US Court says: "This is how science works"

The NCSE have reported that:

A federal court rejected a claim that the evidence for climate change is too uncertain for the United States government to act on it.

This is good news for science, because the judges have supported regulators who defer to scientific authority when implementing policy. The US Environmental Protection Agency had ruled, based on climate science studies collated by the IPCC and other authorities, that the Clean Air Act required Federal Government to impose limits once it determined emissions were harmful. Presumably petitioners wanted to cast doubt on the link between climate changes and emissions, so that, if harmful environmental changes were detected, this would not result in limits being placed on their operations.

A key paragraph in the judgement is this:

State and Industry Petitioners assert that EPA improperly “delegated” its judgment to the IPCC, USGCRP, and NRC by relying on these assessments of climate-change science. See U.S. Telecom Ass’n v. FCC, 359 F.3d 554, 566 (D.C. Cir. 2004). This argument is little more than a semantic trick. EPA did not delegate, explicitly or otherwise, any decision-making to any of those entities. EPA simply did here what it and other decision makers often must do to make a science-based judgment: it sought out and reviewed existing scientific evidence to determine whether a particular finding was warranted. It makes no difference that much of the scientific evidence in large part consisted of “syntheses” of individual studies and research. Even individual studies and research papers often synthesize past work in an area and then build upon it. This is how science works. EPA is not required to re-prove the existence of the atom every time it approaches a scientific question.

This is not to say that the science is right, but it is to say that deferring to the appropriate scientific authority is right. If the petitioners want to call this a judgement 'delegated', then fine; but it's the right way to conduct public policy. Of course 'delegated' suggests that the EPA simply washed its hands of responsibility for the science, but without reproving the existence of the atom, there is still much that needs to be done, and can be done:

Moreover, it appears from the record that EPA used the assessment reports not as substitutes for its own judgment but as evidence upon which it relied to make that judgment. EPA evaluated the processes used to develop the various assessment reports, reviewed their contents, and considered the depth of the scientific consensus the reports represented. Based on these evaluations, EPA determined the assessments represented the best source material to use in deciding whether greenhouse gas emissions may be reasonably anticipated to endanger public health or welfare. Endangerment Finding, 74 Fed. Reg. at 66,510–11. It then reviewed those reports along with comments relevant to the scientific considerations involved to determine whether the evidence warranted an endangerment finding for greenhouse gases as it was required to do under the Supreme Court’s mandate in Massachusetts v. EPA.

The very act of relying on the science can be, and should be, approached in a scientific manner. A sensible government agency will gauge the level of confidence it can take from the nature of the evidence and the outcome of studies and meta-studies, without re-doing those studies themselves. As the judgement says:

Based on this scientific record, EPA made the linchpin finding: in its judgment, the “root cause” of the recently observed climate change is “very likely” the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Endangerment Finding, 74 Fed. Reg. at 66,518. EPA found support for this finding in three lines of evidence. First, it drew upon our “basic physical understanding” of the impacts of various natural and manmade changes on the climate system. For instance, EPA relied on evidence that the past half-century of warming has occurred at a time when natural forces such as solar and volcanic activity likely would have produced cooling. Endangerment Finding, Response to Comments (RTC) Vol. 3, at 20. Other evidence supports EPA’s conclusion that the observed warming pattern—warming of the bottommost layer of the atmosphere and cooling immediately above it—is consistent with greenhouse-gas causation.

EPA further relied upon evidence of historical estimates of past climate change, supporting EPA’s conclusion that global temperatures over the last half-century are unusual. Endangerment Finding, 74 Fed. Reg. at 66,518. Scientific studies upon which EPA relied place high confidence in the assertion that global mean surface temperatures over the last few decades are higher than at any time in the last four centuries. Technical Support Document for the Endangerment Finding (TSD), at 31. These studies also show, albeit with significant uncertainty, that temperatures at many individual locations were higher over the last twenty-five years than during any period of comparable length since 900 A.D.

For its third line of evidence that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases spurred the perceived warming trend, EPA turned to computer-based climate-model simulations. Scientists have used global climate models built on basic principles of physics and scientific knowledge about the climate to try to simulate the recent climate change. These models have only been able to replicate the observed warming by including anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases in the simulations. Endangerment Finding, 74 Fed. Reg. at 66,523.

A cautionary note, however; Mitt Romney's plan, according to his website, is to "Amend Clean Air Act to exclude carbon dioxide from its purview", which would be an odd thing to do; like excluding smoke from the Clean Air Act. If he was successful, this would render this judgement irrelevant, and no limits based on the Clean Air Act could be placed on industry in the US to curb climate change.

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Christian Philosophy

In William Lane Craig's latest newsletter, talking about a recent visit to Hungary, he says:

A senior Norwegian philosopher joined me for lunch one day to share his story. He told me that he had long been a Christian, but his faith was completely privatized. As a professor of philosophy at a secular university, he never told his students that he was a Christian nor did he make any attempt at all to integrate his Christian faith with his discipline. He then fell into a deep depression, which lasted about two years. During that low time, unable to do any productive work, he began to listen to my Defenders podcasts, which he came across on the internet. As a result of listening to the class, he came to realize that he could do Christian philosophy, an idea which had never crossed his mind. Coming out of the depression, he decided to change everything in his teaching. He now announces to his students that he is a Christian and that he will offer a Christian perspective on the philosophical issues under discussion in his classes. He makes no apologies for taking this bold approach. He not only has Intro level classes of around 350 students, but he also supervises Ph.D. students in philosophy at this secular Norwegian university! Can you imagine the impact that will have on the future of the university environment in Norway?

I was puzzled why doing 'Christian philosophy' had 'never crossed his mind. Never? This seems an odd thing to say, since plainly there are Christians out there doing it, such as William Lane Craig himself, Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne and Wes Moriston. The philosophy I've studied has included elements of what I would call 'Christian philosophy', such as Aquinas and Anselm. I couldn't imagine why the thought of doing Christian philosophy would never cross a Christian philosopher's mind.

So, I thought I would ask him directly. Guessing from this list of speakers, I sent an email to Ralph Henk Vaags, an assistant professor at the University of Agder in Norway, and he confirmed in a friendly email that the story was about him. In response to my query wondering why he never thought to do Christian philosophy, he said:

It is not my view that we can come to philosophy with empty sheets. We created a worldview, and have opinions about right and wrong, true or false, etc. before we became professional philosophers. I am no exception (though I was not a Christian when I come to philosophy). Our worldview will be challenged when we enter the field of philosophy, and if we are open and listen to the arguments, things can really change. I become a Christian through philosophy.
When I got a position in philosophy, holding lectures and writing philosophical books, etc. I regarded religious faith and professional philosophy as two separate fields, and we should not mix them. Of course, my answers to philosophical questions were consistent with my religious beliefs, but I regarded this as irrelevant to my teaching and philosophical research at the university. Religious convictions were my private section. What happened after my period of depression was that I became open to the possibility of doing Christian philosophy today. Listening to dr. Craig’s lectures was an important opener for me. Through his lectures I became convinced that I should do Christian philosophy too, and I could do it without stepping outside the philosophical circle. My research later has confirmed and support this decision.

No doubt we don't come to philosophy with empty sheets; but assumptions and axioms can change, subject to evidence and argument, and that is surely the point of philosophy. Which seems to me anathema to Christianity, or any religion that demands adherence to a dogma.

Of course, this reply doesn't really answer my query; it rather re-states what puzzles me (and makes me wonder how he came to be a Christian):

Of course, my answers to philosophical questions were consistent with my religious beliefs, but I regarded this as irrelevant to my teaching and philosophical research at the university.

Why would anyone regard one's own beliefs as irrelevant to one's teaching and philosophical research? I do think that is odd. Of course one must endeavour to be even handed in philosophical teaching and research, but that doesn't mean one has no opinion; quite the opposite, I would say. A philosopher should state a position and defend it.

Professor Vaags founded the Institute of Christian Philosophy in 2008. In an interview on that website, he says this about Christian philosophy:

If we already have an idea of what philosophy is or should be, we could then say that Christian philosophy is a philosophy that is developed in harmony with a Christian interpretation of life or a Christian worldview. How a Christian interprets life is very much conditioned by the person who does the interpretation. However, certain things are central beliefs within the Christian faith, as for example that God exists, that God is a Trinity, that Jesus raised from the dead and that we are saved through our faith in Jesus Christ. Variations related to this type of beliefs are relatively small.

So it is those central beliefs that could be wrong, by Professor Vaags own admission, if he is doing philosophy correctly. To be fair, in his letter to me he says:

I still make a distinction between religious faith and philosophy, because I am open to the possibility of regarding Christian philosophy as a bad philosophical project – even if Christianity is true. We cannot reduce Christianity to philosophy. The difference is that I am now doing Christian philosophy as a professional philosopher. That means Christian philosophy has to play by the rules of philosophy, and only those. 

I'm not exactly sure what that first sentence means; he's open to Christian philosophy being a bad philosophical project 'even if Christianity is true'? Christian philosophy seems descriptive in the sense that naturalist philosophy is descriptive of philosophy informed by naturalism, but one can be a naturalist and entirely open to naturalism being false in a way that a Christian is not open to Christianity being false. In that sense, this term 'Christian philosophy' is oxymoronic.

He has plainly had some pushback from colleagues (and maybe students?); again from the interview:

Q. But isn’t this to mix philosophy and religion – more specifically Christianity? How can one combine a Christian faith with philosophy? I thought that philosophy is about reason, not about faith...A. There are some who see a problem here. There is skepticism among my philosophy colleagues. Several significant philosophers, however, see it differently. There are of course challenges, as it is for any philosophy or interpretation of life, but this is not something special for a Christian philosophy. 

Hmm. Returning to WLC's newsletter, Craig says:

Can you imagine the impact that [offering the Christian perspective] will have on the future of the university environment in Norway?

I would be surprised if it has much effect. For centuries philosophers and scientists have studied and taught from the Christian perspective, and all that has happened is that naturalism has become a more prominent position amongst those who think deeply about the world. It's a fair criticism of enquiry that what it uncovers is tainted by pre-existing beliefs, but that criticism cannot be levelled against the evidence that supports views that are counter to the prevailing view. That Christians have searched for centuries for evidence to support their view, but failed, doesn't make Christianity false, but it certainly counts against it. That the evidence disproves Christian beliefs is surely the final nail in the coffin, or stone in the tomb entrance.

Thanks again to Professor Vaags for taking the time to respond.

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The Jesus Process

Following on from my previous post, and spawned by the recent furore over Bart Ehrman's attack on mythicism in Did Jesus Exist?, R Joseph Hoffmann has now posted three essays in what he calls 'The Jesus Process'. As a complete ignoramus on this subject (apart from reading Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus), I think this could provide some excellent resources. I've only skimmed them, but these are my initial observations.

The first essay, by Maurice Casey, is an attack on the internet mythicist phenomenon. Quoting Earl Doherty, he says:

The primary purpose of both site and book [Jesus: Neither God Nor Man] was to reach the open-minded ‘lay’ audience…[2]

This is as inaccurate as possible. The internet audience is ‘lay’, but it is not open-minded. It has both ‘Christian apologists’, whom mythicists love to hate, and atheists who are determinedly anti-Christian. Both groups consist largely of people with closed minds who are impervious to evidence and argument, a quite different world from the critical scholars among whom I am happy to have spent most of my life, whether they were Christian, Jewish or irreligious. We were not concerned by ‘peer pressure’ or the ‘constraints of academic tenure’, except that we were united by an absolute determination to oppose any threat to the academic freedom of people in our universities, regardless of status, colour, race, religion or creed.

Not a very auspicious start. This is an error of fact and judgement. Casey is foolish and plain wrong to label the 'internet audience' as closed-minded. Plainly many surfers are, but he would have some difficulty demonstrating that each and every surfer is not open-minded (are none of them members of the academy he lauds?), or that the 'internet audience' is some homogeneous whole that acts in a closed-minded way. So, a false and unsubstantiated statement, which is a shame. Perhaps he considers that most people are not open-minded, which may be true, depending on his definition of open-minded, in which case he could have moderated this claim by saying much of the internet audience is not open-minded, as far as it reflects the population at large, which would be easier to defend, and not obviously wrong.

He goes on to discuss the claims of Doherty, Dorothy Murdock, Tom Harpur, bloggers Neil Godfrey and Steven Carr, and Robert M.Price. Here I'm hoping he is on more solid ground, since it's his area of expertise. The essay appears to be well referenced, and I look forward to a discussion of the points he raises. Given his background, I take his criticisms seriously, so I'm bound to take his opinion on this difficult subject seriously too. As a layman, I would need to be given some extremely good reasons to disagree with his understanding of the consensus view of critical scholarship. I hope his reasoning is not infected by the sort of intolerant attitude to dissent shown by his initial outburst against the 'internet audience'. Needless to say, such obvious errors of fact and judgement do sway the reader's opinion of a piece.

Hoffmann himself has written an essay on 'the road' to an historical Jesus, countering mythicist claims:

The following remarks are designed as a kind of summary of what we know for certain about the conditions and the process through which historical tradition emerged. It is a preface of sorts to a more ambitious project on the myth theory itself and what we can reliably know–if anything—about the historical Jesus.

This looks closest to the sort of thing that will help a know-nothing like me to understand the process scholars have used to conclude that, yes, there is an historical Jesus. It appears well referenced and methodical, and Hoffmann eschews the intemperate language that characterises his wrong-headed attacks on new atheism. I look forward to reading up on his references and reading some of the background scholarship. Although he plainly disagrees (now, but not before?) with mythicists, I hope this is something that they can treat as a useful rebuttal. Maybe this is closer to the book that Carrier thought Ehrman was going to write? Hoffmann says towards the end:

And this brings me back to the starting point.  They [the gospels] preserve something, and I believe it is historical memory as well.  They might have gone off in all directions. The apocryphal Jesus story does just this, with tales of ascents into heaven, a divine brat who slays his playmates, and a revealer who descends to hell and puts demons in irons.[135] That is pure legend.  It “flies off in all directions.”  The Gnostic gospels do it too.  But the canonical gospels do not.  If a contrived mythology is the sufficient explanation of these literary artifacts, it is the job of the myth theorists to explain why they are such poor examples of the mythic tradition—not why they tell the tale of a man who ascends triumphantly into heaven, in some late accounts, like Romulus in the famous apotheosis of Livy–but why they begin with someone who bothered to touch the ground at all.

Why do the canonical gospels begin with a man who is far from divine? If this is true, then he makes a good point. If the purpose of the gospel writers was to tell the story of a divine visitation, they would start with those details. That they start with a more mundane story suggests the story of an 'ordinary' man is their message. However, I'm not sure how he was unaware of this in 1996, when he wrote, apparently sceptical of an historic Jesus:

...Why is the core historical episode of the gospel tradition, the story of Jesus's death on the cross, completely lacking in convincing historical detail, being rather a liturgical drama built up from the psalms and prophetic texts?...

And I'm still not sure how scholars know that a narrative is documentary and not fiction; much modern day story-telling deals with fictional characters who do not behave supernaturally, so presumably they did too 2000 years ago? Nonetheless, I'm grateful that he has given us, the non-paying public, the benefit of his many years of scholarship. This would be impossible in pre-Internet years, Professor Casey should note! I will invest in a Hoffmann book, as a form of thanks.

The third essay, by Stephanie Fisher, a pupil of Casey's, appears to be a critique of Richard Carrier's Bayes Theorem approach to Jesus historicity. Carrier is referred to as 'atheist blogger Richard Carrier' twice in the first couple of paragraphs, which seems to be an attempt to denigrate Carrier's standing, and is an unnecessary flourish, if so. Carrier is a published historian, which is more than one can say of Fisher at the time of writing, however flawed his arguments may or may not be. The essay also seems imbued with too much snark; odd from a protege of a man who seems to be forever railing against the the snark of the new atheists. The use of 'Dickery' in the title is calculated to insult Carrier, and, as such, is unnecessary; a scholarly approach would pay more dividends, I think. She starts:

Most analysts would say that Bayes’ theorem is not in the least amenable to complex and composite historical texts. 

I hope she supports this with a reference (none at the initial assertion); prima facie it seems an unlikely claim, but I'm no expert on Bayes, or history! So maybe she's right, and she's supported her case below. She goes on:

Bayes theorem was devised to ascertain mathematical probability. It is completely inappropriate for, and unrelated to historical occurrence and therefore irrelevant for application to historical texts. 

I'm not sure about the grammar here, but that Bayes is 'completely inappropriate for, and unrelated to[,?] historical occurrence' is quite an assertion, and needs to be backed up by evidence and argument below. After all, Carrier has written a whole book to support his view.

Carrier doesn’t have a structured method of application, but worse, he is dealing with mixed material, some of which is primary, much of which is secondary, legendary, myth mixed accretion. He has no method, and offers none,  of distinguishing the difference and this renders his argument a complete muddle. Effectively in the end, he can conveniently dispose of inconvenient tradition, with a regrettable illusion that Bayes provides a veneer of scientific certainty to prior conclusions he is determined to ‘prove unarguable’.

This gets closer to some substance; Carrier has a problem with method, apparently, in particular with how to deal with mixed, primary and secondary, material. Here some examples are required to explain how Carrier's proposal lacks method, and how his approach would cause problems with primary and secondary material. Hopefully Fisher supports this, and her other objections to Carrier, in the body of her essay, which I look forward to reading in detail in the coming days.

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Hoffmann on Jesus's Existence

R. Joseph Hoffmann appears to exemplify the old philosophical problem of identity; am I the same person who went to Primary School, then Grammar School, and college, and passed those professional exams? Who married the wife? Is the wife the same person I married? Of course we change, but how sensible is it to call that younger person me?

Hoffmann's views appear to have changed on the thorny subject of the existence of Jesus to a remarkable extent. Here's what he said in the foreword to G.A. Wells book, The Jesus Mystery, back in 1996:

It is no longer possible to dismiss the thesis that Jesus never existed as the “marginal indiscretion of lay amateurs” (to paraphrase a sentence once imposed on Matthew Arnold’s biblical criticism by his theological critics). The direction of biblical criticism since Albert Schweitzer's day has circled back with dizzying regularity to the implied question of Jesus's existence but has sought without success to answer it.

And here he is 16 long years of scholarship later:

For those of you not paying attention, the New Atheism has a new postulate:  Not only does God not exist but Jesus didn’t exist either.  It is a theory that zips past Planet America every fifty years or so, like a comet, then fades away until a new generation of nutters tries to resuscitate it.

Every fifty years or so? Surely shome mishtake? He presumably means every 16 years or so, although it's odd that he would see fit to write a foreword for one of the 'nutters' 16 years ago. Although he doesn't describe Wells as a nutter in the foreword, as far as I can see, but I may have missed it! 16 years ago, the implied question of Jesus's existence had circled back with 'dizzying regularity', but now it zips past every 50 years or so.

To be fair, the foreword proceeds and gives an outline of mythicism arising from Schweitzer's work (although he says that Schweitzer argued against the Jesus of 'nineteenth century Protestantism' rather than Jesus himself), which he plainly sees as naive and misguided for the most part, and then an outline of the historicist response during the twentieth century:

The quest [for the historical Jesus] goes on with something close to the fervour of scientific discovery. At the risk of provoking controversy, it goes on mainly in Christian circles and among Christian theologians. The Jesus of 'history' has always been obscure to Jewish scholars whose enforced involvement in discussions of Jesus's stature is largely the result of the triumph of imperial Christianity in the fourth century, by which time no clear record of Jesus existed except that foisted on Jewish scholars by Christian teachers.

Quite a sceptical comment on the historical Jesus. He calls Wells "the most articulate contemporary defender of the non-historicity thesis" and then asks some questions that need to be answered 'at this juncture in Jesus research':

Why is Paul utterly silent about the historical Jesus?...Why is the core historical episode of the gospel tradition, the story of Jesus's death on the cross, completely lacking in convincing historical detail, being rather a liturgical drama built up from the psalms and prophetic texts? What role can the recovery and analysis of 'Q' (the hypothetical sayings source) play in deciding the matter of historicity? 

In the debate between Ehrman and Carrier, on which Hoffmann appears to side with Ehrman, these questions from Hoffmann sit better on the Carrier side.

Now, to be fair again, these questions may well have been answered in the intervening years to Hoffmann's satisfaction. Note, however, that they did not appear to be at the time of this broadcast in 2007, when Hoffmann said "I happen to believe that Jesus of Nazareth did not exist". Note that him saying 'Jesus of Nazareth' did not exist is not necessarily the same as denying an historical Jesus, however; 'Jesus of Nazareth' may be code for 'the Jesus of nineteenth century Protestantism', per Schweitzer, for example. We are back to the problem of identity. However, the blurb for the show says:

The goal of The Jesus Project, according to Dr. Hoffmann, is not to “prove” the non-existence of Jesus, but to take the theory as a “testable hypothesis” and use the best methods of critical inquiry to reach a probable conclusion.

...which does not suggest that a mythicist hypothesis is automatically nutty, and also suggests that he is at least sympathetic to the possibility, and maybe does not think that its proponents are 'nutters'. Which makes the quote at the top all the more puzzling in its intemperance. Rather hilariously Hoffmann says about Wells, presciently:

The arguments against it [Wells's mythicist thesis] have ranged from ad hominem attacks on his qualifications...to the familiar and often unargued proposition that the non-historicity of Jesus makes the rise of Christianity and the writing of the gospels all but impossible to explain.

Not dissimilar barbs have been flung at Carrier, too.

Whatever his thought processes are, it's good to see that he has launched something called the Jesus Process, which might throw some light on this fascinating, if infuriatingly distant, story.

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Do Catholics want their Children to Grow up Bigots?

I ask because that is what the Catholic Church want, and I don't believe any of my Catholic friends would agree with them.

Cardinal Vincent Nicholls has sent a letter to parishioners urging them to oppose gay marriage:

We have a duty to married people today, and to those who come after us, to do all we can to ensure that the true meaning of marriage is not lost for future generations.

The 'true meaning'? Well, according to Catholics:

The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, by its nature is ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring...

So because someone once, in a far off age, wrote down that marriage is between a man and a woman, for the procreation of children, so it has to be for ever, regardless of facts and changes in mores. This sort of brutish intransigence is a perfect demonstration of the evil of religion.

And now they want to infect children with the same despicable bigotry; the Catholic Education Service has sent this letter to all Catholic secondary schools, where it has been read out in assembly in at least one school, and the pupils urged to sign a petition against gay marriage.

This is the reality of faith schools, as Andrew Copson highlights in today's Guardian:

But, with the evidence mounting, the government should be investigating not just the incidents of the last fortnight, but also the whole principle of allowing such discrimination within our state education system at all.

I cannot stop grown-ups from being bigots (and believe me, I've tried!) but faith schools deliver in-built discrimination to our children, by definition, even before we consider the bizarre and irrational tenets that can infect each individual faith. Discrimination should not be state-funded, if we want a society which values equality for all.

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Dawkins's Ultimate 747 Gambit

This argument, from p. 187 in my Kindle edition of The God Delusion (I lost my print copy, lending it to light fingered theists!) is commonly cited by philosophers and theists as particularly poor, and it certainly doesn't stand up as a syllogism:

1. One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect, over the centuries, has been to explain how the complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises.
2. The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself. In the case of a man-made artefact such as a watch, the designer really was an intelligent engineer. It is tempting to apply the same logic to an eye or a wing, a spider or a person.
3. The temptation is a false one, because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer. The whole problem we started out with was the problem of explaining statistical improbability. It is obviously no solution to postulate something even more improbable. We need a ‘crane’, not a ‘skyhook’, for only a crane can do the business of working up gradually and plausibly from simplicity to otherwise improbable complexity.
4. The most ingenious and powerful crane so far discovered is Darwinian evolution by natural selection. Darwin and his successors have shown how living creatures, with their spectacular statistical improbability and appearance of design, have evolved by slow, gradual degrees from simple beginnings. We can now safely say that the illusion of design in living creatures is just that – an illusion.
5. We don’t yet have an equivalent crane for physics. Some kind of multiverse theory could in principle do for physics the same explanatory work as Darwinism does for biology. This kind of explanation is superficially less satisfying than the biological version of Darwinism, because it makes heavier demands on luck. But the anthropic principle entitles us to postulate far more luck than our limited human intuition is comfortable with.
6. We should not give up hope of a better crane arising in physics, something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology. But even in the absence of a strongly satisfying crane to match the biological one, the relatively weak cranes we have at present are, when abetted by the anthropic principle, self-evidently better than the self-defeating skyhook hypothesis of an intelligent designer... 

...God almost certainly doesn't exist. 

It's plainly not the sort of argument a philosopher would want to put up, but Dawkins is not writing for that audience. He's not writing another Miracle of Theism. He's addressing the ordinary person and telling us why he thinks a god is improbable. To that extent, it's always seemed fine to me. I want to explain why it has always seemed fine to me. This doesn't mean, of course, that this is what Dawkins meant, or that the concepts I discuss are entirely accurate (I'm bound to be wrong about many people's god concept, for example). It's an explanation for why it has appealed to me, to perhaps explain why it appeals to others.

Points 1 and 2 summarise how many people approach the 'god explanation'. Point 3 borrows from Daniel Dennett, and asserts that the traditional mind-first view is a problem (Dawkins makes a hidden assumption here). Points 4 to 6 explain that the evidence shows that it is false (given his hidden assumption). I think he's right on his own terms, but theists and atheists often argue past each other on this. Even many atheists get the wrong end of the stick; I think, perhaps, because they are so familiar with more sophisticated god concepts. Here, Common Sense Atheism fails to see the problem, because of the god concept they address. They use philosopher Erik Wielenberg's redrawn argument as the basis for a re-appraisal. Wielenberg's piece is right on its own terms too; it's just not how I interpreted Dawkins's words. Despite Dawkins describing the above as his 'central argument', I don't see Dawkins proposing an argument; I see him refuting an argument.

He starts the chapter by referring to Fred Hoyle's Boeing 747 argument for God:

Hoyle said that the probability of life originating on Earth is no greater than the chance that a hurricane, sweeping through a scrapyard, would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747. Others have borrowed the metaphor to refer to the later evolution of complex living bodies, where it has a spurious plausibility.

This is the common refrain (and one I used to express): if there's no God, then how likely is all this around us? And just before that, Dawkins says:

The argument from improbability, properly deployed, comes close to proving that God does not exist. 

So, the way I've always read it, Dawkins is trying to refute an argument for theism that goes something like this:

P1 There are complex things.
P2 The existence of complex things is unlikely without ultimately a mind to explain them.
[P3 Minds are complex.]
C Therefore an ultimate mind [the most complex?] exists, and this is God.

But, Dawkins says, since your god is a complex thing, it is therefore most unlikely without another mind to explain it, per P2, so the argument is self-defeating, and invalid. Spot on, I say. This doesn't need any argument for more complex explanations, per Wielenberg; it just needs a complex explanation. This argument was basically how I thought when I believed, and, to be honest, that's what everyone I knew who believed thought too, as far as I could tell! But it doesn't work. I've bracketed P3 because this is generally a hidden assumption, and, I think, is where atheists and perhaps many 'everyday' theists differ from theists who have realised this argument is hopeless.

So, many theists have thought about this some more and deny that this is the argument; they posit something more like this:

P1 There are complex things.
P2 The existence of complex things is unlikely without ultimately a mind to explain them.
[P3 Minds are simple.]
C Therefore an ultimate mind [the most simple?] exists, and this is God.

Now the argument is valid, I think, and Dawkins’s improbability objection doesn’t apply, because the god isn't a complex thing. P2 doesn't apply to it.

For theists, P2 is supported by many arguments, such as Aquinas’s five ways, Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason, Paley's teleological argument, and so on. P3 seems to be intuited from the supposed immateriality of thoughts. Minds don't have extension in space, per Descartes, for example, so don't have parts, so are simple. For atheists, obviously, these arguments don't convince.

Furthermore, for atheists, Hume’s arguments for the preferment of natural explanations, evolution by natural selection showing the direction of development from simple organisms without minds to more complex organisms with minds, and physics also showing a move from low entropy to high, and simple universe origins, all militate against P2; and the incoherence of dualism in the light of the evidence shows P3 to be false. And this is what Dawkins is referring to in points 4 to 6, I think. So, that argument, with a different hidden assumption, isn't sound.

In the end, I think Dawkins addresses an intuitive argument for god adopted by many that is invalid. Certainly, many theists don't adopt that intuitive argument, but a revised valid argument many do adopt is not sound, because our exploration of reality shows that its premises are unlikely to be true. Dawkins fails to pull out these different assumptions, but nevertheless brings forward points that fatally damage both arguments. I think many readers see what he means, and the book's popularity certainly supports that thought.

Since these are the arguments I see Dawkins refuting in this section, it follows that other arguments that theists may want to posit need to be countered differently, so I think when he says that 'The argument... comes close to proving that God does not exist', I think he's stretching. Nevertheless, I think it's reasonable to say that the first argument, above, if taken by a theist as reason for believing, is in fact a good reason for not believing.

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The Point of Free Will

I've been enjoying (or is it suffering?) another round of free will posts. Sam Harris and Jerry Coyne state the obvious, that contra-causal free will does not exist, and so conclude, contra compatibilists like Daniel Dennett, that free will does not exist. This is not entirely unreasonable, since free will is commonly considered to mean contra-causal free will. And maybe they're right, that it should be held to that definition; for philosophers to amend free will to some other thing allows theologians the get-out of pointing to many respected philos who believe in a free will that has nothing to do with their bankrupt theological concept of free will.

But I'm really not that fussed about the use of the term. I've previously discussed how contra causal free will makes little sense whether determinism is true or false. But rather than rescuing free will, I do think it's worth rescuing the point of free will; or why responsibility is worth laying.

In another piece Coyne says this:

I still see myself as a meat robot, and I don’t accept free will as meaning “I could have done something different had circumstances been different.” For in that sense computers and nearly all living organisms also have “free will”.

This strikes me as a slightly strange thing to say; the first part seems to contradict the second, since if he's a 'meat robot' then obviously robots too can have free will, and we surely treat many living organisms as if they too have free will. I treat my cats as if they have causal influence over their own behaviour, for example. And there's a sense in which Coyne is suggesting some kind of human exceptionalism; if we allow free will then I see no reason to deny it to computers and living organisms a priori. 

I suppose he means something more, that any computer or any living organism would have free will under the definition offered - it's too liberal. But I think this gives a clue to the point of free will; if a computer or living organism is sufficiently complex that it can change its behaviour because it has an internal guiding mechanism that responds in a certain way to external prompts, then we have a reason to talk about the machine having something like 'free will'. We aren't puppeteers in these circumstances, but nudge button operators.

What difference does this make? If we want to affect our futures, and I assume we all do, we need to differentiate between objects that can be remonstrated with and those that can't. Now, although I do remonstrate with my computer, I understand it's pointless: I could change how it operates, but it could not reflect on its actions. However, a more complicated computer, like Marvin, might be worth remonstrating with, if it has an internal guidance and reflection system open to external prompts and information. Similarly, experience shows that my cat is worth remonstrating with too, even if it's less effective than with fellow humans; she doesn't have all the tools or understanding available to most humans. But notice, there are humans who also can't be remonstrated with, so membership of homo sapiens does not determine who is in this group.

In another Coyne piece, in response to some issues that Russell Blackford raises, he says this:

When Russell says “I could, indeed, have chosen to do otherwise,” he seems to mean only, “had I been somebody other than Russell Blackford at that moment, I might have done otherwise.” And in what sense is that free will? It’s one thing for people to chastise somebody for making a “bad choice” (an emotion that feels natural but is at bottom irrational), but it’s a different thing to think that somebody actually can act in different ways at a single time.

To me, this highlights the very point of free will; to identify the nature of particular agencies, so we can take an appropriate course of action in the light of that nature. I don't think Russell, or anyone, would have behaved differently under the same circumstances (that would just make us randomly-acting beings) - but the difference between how Russell behaves and how another person behaves under the same circumstances reflects a freedom to act differently which is open to all agencies. So we can then apply a 'blame' in proportion to the 'culpability' of each agency going back in the causal chain. I use scare quotes to recognise that the agencies weren't 'free' from their own causal determinism, but we can now usefully employ this information to address any problems caused, or reward any benefits resulting, in the knowledge that the responsibility reflects an agency's ability to self-regulate. We wouldn't allocate moral responsibility to the snow in deadly avalanches, but we might to folk who detonate charges setting off deadly avalanches, because the former has no agency that would respond to remonstration, but the latter has. And such allocation would actually require determinism, or, at least, if there are any indeterminate events, these would be irrelevant to any such moral calculation.

So, in summary, I'm happy to jettison free will; I'm just not so happy to jettison the point of free will, if this is what it is. It does appear that Sam Harris, at least, agrees:

...I argue that people are mistaken in believing that they are free in the usual sense. I claim that this realization has consequences—good ones, for the most part—and for that reason we should not gloss over it by revising our definition of “free will” too quickly. Dan believes that his adjustment of the concept has allowed him to provide a description of human agency and moral responsibility that preserves many of our intuitions about ourselves and still fits the facts. I agree, for the most part, but I think that other problems need to be solved.

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