other animals, and to ignore biblical teachings such as descent from Adam and Eve and the massacre of the Canaanites, which suggest that some humans are more equal than others.

The Commission on Assisted Dying will be reporting this week, and it has taken on board evidence from Robin Gill, an advisor to the Archbishop of Canterbury, that the current status quo should be maintained, preferring to limit patient choice to a denial of treatment, with all the potential for pain and suffering that that entails. This stems from another supposed truth (poetic or otherwise) that human life is a gift from God and thus not our own:

10. The sanctity of human life: This principle is crucial to Christians. It encapsulates their belief that life is in and of itself sacred because it is given by God. Life has an inherent value, not just a conditional one. The principle is enshrined in law in the form of an absolute prohibition on the intentional killing of innocent human beings. It is not normally taken to mean that any life ought to be preserved at all costs. But it does ‘protect each one of us impartially, embodying the belief that all are equal’ (quoted by the Archbishop and the Cardinal from the 1994 Select Committee’s report, included in Appendix I).
11. For a Christian, this principle also encapsulates the simple belief that God owns my life, not I, and I have, therefore, no right to end it.

(from the Church of England briefing paper to the Lords Select Committee on Assisted Dying)

The consequence of such literal beliefs is Anglican opposition to humane measures which recognise each individual's autonomy. But, it's a logical corollary to the view that our lives are not our own. Let us hope that the Commission recognises the evil nature of such warping ideas, poetic metaphor or not, since these beliefs have neither rhyme nor reason to my ears.

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Moths to the Flame

Many people agonise over the meaning of life. Why are we here? Where are we going? What's it all about, Alfie?

There's an assumption to theism of ultimate meaning, and individual personal meaning, that is satisfied in the concept of an afterlife in heaven. If we return to dust, what's the point of getting up in the morning? (This argument is deeply flawed on a number of levels, but let's put that to one side.) But *why* do we seek this meaning, if it results in such false beliefs, a theist might ask. False beliefs aren't beneficial to survival, so this wouldn't be naturally selected.

I see two answers to this apparent conundrum. Firstly, meaning-seeking has been extremely useful to homo sapiens; we are a (perhaps the only one, so far) being that tries to uncover why things are the way they are. It's difficult to see how technology could be achieved *without* such a tendency. So it's certainly *conceivable* that meaning-seeking has been selected for its own good. Secondly, it may just be a by-product of advanced brain functions that have been selected for other reasons.

Are these explanations plausible? I think so; we can see a simple example of other *behaviour* that has been naturally selected and causes problems despite that. If we light a candle outside we see many insects 'foolishly' flying into the flame, like kamikaze pilots (and what about *that* behaviour?!). Richard Dawkins as usual writes well on the subject:

Moths fly into the candle flame, and it does not look like an accident. They go out of their way to make a burnt offering of themselves. We could label it “self-immolation behavior” and wonder how Darwinian natural selection could possibly favor it. My point, again, is that we need to rewrite the question before we can even attempt an intelligent answer. It is not suicide. Apparent suicide emerges as an inadvertent side effect. Artificial light is a recent arrival on the night scene. Until recently, the only night-lights were the moon and the stars. Being at optical infinity, their rays are parallel, which makes them ideal compasses. Insects are known to use celestial objects to steer accurately in a straight line. The insect nervous system is adept at setting up a temporary rule of thumb such as, “Steer a course such that the light rays hit your eye at an angle of 30°.” Since insects have compound eyes, this will amount to favoring a particular ommatidium (individual optical tube radiating out from the center of the compound eye). However, the light compass relies critically on the celestial object being at optical infinity. If it is not, the rays are not parallel but diverge like the spokes of a wheel. A nervous system using a 30° rule of thumb to a candle, as though it were the moon, will steer its moth, in a neat logarithmic spiral, into the flame. It is still, on average, a good rule of thumb. We do not notice the hundreds of moths who are silently and effectively steering by the moon or a bright star or even the lights of a distant city. We see only moths hurling themselves at our lights, and we ask the wrong question. Why are all these moths committing suicide? Instead, we should ask why they have nervous systems that steer by maintaining an automatic fixed angle to light rays, a tactic that we only notice on the occasions when it goes wrong. When the question is rephrased, the mystery evaporates. It never was right to call it suicide.

What Use Is Religion?

Whenever someone bemoans the nihilism of atheism, I see a moth fluttering into the flame.

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Please Choose Your Presupposition

I've been following the debate between presuppositional apologists and others (including the odd Christian) over at Premier Forums, and I thought I would write a little on the subject, in the hope of clarifying my own thinking about it.

To start with, as a sceptic, I'm still in the position where I can evaluate different world views and tentatively indicate which is currently preferred. I'm not committed to any world view, and am open to persuasion. So far, given our human condition, it seems *necessary* to maintain a tentative position. That *could*, in principle, entail preferring a theist world view (it doesn't at the moment!).

(It's noted, though, that provisionality, on the face of it, would seem to rule out a lot of theist world views, which demand *commitment* - Kierkegaard's leap of faith. Doubt is frowned upon, even though acknowledged at times.)

Many theists insist that the sceptic *must* declare a world view. This strikes me as transparently rhetorical; anyone can imagine how a person could be sceptical, non-committal and honestly ignorant, and they *should* address *that* position, not any number of straw men positions they would prefer to attack. However, this is part of their tactic, since they are interested in showing the impossibility of the contrary view, and to deny any criticism of their assumptions. See this, from a presup:

No, God is not on trial, WE ALL ARE. It is obvious to me that evidence doesn’t win the day with atheists, so I choose to argue for the impossibility of the contrary and from a position of accountability.

This is not entirely unreasonable (well the evidence bit is!); as Sherlock Holmes said:

How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?

Unfortunately for the presuppositionalist, I think we can see that they haven't eliminated the impossible.

Consider a typical demand from a presuppositionalist:

...how do YOU account for the universal, abstract, invariant laws of loigc [sic] according to YOUR worldview?

Little defence of his own world view, since he understands that his world view begs the question. So straight onto the attack. Your world view begs the question, you make assumptions too. Again, I think this is fair enough, to a degree; we do not have a sure foundation for any epistemology - philosophers have wrestled inconclusively with this knotty problem for centuries, and I'm not about to challenge their (lack of) conclusions! Although it's plain that many are satisfied that we can have *tentative* knowledge, through the comfort we have derived from the scientific method.

So let's consider the claims of two possible world views. The presuppositionalist might say:

1. I presuppose that God provides the foundation for logic/induction/reason.
2. I can now justify my use of logic/induction/reason and apply these to the evidence to determine reality.
3. The atheist world view, because God provides this foundation for logic etc, is impossible.

Unfortunately for the presup, number three is criticising the atheist world view according to his own world view - an external criticism. A typical atheist could then say:

1. I presuppose that logic/induction/reason is a brute fact.
2. I can now justify my use of logic/induction/reason and apply these to the evidence to determine reality.
3. The theist world view assumes a god; please provide the evidence for that, and I will evaluate it (little to no evidence for a god, therefore no god is proved).

There is no *internal* problem with the first two steps of the two world views, if we agree that presuppositions are necessary; which I think is hard to argue against. But it doesn't mean we *have* to accept any presupposition; we are at liberty to evaluate which is the best world view for the reality we see around us.

As a sceptic, I cannot see anything compelling about the theist presuppositional position. It plainly hasn't established a reason to believe its presupposition, and it cannot offer an explanation of how this works. Logic is founded in God? God is logic? This suggests that logic *could* be something else; that there is possibly a state of affairs where 2+2=5 and things could be p and ~p. A presup *must* believe that, otherwise, if this isn't the case, and 2+2≠5 and things can never be p and ~p, then logic still just *is* a brute fact. So the God presupposition does not help.

Also, the presup must demonstrate that there is *no* world view that is possible other than theirs. This assumes that they know all other world views, and have proved them impossible; a brave and foolhardy claim. A sceptic doesn't claim to know all world views, but can analyse those of which he's aware, and tentatively prefer one.

Furthermore, it's difficult to see how one could not plug *anything* in place of God in the presuppositional world view:

I presuppose that my cat/the clouds/love provides the foundation for logic/induction/reason.

Any world view like this is internally consistent, once the presupposition is allowed, and not analysed as above. But it cannot be persuasive to the sceptic, because they *have* to choose between different presuppositions. The presup think it's a compelling argument because they demand everyone commits to a presupposition, and don't examine it. That is their fatal error. We *are* at liberty to adjust our presuppositions, which means we must be allowed to analyse them. They want to deny analysis of the God proposal to all. The sceptic, by contrast, wants *everything* to be open to analysis. Even the foundation of logic (if anyone's got any ideas).

I don't think most Christians think like this (at least, not to this extreme), and it doesn't seem like a position that's worth debating. The presup is obviously happy with their presupposition for internal reasons, and appears blind to the *sceptical* position. The debate will constantly ping pong between demands for a justification of logic, to evidence for God, and no-one will be any the wiser. Best to give the presups a wide berth! They're not for learning.

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The Necessity of Evil?

The faithful like to think they have the moral upper hand on non-believers. This is usually because they believe there is an objective morality, somehow personified (is that the right word?) in their version of god. It's not clear to me how a god being the embodiment (again, is that the right word?) of 'good' establishes an objective morality, but let's see if we can run with it. 

I've seen theists say to deniers of objective morality, that to torture a child for fun is always wrong, so let us examine this knotty problem. (The 'for fun' is a little problematic, because it could defy accurate definition.)

Moral 'laws' are not constraining laws, in the way that physical laws are, they're normative - they can be overridden, but, we feel, they *should* be observed. This seems to make them a little worthless to me, but nevertheless, let's continue. For a morality to be objective, it would be recognised by everything under all circumstances; in other words, it wouldn't be *contingent*. Regardless of the viewpoint, one could identify the normative behaviour. This universality, I think, should apply to everything; you, me, trees, rocks. One could say that rocks, being inanimate objects never have the chance to operate with moral considerations. But one could imagine that a rock, having rolled down a hill and pinned an innocent child to the ground and caused much pain might be being immoral. It cannot do anything about it, agreed, but nonetheless, it *is* torturing a child. Perhaps the apologist would deny that this is 'for fun'? Perhaps, but it's certainly to no purpose, and if that's not 'for fun', I'm not sure what is.

OK, so the apologist says, don't be silly, these 'laws' cannot apply to things lacking agency, or the ability to do anything about it. Right, so they're not universal, they're just universal for, er, homo sapiens? And other animals, too, perhaps, but we'll figure that out later. Let's accept that, and carry on. Mackie says in his 'Ethics' that 'the device of morality is beneficial because of certain contingent features of the human condition'. On this I think he concurs with many ethicists. This has always seemed to me an obvious point about morality, and renders a universal objective morality unobtainable. History would seem to bear this out, but let's not be too empiricist about this, and explore further. 

To torture a child for fun is *always* wrong? Or can we think of a circumstance where this could be OK? I think we can. Imagine we are observing two rooms set up by some James Bond villain. In one, there are ten children, in the other 50. If no child in the first room tortures another child 'for fun' within the day, then the 50 children in the other room will be tortured. If I know kids, there will be some fun-filled victimisation going on sooner or later, so I guess the 50 kids are safe. More to the point, as observers, we must *hope* for the torture of a child for fun, to achieve the preferred outcome. Hang on, what's that? We want a child to be tortured for fun? Surely that's objectively wrong? Well, no, it's *contingent*, like all other morality.

Let's be charitable, and allow the apologist to say, hey, unrealistic thought experiments aside, it's *wrong* to torture kids for fun! You just *know* it's wrong. Well, I guess, we do, practically *all* the time. It's clearly *not* universal, but let's allow some leeway, and say that it *is* objectively wrong. Nevertheless, kids are tortured for fun everyday in this world, so it *does* happen. In fact, in the theists' world-view, their god is *allowing* it. Why would he do that, him being the embodiment (?) of good, and all that? The closest to an explanation of this conundrum is, to sum up centuries of theodicy, 'for the greater good'. So evils are allowed to occur to achieve greater 'goods'. But that means... that 'torturing children for fun' is for the greater good. Which means it's not objectively wrong, surely? Well, your guess is as good as mine, but I suppose we've stumbled upon the Euthyphro dilemma.

With such confused moral thinking, is it any wonder that abuses occur as we've seen reported in Ireland. If a doctrine acknowledges that evil is *required* for the greater good, why wouldn't the believers of that doctrine think that these evils are *inevitable*. I think only *humanitarian* instincts, which thankfully come to the fore in the vast majority of theists, prevent it. It's *human* values that conteract these bankrupt *theist* values.

One would hope that these abuses are confined to Ireland and the recent past, but one fears the worst; is it the logical outcome of a doctrine that preaches the *necessity* of evil?

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Yet More on Faith - Fish Fingered

From Stanley Fish's article in the New York Times:

The theological formulation of this insight [reasoning without assumptions is impossible] is well known: Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11). Once the act of simply reporting or simply observing is exposed as a fiction — as something that just can’t be done — the facile opposition between faith-thinking and thinking grounded in independent evidence cannot be maintained. Pking gets it right. “To torpedo faith is to destroy the roots of . . . any system of knowledge . . . I challenge anyone to construct an argument proving reason’s legitimacy without presupposing it . . . Faith is the base, completely unavoidable. Get used to it. It’s the human condition.” (All of us, not just believers, see through a glass darkly.) Religious thought may be vulnerable on any number of fronts, but it is not vulnerable to the criticism that in contrast to scientific or empirical thought, it rests on mere faith.

This is classic pomo style defence of religious thought, and whilst the argument is trivially true (in the sense that at bottom we all have to make assumptions a priori) it *isn't* the point of the reason/faith divide. The point is that the religious *do* use reason themselves, so they *do* adopt the same assumptions as the non-theist. But here's the rub; *except* when it comes to their privileged god belief. So the theist takes on board the assumption of reason, not unreasonably, and then discards it for one *particular* belief. This strikes me as inconsistent at best and dishonest at worst. What has Stanley Fish used to formulate his anti-reason attack if not reason itself? Any other tool than *reason* and it would have been a series of wildly unconnected thoughts of no relevance to the point in question (no jokes, please, tempting though it is). To attack *reason*, therefore, is self-defeating. All that non-theists ask is that theists apply the same critical thinking to their religious belief as they would to all their other beliefs.

It's also wrong historically, since most people in the past would have felt, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that everything around them was testament to the truth of the god concept. Homo sapiens had good *reason* to believe there were greater movers at work. It was the way his mind constructed a believable narrative about his situation.

More dangerously, to take a realisation about our epistemology (that we have no reason to assume reason!) and extend it to allow belief without reason is simply a recipe for conflict. Without allowing reason its supremacy, we simply have no conflict resolution mechanism. Well, other than violence, I guess.

And once again we have a theist defending the notion of faith without evidence, contradicting Catholic doctrine, and other theists, like Polkinghorne. Is it any wonder the non-believer has to spread his attacks wide, only to be accused of attacking the wrong target? There are so many different versions of superstitious belief, it is a Sisyphean task.

It really is about time the theists got together and sorted their story out. Do they believe for good reason, or not?

Fish continues:

So to sum up, the epistemological critique of religion — it is an inferior way of knowing — is the flip side of a naïve and untenable positivism. And the critique of religion’s content — it’s cotton-candy fluff — is the product of incredible ignorance.

It is more reasonable to believe that religion is an inferior way of knowing because:  

• It hasn't *demonstrated* any advantage over reason when it comes to taking advantage of reality; quite the opposite.  
  
• The religious way of knowing has led to numerous unsubstantiated and conflicting claims about the world. Logic compels us to say that they cannot *all* be right, so we must exclude at least all but one. Which are we to choose?
  

Why would a god make believing in him such an unreasonable proposal?

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