Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Here’s the Real Message Behind This Week’s Sunday Book Review



Tired of the New Atheists, and the old atheists as well? Delighted to see the likes of Philip Kitcher taking them down in this week’s Sunday Book Review? Philosophers Kitcher and David Albert reviewed books by atheists Alex Rosenberg and Lawrence Krauss in an exercise that was more like shooting fish in a barrel than any kind of literary review. But wait a minute, what is Philip Kitcher—who once wrote that evolution illuminates “a wealth of biological details” and whose book was endorsed by arch evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould—doing tossing Molotov cocktails into the atheist camp? Isn’t evolution just atheism in disguise? Kitcher’s and Albert’s reviews are another example of what is the fundamental name-of-the-game, and most people will continue not to get it.

Atheists such as Rosenberg and Krauss make for great targets, but the question that Kitcher and Albert did not ask is “why?” Why do otherwise very intelligent thinkers present such silly ideas? These atheists make bogus, anti-intellectual moves and, sure, that ought to be exposed.

But far more interesting and important is the question of how anyone, let alone very intelligent people, make such moves in the first place. If you see Michael Jordan pass the ball to the wrong team, score at their goal, and so forth, you don’t point out the mistakes and laugh. You wonder what in the world could be going on. In the case of the atheists (old and new), the answer is not that complicated.

All manner of theologians, philosophers and scientists have been explaining and insisting, for centuries, that the world arose by law, not miracle. Anglicans, Lutherans, Roman Catholics and others have agreed that God did not intervene to create the world. For everyone knows that a greater god works according to secondary causes. Miracles make for a capricious creator and, in any case, we must not make god out to be like a man. Furthermore the world is obviously not designed, for its patterns reveal no designer behind the design. Even more importantly, the world is far too inefficient and evil to have been intended. And in any case, science would be impossible if the world did not operation according to natural laws.

These and other arguments have been forcefully advanced since the Enlightenment, and is it really such a surprise that, having been handed the news that the divine is as superfluous as Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover, a logical few would venture just one tiny step farther and conclude that, gee, maybe we can say more than just that the divine isn’t necessary. Maybe this divine just isn’t, period.

Could it be that this god is dead? He is invisible and doesn’t do anything. Is not atheism practically a necessary consequence?

What the religious skeptics, from Hume and Huxley to Dawkins and Krauss, have done for the rest of us is to perform a rather reasonable reductio ad absurdum on evolutionary thought. But as we know from centuries of history, the smart money won’t go there.

It reminds me of Lieutenant Thomas Keefer (Fred MacMurray) in The Caine Mutiny, who encouraged the mutineers, only then to shift back into the shadows to maintain plausible deniability when the judgment came. Or of Captain Renault (Claude Rains) in Casablanca, who was “shocked, shocked” to find gambling going on in the casino. Or of Peter Townsend’s lyric, “And the men who spurred us on; Sit in judgment of all wrong.”

Where were the Kitcher’s and Albert’s of the world when Leibniz, Ray and Burnet imposed their religion on science? Where were they when Darwin made his silly metaphysical mandates that the species just happen to arise on their own? Where were they when Gould, Coyne, Miller and Haught continued the tradition of theology telling science what the right answer is, and the supplied right answer is a polite version of sheer absurdity? They were nowhere to be found, of course.

You see the smart money knows not to go against the flow or make rash statements. It takes advantage of those low-risk, high-payoff opportunities as they arise, like criticizing the dumb-money atheists.

The evolution debate is not about atheism. It never was. Atheism is the unwanted black sheep of the family. What’s important in the evolution debate is the men who spurred them on. For atheism doesn’t come from, well, atheism. It comes from, as historian Alan Charles Kors found out, religion:

[My] inquiry led not to a prior history of free thought, most of which culminated in deeply theistic deisms or in antiphilosophical skepticisms, but to the orthodox culture of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in France. It was, above all, within the deeply Christian learned culture of those years that there occurred inquiries and debates that generated the components of atheistic thought. It was, to say the least, not what I had expected; it indeed was what I found. … Before one can understand the heterodoxy of early-modern atheism, one first must understand the orthodox sources of disbelief. [Atheism in France, 1650–1729, Volume I: The Orthodox Sources of Disbelief, Princeton Univ Press, Princeton, NJ, 1990, p. 4.]

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

24 comments:

  1. Nice piece.

    One wonders why modern atheism arose. What are the motivations of the atheist camp? Why did a group of people who are seemingly overtly anti-religious create a religion of their own? Why all the hatred and animosity against the other religions, especially Christianity? What's in it for them? Is it all due to man's affinity to belong to a tribe? Is it gang mentality? I don't know. But there seems to be a strong inferiority complex at work somewhere because atheists never cease to point out their intellectual superiority. The insufferable pomposity of atheists is now legendary.

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  2. May be because the true God is a hidden God that allows man to avoid him?

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  3. So I'm an alien, visiting Earth for the first time and I'm curious about human religious beliefs.

    I note that there seem to be about 20 major religions although the total of all such groups, great and small, seems to run into the hundreds. They don't all believe the same things, though.

    A lot of them have their own creation stories as well but, again, they are not all the same.

    I note that, in the United States, evangelical Christians complain about religion being "driven from the public square" and being denied a role in government. Yet I have the strong impression that they are not arguing for the free speech rights of Hindus or that Muslims or even Mormons should have a greater role in government. What they really mean when they talk about religion in general is their own brand of Protestantism.

    From my study of recorded history I can see the religion has played an important - occasionally pivotal role in human culture and society. Yet the variety of such beliefs suggest it is not so much the individual theology that is important so much as that there is a faith shared by many which tends to bind them together into a cohesive and resilient whole.

    The question I would ask all believers is how would you persuade me that your particular faith is true and all the other are, therefore, false.

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    1. So I'm an alien, visiting Earth for the first time and I'm curious about human religious beliefs. I note that there seem to be about 20 major religions although the total of all such groups, great and small, seems to run into the hundreds. They don't all believe the same things, though. … The question I would ask all believers is how would you persuade me that your particular faith is true and all the other are, therefore, false.

      Good question. I assume that, qua alien, you would have a certain degree of objectivity. So you aren’t attached to any one of these particular religions. I like the thought experiment because it highlights the difference between an objective position and your own, personal, position qua evolutionist. The alien would observe that one of those 20 major religions has had a strongly anti-realism influence on science, and it has mandated the faulty theory of evolution.

      Therefore, qua evolutionist, it might be difficult for you to genuinely engage in this thought experiment. In fact, I’ve never seen an evolutionist pull it off. So I suspect your thought experiment does not accurately represent your situation. It may be like a person who is secretly a Yankees fan, but pretends to have no allegiances, asking baseball fans to justify their favorite team, when all the while, in your heart you already have made your commitments.

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  4. CH: I like the thought experiment because it highlights the difference between an objective position and your own, personal, position qua evolutionist.

    Being unattached to any of these particular religions, we're left without an explanation as to why a designer would have designed the particular biosphere we observe. As such, said designer becomes a mere possibility.

    As such, we discard this designer, along with the near infinite number of mere possibilities we discard every day, in every field of science.

    CH: It may be like a person who is secretly a Yankees fan, but pretends to have no allegiances, asking baseball fans to justify their favorite team, when all the while, in your heart you already have made your commitments.

    And the Bible says every man is without excuse, as he knows the truth, but willfully rejects in. There is a cosmic battle of good and evil raging right now, and everyone must choose sides, even if they do not realize it or not.

    "in [our] heart [we] already have made [our] commitments."

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  5. "As such, we discard this designer, along with the near infinite number of mere possibilities we discard every day, in every field of science. "

    As good evolutionist you already got the answer before run the experiment.
    Good science!

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  6. We explain our relatively recent, rapid increase in the creation of knowledge in that we use good explanations as a criteria for which possibilities we test. So, yes, this is good science.

    Again, we do this every day with a near infinite number of mere possibilities, in every field of science. So, why should your designer should be any different? Because your preferred holy book said a designer did it?

    In other words, If we supposedly cannot conceive of how the designer did it, then it's unclear how we can devise an experiment to test it anymore than we could devise an experiment to test an un-conceived explanation.

    For example, imagine someone claimed a box traveled across the US because "a traveler did it". When we ask what means the traveler used, how the travel knew how to travel, etc. they merely say that's what travelers do, they travel.

    How could we devise an experiment to test if the box traveled across the US because an abstract traveler did it?

    Again, to whatever degree you actually explain how the traveler did it, you merely have unseen events, rather than the supernatural. And only the supernatural is worth worshiping.

    So, no explanation will be forthcoming in the case of ID proponent, as the designer is a stand in for whatever preferred supernatural being they happen to worship.

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  7. Scott said

    “We explain”

    We? Who?

    “our relatively recent, rapid increase in the creation of knowledge”

    What do you mean by “creation of knowledge”?

    “in that we use good explanations as a criteria for which possibilities we test.”

    And you already know what would be the answer of an allien? And you know that that answer is not interesting, it will not “create knowledge”? Whatever you understand by that expression.

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  8. Blas: We? Who?

    Those who actually attempt to explain our recent, rapid increase in knowledge.

    What's your explanation? I don't think you have one. As such, you're not in included when I use the term "we".

    Blas: What do you mean by “creation of knowledge”?

    Our ability to make progress. Why did it start to accelerate after the enlightenment, then continue to accelerate even more as we continue to refine how we solve problems?

    Blas: And you already know what would be the answer of an alien?

    The ability to create knowledge doesn't happen by accident. An alien race advanced enough to have created the knowledge necessary to travel great distances in space would also be advanced enough to have created an explanation for how that knowledge was created.

    In fact, they would have found errors in our best, current explanations, and improved them even further, just as Deutsch did with Popper's explanation in less than a century, etc.

    So, given what we know now, I'd expect them to also discard "designer did it" because it's a bad explanation. (If they had an explanation, such as they were the designers, that would be a different story)

    It's for this same reason that we shouldn't fear aliens that actually created the technology of how to reach us. They'd be more morally advanced than us since they would have more knowledge of how their actions effects others, themselves, etc.

    For example, most depictions of aliens in fiction are parochial, in that they fail to take into account how their understanding of problem solving would have to advance before they could actually create the knowledge they wield.

    In other words, they are depicted as people just like us, which just happened to have all this technology for some unexplained reason.

    This is the same sort of flaw in regards to conceptions of an all knowing and all powerful God, who is depicted as merely as a person who is like us but infinitely powerful, etc. Both are parochial and naive.

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    1. “What's your explanation? I don't think you have one. “

      I have one, we already discuss it, different from yours. We have different views of the history. And there are many more. As you know there are so many epistemologys as philosophies.

      “Our ability to make progress.”

      Again hidding behind words, progress of what?

      “Why did it start to accelerate after the enlightenment, then continue to accelerate even more as we continue to refine how we solve problems?”

      I know what you try to demostrate, but your history is different of mine, and in your camp there is not fulla agreement with you:

      Massimo Pigliucci:” developmental biologists had done a lot of highly fruitful research throughout the 19th and 20th centuries even as they ignored Darwin. And molecular biologists made spectacular progress from the 1950’s though the onset of the 21st century, again pretty much completing ignoring evolution. This is not to say that evolutionary theory doesn’t help in understanding developmental and molecular systems, but it is a stretch of the record to make claims such as those of Dobzhansky. (It would be like saying, for instance, that nothing makes sense in physics except in the light of quantum mechanics. Plenty of things in physics make perfect sense even as one brackets quantum mechanics and considers it a background theory.) “ http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com.br/2012/03/universal-darwinism-and-alleged.html

      “So, given what we know now, I'd expect them to also discard "designer did it" because it's a bad explanation. (If they had an explanation, such as they were the designers, that would be a different story)”

      Then really you do not know which will be their answer, also maybe they have a “controversy” like us, and his answer will change when they found us. So parrochial are you thinking that already know the answer.

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  9. Blas: I have one, we already discuss it, different from yours.

    A theistic understanding is not an explanation.

    Blas: We have different views of the history. And there are many more. As you know there are so many epistemologys as philosophies.

    Which was already addressed in the thought experiment. Having different views is not the same as persuading us that one is correct.

    Blas wrote: Again hidding behind words, progress of what?

    But then wrote; I know what you try to demostrate, but your history is different of mine, and in your camp there is not fulla agreement with you:

    You do know? I thought you didn't know what I meant by progress?

    Blas Massimo Pigliucci:” developmental biologists had done a lot of highly fruitful research throughout the 19th and 20th centuries even as they ignored Darwin. And molecular biologists made spectacular progress from the 1950’s though the onset of the 21st century, again pretty much completing ignoring evolution.

    It seems you've spoken too soon. as you cannot see the forest for the trees.

    Again, why did our ability to make progress start to accelerate shortly after the enlightenment, then continue to accelerate even more as we continue to refine how we solve problems? Why do we make such rapid progress today?

    Here's a hint: saying "my history is different than your's" isn't an explanation.

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    1. “A theistic understanding is not an explanation.”

      For you, there are many theistic epistemologies.

      “Which was already addressed in the thought experiment. Having different views is not the same as persuading us that one is correct.”

      So mine and yours are both wrong.

      “You do know? I thought you didn't know what I meant by progress?”

      Off course not, that is why I´m asking. I would like to know what do you mean by progress and “create knowledge”

      “It seems you've spoken too soon. as you cannot see the forest for the trees.”

      Please remove the trees and let me see the forest.

      “Again, why did our ability to make progress start to accelerate shortly after the enlightenment, then continue to accelerate even more as we continue to refine how we solve problems? Why do we make such rapid progress today?”

      Science started in the middle ages, when the view that the universe was created by a rational God that give us the possibility to understand it. The progress of science is not linear, is logaritmic, because we build knowledge over knowledge. This process boosts with the improvement movements and the invention of the stamp in the Renaissence. Then gets another boost when the industrial revolution allowed to put more resources, human and materials, to work on science.

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    2. Blas: Science started in the middle ages, when the view that the universe was created by a rational God that give us the possibility to understand it.

      So, we make progress because, "That's just what God must have wanted", which is just what I expected.

      Blas: The progress of science is not linear, is logaritmic, because we build knowledge over knowledge. This process boosts with the improvement movements and the invention of the stamp in the Renaissence. Then gets another boost when the industrial revolution allowed to put more resources, human and materials, to work on science.

      And it turns out that way because, that's just how God wanted it to work, right? And no further explanation can be given because God is unexplainable.

      However, I'm saying there is more to it than that. And part of this explanation includes discarding mere possibilities and un-conceived explanations, as I've outlined above.

      As such, That's just what God must have wanted" is a bad explanation, which we discard.

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    3. "So, we make progress because, "That's just what God must have wanted", which is just what I expected. "

      As final cause, yes that the answer, but we look for secondary causes.


      "And no further explanation can be given because God is unexplainable."

      No that is the answer for the final cause, we look for secondary causes that are intelligible for us.


      "As such, That's just what God must have wanted" is a bad explanation,"

      Why it s a bad explanation?

      " which we discard."

      Interesting you discard the explanaton that led to start science.

      Can you explain why "Problem solving itself represents a form of problem"

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    4. Blas, are you suggesting explanations as to how we make progress cannot be criticized, found to contain errors and improved by discarding those errors?

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    5. No I am asking why "Problem solving itself represents a form of problem"?

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  10. It would seem Scott by your choice of words that you try to take or should i say fake or should I say tear ownership of science away from those by whom it is shared and place it in your courts. That makes you a robber a thief of sorts. Trying to steal credit and honor and glory that doesn't belong to you but more properly to others and take it away from them or deny them their right. That in addition makes you appear as dishonest and or unfamiliar with history and philosophy which would by default make you one who is ostensibly ignorant of science as a work of progress a child of many other disciplines.
    The history and philosophy of science gives a respect and sense of responsibility and even of continuity with the past and those of the past who were varied but many of which were Id theorists. Atheism and evolution do not have any rightful claim to science or its progress. Science is as Blas partly indicated a movement that gains momentum and builds exponentially upon further advances and discoveries made by careful dedicated people involved. But let us not think that everyone involved in humankind scientific endeavors is equally smart or knowledgeable and capable of speaking accurately about what they are only a small limited part of, in no way similar to great men of the past who had feet planted in two worlds and understood exactly what they were doing and what it meant and didn't mean. Which is why quotes from the past often sound much more elegant, humble, and learned than what comes from the dull minds of many of today's materialist science workers. But my main point is that materialist science workers are first of all only a part of science workers a even smaller part of sciences greatest moments in history and lastly most are just laborers not brilliant minds in the historical sense.

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  11. Michael,

    Again, I'm suggesting that problem solving isn't magic. Problem solving itself represents a form of problem to which our solutions can be criticized, resulting in errors being found and discarded.

    So, given our current explanation for how problem solving works, in reality,
    "That's just what God must have wanted" is a bad explanation.

    However, you seem to be suggesting that we make progress because "that's what God must have wanted." and this "solution" cannot criticized as is already known, exhaustively true, based on foundational aspect revealed in the past, etc.

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  12. That's not at all what I am saying. You should make sure to yourself that your not projecting and reading your own ideas into what I said and instead accurately read what I did say. If you re-read my post you will see that I wrote that the sciences are an endeavor of mankind and that obviously it keeps building up and has gained momentum seemingly exponentially by applying and focusing on previous discoveries. I don't see how you could even come close to reading what you say i am saying. Science comes from a long line of trial and errors in the history of thought it does not simply appear it is connected with mankinds quest for know how, plain curiosity and wonder . My point is that it comes from humble and unpretentious origins and is not to be regarded as anti religious or better than religion or as the possession of atheists because that is not where it came from.
    Regards.

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  13. Scott as to what you say about the problem solving method you are correct and stating something that is common knowledge. You then proceed to add a totally unnecessary and inaccurate idea to it make up of half baked and fuzzy notions about what it means to be a believer in God and how it relates to our human scientific enterprises.

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  14. Michael: If you re-read my post you will see that I wrote that the sciences are an endeavor of mankind and that obviously it keeps building up and has gained momentum seemingly exponentially by applying and focusing on previous discoveries.

    My question is simple: can this be criticized or not?

    For example, I'm suggesting this is a highly simplistic view. As such, it leaves out important details which would effect how we evaluate create scientific theories, the specific role empirical observations play, etc.

    Michael: My point is that it comes from humble and unpretentious origins and is not to be regarded as anti religious or better than religion or as the possession of atheists because that is not where it came from.

    And I'd suggest that you're ignoring specific theistic assumptions about the origin of knowledge. I don't think you're actually aware of their implications, given that your simplest view doesn't even seem to address knowledge creation, etc.

    Michael: Scott as to what you say about the problem solving method you are correct and stating something that is common knowledge.

    If it was common knowledge, then you'd understand why theism, which is justificationist in nature, would have an impact on explanations as to how we make progress.

    For example, do you think God "just was", complete with the knowledge of how to build the biosphere, already present? If not, then what is the origin of this knowledge? How was it created?

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  15. Scott
    Ill say it again go by what I say and have said not what you think or assume is the effect of any position I have on my thought processes. The important thing is role judge a argument on its merit not who says it. It seems to me touch have some sort of problem comprehending what is clear in front of you without for some reason reacting to some false caricature and faulty assumption that exist only in your mind. I will not respond any further to your pointless and inaccurate claims. Ill be content to allow others to judge between your comments and mine fully confidentt that truth is justified by its own.
    Regards.

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  16. Michael: Ill say it again go by what I say and have said not what you think or assume is the effect of any position I have on my thought processes.

    So, you refuse to answer the direct questions I've asked?

    Michael: The important thing is role judge a argument on its merit not who says it.

    But we need not stop there. I'm suggesting that "that's just what God must have wanted" is a bad explanation. And I'm suggesting this based on a more detailed explanation for how we create knowledge than you've presented.

    However, your objection seem to suggest that we must stop there, and further criticism cannot be made.

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