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August 22nd, 2012 at 1:15 am
I have some comments on Phil Torres’ opening statement. In particular, I want to comment on his working definition of “faith”.
If Phil’s intention in defining ‘faith’ was “to capture what most people mean most of the time by the lexical item ‘faith’”, then he would have been better served by referring to a dictionary rather than an encyclopaedia of philosophy. Being Australian, I prefer the Macquarie Dictionary, but Merriam-Webster will serve just as well. In short, the most common usage relates to trust or loyalty, the next most common relates to belief held in the absence of proof (especially, but not exclusively, belief in God or religious doctrines), and the third relates to the beliefs themselves as a system (e.g. “the Protestant faith”).
Beyond this, there are possible usages which do connote an absence or insufficiency of evidence. These are qualified usages, such as “on faith” (similar to “without question”, or “uncritically”), “leap of faith” (implying a drastic insufficiency of evidence), and “blind faith” (implying a complete lack of evidence). Faith in its normal, unqualified usage does not suggest a problematic lack of evidence, only a lack of certainty.
It should also be noted that faith does not necessarily eliminate uncertainty. The dictionary gives an example from The New York Times, 2004, which allows the coexistence of faith and doubt: “Faith without doubt leads to moral arrogance, the eternal pratfall of the religiously convinced.” Similarly, the primary theme of Hebrews 11 (of which Phil quotes only the first verse) is how faith leads not to certainty, but to action: the lengthy list of people who exhibited faith did so by their actions. This, to my mind, is the best way to distinguish between belief and faith: the former is mere intellectual assent to a proposition; the latter is a risk-taking activity which relies on the actual truth of that proposition for its success. To have faith in something is to put your money where your mouth is.
There is a consensus view that “faith” has an implication of “insufficient evidential justification”, or even “belief in the teeth of evidence”, but that consensus exists only among dogmatic atheists. Richard Dawkins is an obvious source of “in the teeth of evidence” comments, the original citation being his first book, The Selfish Gene, but it’s been a constant theme of his ever since. Similarly, Douglas Adams had a character called “the electric monk” in his lesser-known work, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, who was distinguished by his ability to believe things which contradicted even the most immediate of experiential evidence. Electric monks were supposed to be time-saving devices which practised one’s religion on one’s behalf, so this particular monk was a caricature of religious faith in general.
For a repudiation of this distorted view of faith, see Alister McGrath’s discussion of faith and evidence in his 2004 lecture, Has Science eliminated God? Note that McGrath holds doctorates in both Theology and Molecular Biophysics, both from Oxford, so he speaks with significant awareness of both science and religion.
Frankly, if Phil thinks that this distorted view of faith is the consensus view, then he needs to get out of the echo chamber more often.
August 22nd, 2012 at 2:05 pm
The focus of my previous comment was on ‘faith’ as a term of general usage (outside of new-atheist jargon, where it takes on a special meaning), and how that meaning entails evidence but also uncertainty. I’d now like to consider ‘faith’ from a more philosophical perspective, since there are valid questions relating to its epistemic status which go beyond dictionary definitions.
First, let us confirm that the encyclopaedic entry which Phil quotes is at least compatible with the dictionary definition, or else we will need to shift our frame of reference from “common usage” to “philosophical jargon”. Even if no incompatibilities are found, however, the analysis may highlight additional useful details.
The assertion that faith involves “some kind of venture” is compatible with the observation that faith involves acting on propositions which are less than certain (as seen in Hebrews 11, and the relationship between ‘faith’ and ‘trust’). Simple mental assent (belief without commitment to action) carries no inherent risk: it is only when the belief is acted upon (an act of faith) that risks are introduced, and only then to the extent that being wrong has relatively adverse consequences.
For example, one’s degree of belief about whether a set of wires is carrying a lethal voltage is of no consequence unless one risks touching the wires. Similarly, one might believe that a fireman is competent at carrying people down a ladder, yet lack the faith in him to submit to being carried in such a manner. The apparent discrepancy between belief and faith in this case is not necessarily evidence of inconsistency: it is, rather, an illustration of the difference between merely believing something, and exposing oneself to risk (“some kind of venture”) which hinges on the correctness of that belief.
The assertion that faith “involves accepting what cannot be established as true” is compatible with the observation that faith entails a lack of proof. Things which can be established as true, either with metaphysical certainty (such as the logical tautology “all A is A“) or with undeniable force of evidence (such as the fact that I see a computer screen in front of me), are not subjects of faith. Clearly there is some room for argument about what can actually be “established as true”, but it suffices to note for now that this condition does not pose any immediate problem for our working definition of ‘faith’.
The suggestion that “reasonable faith arguably needs to conform to evidentialism” is not an immediate problem, because faith is based on evidence, although not conclusive evidence. The requirement “to hold propositions to be true only to the extent justified on one’s available evidence” has implications for faith, but one must bear in mind the distinction between faith and mere belief. Holding a proposition to be true with some degree of confidence is mere belief. The rationality of faith is a product of that degree of confidence and the consequences of two possible outcomes (“being right” and “being wrong”) in the context of an action. Degrees of confidence thus contribute to the rationality of faith, but do not determine (or even dominate) it: it can be quite rational to act on a weakly-held belief if the risk/reward ratio justifies it.
Given this analysis, I can see no reason to depart from our dictionary-based understanding of faith, nor any reason to dismiss it as inherently or categorically irrational. On the other hand, there is certainly a question as to whether particular acts of faith are contrary to reason or not, and this is why particular acts of faith are subject to rational scrutiny and arguments in their defence.
Such analysis must be careful to distinguish between the actions one takes on the basis of belief, and the beliefs themselves. This is partly because the term ‘faith’ can ambiguously apply to either of these concepts, but also because a proposition with little evidence (and thus little basis for belief) can still be a rational basis for action. Conversely, just because an action relies on a certain proposition being true, it does not mean that the person taking the action must be highly confident that the proposition is true.
Where faith is concerned — even in the dry, impersonal, philosophical sense — the degree of confidence provided by the evidence is only half the story.
August 23rd, 2012 at 1:10 pm
Tom and Phil have now both posted for the second time. Phil is still insisting that faith is, by widely-held definition (among philosophers), unreasonable because it is belief which exceeds its valid grounds in evidence. Having considered the encyclopaedic entry which he cites in support of that position, I think his assertion is too strong: I have already given an argument in support of my account of ‘faith’ being compatible with that description.
Even so, I think the time has come for the debaters to cease quibbling over terms. Phil insists on using ‘faith’ in a sense which more or less establishes his argument by definition; Tom, for obvious reasons, does not wish to be held to that definition. The consequent dispute over terms is pedantic and tedious. If Phil’s key concern is Epistemology and the justification or warrant for belief, then let us speak simply in terms of ‘belief’ and its grounds. It is not necessary to introduce ‘faith’ as a species of belief which lacks appropriate justification — on the contrary, it is a counter-productive term because it is both prejudicial (asserting that which ought to be demonstrated) and ambiguous (thus likely to introduce errors of equivocation).
For my own purposes, therefore, I will cease to discuss ‘faith’, and merely discuss ‘belief’ instead. I suggest that Tom and Phil do likewise. They can take or leave that advice, of course. The interesting part of the debate then becomes one of evidence, and whether we can formulate universal standards of evidence which comport with our intuitions as to what is reasonable. There is also an interesting question as to what kind of thing can constitute a belief: Phil has asserted that ‘trust’ is non-propositional in nature, but Tom has responded along the lines that ‘trust’ can be described propositionally. Interesting though that is, let’s not allow it to be a continuation of the ‘faith’ pedantry in another guise.
Before dispensing entirely with ‘faith’, I want to consider the quotation from Immanuel Kant which was incorporated in the quotation from the encyclopaedia, since I believe he has something important to contribute to the discussion. The word translated ‘faith’ in that passage is the German ‘Glaube‘, which also means ‘belief’. To render ‘Glaube‘ as ‘belief’ in this case would make the statement a bit odd, because there is no need to deny knowledge in order to “make room” for belief. As Phil has pointed out, knowledge is generally held to be “justified, true belief”, so to assert knowledge is to assert belief.
So why does Kant deny knowledge, and for what, exactly, is he making room? If we want to answer this, and obtain a deeper understanding of this tension between ‘knowledge’ and ‘Glaube‘, we will need to consider the surrounding text. Unfortunately this means reading Kant’s prose, which is daunting (to put it charitably) at the best of times. Nevertheless, let us try to understand the reasoning behind this “famous” claim.
I have Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason at hand because I did a one-semester study on it, so I profess sufficient understanding of the work as a whole to guide interpretation here, even though I’m no expert. What Kant is getting at here is that we can’t apply the kind of reasoning that we apply for “objects of possible experience” to metaphysical ones such as God. The problem with doing so is that it results in the illusion of success: the reasoning creates an appearance of the object of one’s analysis (or the appearance of absence if one starts from an assumption of non-existence), but this appearance is mere illusion. Thus, Kant says, if we make these assumptions, we must not consider our conclusions reliable: “even the assumption … is not permissible unless at the same time speculative reason be deprived of its pretensions to transcendent insight.”
This is a very crude distillation of one aspect of Kant’s philosophy — I’m choosing brevity over detail in the interests of everyone’s sanity — but the interesting thing about it is that it applies just as readily to empirical analysis (i.e. ‘science’) as it does to purely rational analysis. If science employs metaphysical assumptions, such as the doctrine of naturalism, then it, too, will obtain the appearance of overwhelming evidence in support of those assumptions. As with metaphysics prior to Kant, however, this appearance of ‘proof’ will be entirely illusory.
In order to make any real headway on the problem — if, indeed, any can be made at all — we must start from a position of strict metaphysical agnosticism: the denial of knowledge to which Kant refers. This denial of knowledge still permits ‘belief’ to the extent that the beliefs do not entail logical contradictions, but the factual poverty of the starting position rarely allows one or the other of contradictory beliefs to be properly justified, either by pure reason or by evidence.
With this in mind, I see serious problems brewing for Phil’s position. “Science,” he says, “is the paradigm case of not venturing beyond the bounds of ordinary reason, of accepting beliefs when and only when the best checkable evidence supports them.” Unfortunately, when science is applied to things which are not “objects of possible experience”, as Kant puts it, it violates precisely this rule, and ventures beyond the grounds in which ordinary reason is competent.
The problem with this kind of error is that it does not result in the usual jarring experience of failed predictions and unmet expectations — the usual cues that one’s pet scientific theory isn’t quite right, which is what allows science to be a self-correcting endeavour (to some extent). On the contrary, the entire system may well produce the expected results and sustain the appearance of internal consistency as a consequence of the error. This is what Kant calls “Transcendental Illusion”.
I haven’t read Phil’s book, of course, but he says that much of it is “dedicated to showing that the beliefs of Christianity, as well as other faiths around the world, are not very well supported by the evidence, and in many cases actually contradict the best available we currently have (as in the case of the existence of the soul).” If “the existence of the soul” is at all typical of the scientific analysis on which he relies, then it seems to me that his science rests on shaky ground, to say the least. Does this research explain how the soul might be an object of possible experience for us (within the scope of “experience” permitted by current science), or does it rest on the all-too-frequent assumption that existence implies the possibility of experience?
How much of Phil’s “science” is actually worthy of that title, and how much of it is either Transcendental Illusion masquerading as evidence, or simply shoddy because it never properly defined the object of the research? This question can only be answered case by case, but there is a more general question which might substitute for it: specifically, what, in Phil’s view, are the capacities and limits of scientific inquiry? Is, for example, the existence of God, or the supernatural in general, the kind of question which falls within the bounds of scientific investigation? If so, how?
This is a very important question, because the validity of much of his evidence rests upon it. Invalid evidence is no evidence at all, and no basis for rational belief.
August 23rd, 2012 at 4:32 pm
Thanks for the excellent comment. Lots of thoughts (some very agreeable) about things you’ve said. As for:
How much of Phil’s “science” is actually worthy of that title, and how much of it is either Transcendental Illusion masquerading as evidence, or simply shoddy because it never properly defined the object of the research? This question can only be answered case by case, but there is a more general question which might substitute for it: specifically, what, in Phil’s view, are the capacities and limits of scientific inquiry? Is, for example, the existence of God, or the supernatural in general, the kind of question which falls within the bounds of scientific investigation? If so, how?
I discuss all these issues in some detail. I talk about the difference between probability and proof, and about when talk of empirical evidence is appropriate. I also talk about the solid, empirical, checkable evidence that appears to seriously vitiate the idea that we have immaterial souls. Yes, the “science” I discuss is very much worthy of that title — in fact, it’s precisely because of this science that virtually no one in the cognitive sciences beliefs in the existence of souls that can exist apart from the brain. If you’re curious, take a look at the book. It’s all in there (in small, bite-sized, easily digestible portions).
August 23rd, 2012 at 10:58 pm
But when the subject of your scientific conclusions is “immaterial”, and presumably thus not an object of possible experience (in the senses of “experience” allowed by science), why should I think that your results are not a product of Transcendental Illusion? No matter how rigorous the science is, it has stepped outside the limits of its proper grounds in evidence, and should therefore be rejected as invalid to that extent.
My objection here is categorical: I require an argument that valid scientific analysis of the supernatural is rationally possible, not that lots of people have done it and feel that the results are compelling. Until such an argument is provided, I will feel entirely justified in dismissing the relevant scientific arguments as invalid due to lack of grounds. The fact that many people perceive the results as valid and compelling is, I assume, a product of Transcendental Illusion.
If I take Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason at least somewhat seriously, I am compelled by reason to reject an entire category of scientific claims, and some of your claims fall into that category. You can see that, can’t you?
August 24th, 2012 at 1:46 pm
I was wondering if this discussion would come arounf to Tom’s suggestion. Phil’s point that faith is a belief that is not based on evidence and Tom arguments against it were interesting but much like arguing about angels and heads of pins.
My Christian faith is based on evidence and reason. Without evidence and reason, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be a Christian. Morover, without evidence and reason I’m not sure Christainity would exist at all. Christianity is, after all, a faith based on the real life existance of Jesus, the miracles he really performed, the execution he really suffered and the reality of his resurection. Without these things, Christianity is worse than a fraud.
August 24th, 2012 at 9:15 pm
In the the Rods and Snakes post, Phil demonstrates profound confusion about the Christian faith.
It would appear that he imagines that the Christian faith is to believe that Abraham did or said or believed such and such. No. The Christian faith is to believe like Abraham did in Whom Abraham believed!
And if God exists, and children believe in Him, then for them to “stumble” is quite tragic indeed! Some pretty determined question-begging is required to categorize such teaching as “ethical filth”!
And did Phil even read the story of “doubting Thomas”? How exactly did Jesus (Christian’s ethical paradigm, remember?) treat this “bad move” on his part? — he provided exactly the evidence that Thomas asked for!
Maybe we shouldn’t be debating “faith” — perhaps it might be more valuable to debate “doubt” for all the faith Phil would seem to devote to it.
August 25th, 2012 at 8:08 am
A nit-pick to Tom’s How (not)… post…
He writes:
Perhaps the following would be more accurate:
1′. If T, then K(P) is insufficient to confidently detect T.
2′. If K(P) is the only trustworthy means to know anything, then we cannot know T with K(P).
And Phil’s position, viz:
3. K(P) is the only trustworthy standard of knowledge
Is only sufficient to conclude:
4′. We cannot know T.
Unless we adopt the scientistic (and suspect!) extra premise that:
5. K(P) is sufficient to know everything.
Do we arrive at:
6. Not-T
But to get there, we needed two contradictory premises (1 and 5)!
August 25th, 2012 at 8:11 am
errata (sorry, the composition window is small, and there is no preview):
a) “2′. If K(P) is the only trustworthy means to know anything, then we cannot know T. (from 1′)” &
b) “But to get there, we needed two contradictory premises (1′ and 5)!”
August 25th, 2012 at 11:47 am
I’m disappointed to admit I’m finding Tom’s responses very weak. There are plenty of ways of knowing aside from those presented by science; Phil has already admitted as much in a previous post. The question, though, is what’s the best way of gaining accurate or truthful knowledge about the world (on the large assumption most people care about accuracy and truth). Phil has argued for one standard; Tom apparently has another, though he hasn’t really presented an argument for it yet. This is not arguing away theism by definition, it’s trying to lay down the terms of the debate.
Additionally, the debate seems to have moved (I’ll admit I only skimmed the first two posts, though) from Tom arguing for the truth of the God of the Christian Bible to a general claim of theism’s ability to be knowable. I’m not sure how he will unpaint himself from this corner, since the leap from theism to Christianity is a large one indeed (as I thought Phil made clear in his last post).
August 25th, 2012 at 12:22 pm
Ashley, if Phil has another way of knowing, one which he will accept as reliable and valid with respect to ultimate questions, I’ll be interested to hear him say what it is. He’s been awfully insistent on repeatability and third-party confirmation.
There’s a reason I haven’t argued for my standard of knowing, and I wrote it at the end of my last comment. In a word, I want to hear Phil’s response to one thing before I write two, especially where the second is going to be lengthy and complex. And especially when he has a current commitment to a standard that does not rationally succeed for the question at hand.
It has been my observation that Internet debates tend to mushroom, as A says one thing, B responds with 2 things, and A comes back again with 4….
I’m trying to keep that from happening here, and Phil has agreed to the same (Point 2 here).
August 25th, 2012 at 1:05 pm
“Ashley, if Phil has another way of knowing, one which he will accept as reliable and valid with respect to ultimate questions, I’ll be interested to hear him say what it is. He’s been awfully insistent on repeatability and third-party confirmation.”
Tom, I’ve noticed you keep rewriting statements to fit what you want to talk about, which effectively ignores the thrust of the question at hand. Exactly at issue is what is the best way of attaining knowledge when that knowledge pertains to questions of what the universe is. (I’m not sure what an “ultimate question” is, but I take it ‘what is the universe?’ might qualify.) There are ways of knowing through trust (which you’ve both agreed to); I would add that there are emotional ways of knowing, too. However, are these good ways of answering the questions: “What is the universe? Why is it here?”? Phil says no; you say yes.
This seems like an impasse, unless you can provide some reasons as to why you think one should answer questions about reality through trust, emotions, etc. From my perspective, these might be valid ways of knowing how to relate to other human beings who stand before you (for instance) but are not particularly good ways of giving us knowledge about the universe.
August 25th, 2012 at 1:19 pm
What you’re asking for, Ashley, is what I was alluding to at the end of the post:
Phil says that only certain ways of knowing are valid (with respect to the question at hand, of course); I say that he’s wrong about that, and that he’s wrong in ways that need to be corrected before he can begin to take a non-question-begging, non-fallacious epistemological stance. I’ve invited him to respond to what I’ve said about that, and I’ve indicated my willingness to move ahead to other issues after he has done so.
You’re disappointed that I have not done so already, or perhaps with other things you find lacking in my responses so far; I only emphasize that these are just my responses so far. This is a conversation we’re engaging in, diachronically, and it’s just now at the point it’s at just now.
August 25th, 2012 at 12:29 pm
As for my arguments for theism, I don’t feel painted into a corner. What I’ve been doing so far has been trying to agree what faith is–a question that Phil agreed to discuss, although some commenters here and at Thinking Christian have thought it was not particularly interesting–and to show that Phil’s way of knowing which he thinks takes theism out of the picture epistemologically, is the wrong one to apply to the question.
August 26th, 2012 at 3:05 am
I think that Tom is steering the conversation in the right direction with his most recent post.
For one thing, I fully agree with the clamp-down on scattershot arguments. Regardless of how many good points a party has, they must be presented in limited quantities, and “one” is a good number in that regard. The scattershot approach to argument not only causes uncontrolled growth in the size of messages, but also encourages the fallacy, “you have failed to respond to some of my points because you can not refute them.” Constraints of this sort are necessary for an orderly and disciplined argument in this format.
In addition, I think that the one question Tom has chosen to ask is a good one. Although this argument is ostensibly about ‘faith’ in general, the actual thrust of Phil’s discussion has been its epistemic status (i.e. that it is, by definition, deficient), and the corresponding superiority of ‘evidence’. Tom has now raised an important question: can the epistemic methods which Phil supports allow knowledge of God if He does, in fact, exist? If they can’t do that, then the superiority of his methods are thrown into severe doubt, at least insofar as they relate to the supernatural.
In other words, this assertion of epistemic superiority seems to be the crux of the matter, and it is appropriate to focus attention there.
August 26th, 2012 at 7:06 am
In the How (not)… post this paragraph stands out:
This is brilliantly stated. And it is surely something that “New Atheists” need to confront. The New Atheist “model” of God (“idol” in Biblical language) is entirely broken. No wonder they like to compare God to a celestial teapot (or FSM, if you prefer) — but it is not because God is like a celestial teapot at all! Rather it is because they have insufficient imagination to consider a God Who is categorically different from a celestial teapot.
The God who is simultaneously capable of getting a message across (both before and after the advent of science!) and loves those for whom the message is intended is the only God worthy of the word “God.” Pity the creatures who exercise so much energy in their self-deception.
August 27th, 2012 at 7:08 pm
“Is it possible for Christians today to have “faith” of exactly this sort? That is to say, to what extent are Christian beliefs presently justified by our total evidence?”
The question I would ask you Phil is this. To what extent are your beliefs justified in the historical facts surrounding, say, the historicity of Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great or the texts of Sophocles’ plays? These things are accepted virtually without question by historians all over the world. The evidences for them are considered perfectly reliable.
However, when the facts surrounding Christianity are presented we get skeptics like you claiming that the facts our beliefs are based on are subjective. The truth, of course, is that the historicity of the New Testament (NT) is multiple orders of magnitude more reliable that those surrounding Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great or the texts of Sophocles’ plays.
Anyone fairly applying the accepted standards of validation of ancient texts should be absolutely overwhelmed by the evidences presented by Christianity. The accuracy and early dating of the original texts, the time between the writing of those texts and the manuscript copies available, and the number and accuracy of manuscript copies available are all much greater for the NT than for any other ancient historical facts.
Yet Phil, you state ”…the central claims made by Christians largely lack any kind of good supporting evidence.” It seems like either you don’t know the above or have chosen to ignore these facts. I mean, not even a passing nod to the 25,000 manuscript copies of the NT or the existence of 1st and 2nd century manuscript fragments or the fact that the entire NT could be reassembled from extra biblical sources or the 99% accuracy of the manuscript texts themselves?
As I mentioned in my post above, Christianity is, after all, a faith based on the real life existence of Jesus, the miracles he really performed, the execution he really suffered and the reality of his resurrection. These historical facts have been subject to rigorous and extensive historical and archeological examination. They have not been found wanting.
August 27th, 2012 at 10:15 pm
Tom,
I was one of those who found it uninteresting, I mean, no one should think it is acceptable to establish by definition what needs to be demonstrated by argument. It seems though, from Phil’s latest post, that it was worth harping on because it slips into his arguments as an unspoken assumption.
Take for instance his argument that the case of Abraham supports beliefs that contradict the best available evidence. The only way to get to this conclusion from what is written in the bible is to assume that faith means belief without evidence. Otherwise it’s just a case of Abraham considering the total evidence, not just his and Sarah’s ages, and believing that God could and would honour his promise.
August 29th, 2012 at 7:00 am
http://www.thinkingchristian.net/2012/08/what-is-faith-debating-the-question-with-phil-torres/
I’d have some sympathy with Phil’s general position as you state it in your introduction: “He says faith is necessarily unreasonable.”
There’s nothing reasonable about the substance of unrealised hope, the evidence of things not seen. Faith has nothing to do with human philosophy and reason.
In spiritual matters our instinct, senses and feelings are an unreliable guide.
August 29th, 2012 at 10:29 am
On the contrary, philosophical books have been written (for example) on The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science.
And a “substance/foundation of hope” is the kind of thing that all marriages are based on. While it might be true to claim that there is an irrational component to marriage, it is hardly accurate to say that there is ‘nothing reasonable’ about it.
August 29th, 2012 at 12:10 pm
And my language and my message were not set forth in persuasive (enticing and plausible) words of wisdom, but they were in demonstration of the [Holy] Spirit and power [a proof by the Spirit and power of God, operating on me and stirring in the minds of my hearers the most holy emotions and thus persuading them], So that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men (human philosophy), but in the power of God.
-1 Corinthians 2:4-5 (AMP)
August 29th, 2012 at 1:34 pm
“taste and see” – Ps 34:8
“come and let us reason together” – Is. 1:18
“put spirits to the test” – 1 John 4:1
“For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” – 2 Peter 1:16
“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched —this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.” – 1 John 1:1
“As was his custom, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures” – Acts 17:2
“So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there.” – Acts 17:17
“Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks.” – Acts 18:4
“He himself went into the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews.” – Acts 18:19
“What I am saying is true and reasonable.” – Acts 26:25
“Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” – 1 Pet 3:15
August 29th, 2012 at 2:10 pm
Doug, I understand.
It’s the very essence of faith itself I was drawing attention to and it’s ‘unreasonableness’ in the context of the text I originally quoted. I appreciate it’s the way of many to draw attention to these classical Scripture quotes to justify discussing many diverse subjects in defense of God and Christ, the Bible, creation, etc. But I don’t have that in mind here.
Best regards.
August 30th, 2012 at 9:54 pm
Hi Samuel,
The thing is that the English words (let alone the Greek ones) can be interpreted in a number of ways — many of which aren’t nearly as “unreasonable” as you seem to make out…
While it is true that there have been strains of fideism (of many varieties) throughout the history of the church, it would be a distortion to suggest that the one you seem to be addressing has ever been a dominant position.
September 3rd, 2012 at 6:55 am
In Phil’s How not to post, he writes:
False. What’s more, the claim above is such a shockingly uninformed one, that it should embarrass anyone claiming science to be a preferred method of knowing.
If Phil had any actual experience with science, he would know that scientific knowledge is not filling gaps of ignorance at an exponential rate. If there was ever the convincing illusion that it was, this nonsense was derived from ignorance, optimism and extrapolation.
The optimism of it all is represented in a tendentious model of “all available knowledge” as finite and exhaustible. A much more sensible model, of course, is a fractal model — in which every scientific answer raises a number of further questions.
But why not be specific:
How, exactly, has modern science “closed the gap” of the origins of life? The origins of consciousness? The origins of language? The origins of morality?
How, exactly, has modern science “closed the gap” explaining why the universe seems so tailor-made for humanity?
Hand-waving and conjecture don’t count.
What’s more, any one of the five “gaps” itemized above are HUGE compared to the sum total of human scientific knowledge.
September 3rd, 2012 at 11:28 pm
What about the universe seems at all “tailor-made for humanity”?
What do you know about the scientific debates surrounding the origins of consciousness or language or morality? Dozens, hundreds even, of scientists are working on these issues in the field of neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. Argument from lack of imagination (or simply ignorance) is not an argument.
September 4th, 2012 at 3:45 am
Hi Ashley,
As it happens, I know quite a lot about neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. But to say (correctly) that “[many] scientists are working on these issues” is quite different from saying that the “gap of ignorance is closing exponentially”. What evidence do you have for the latter? Or did you tip your hand when you suggested that it requires “imagination”?
September 4th, 2012 at 10:46 pm
Who wrote that the “gap of ignorance is closing exponentially”? I just did a search on this blog and couldn’t find it anywhere.
It seems to me the more we know, the more we realize we DON’T know. I think most scientists would agree with that last sentence. But not knowing, and KNOWING that we don’t know, 1) doesn’t mean the system we have for “knowing” about the nature of reality right now is not incredibly sound, 2) is not an argument in favor of theism, and 3) doesn’t mean that what we DO know is making theism less tenable.
And no, I haven’t “tipped my hand” by using the word “imagination” — it absolutely takes imagination for us to understand all the non-intuitive things about the world that sciences has to tell us! That doesn’t make the method used to gain that knowledge any less sound, and — again — this doesn’t bring us anywhere close to theism, at all, whatsoever.
It seems this is not a debate to be resolved. I think Tom’s latest post is really muddled, frankly. Theists of all walks can believe what they want, it seems to me, but they shouldn’t try to justify it using words like “evidence” or “reason,” because it sounds ridiculous and is doomed to fail. And no, that isn’t because philosophers and scientists are conspiring to define God out of existence, but because there are two competing epistemological stances here: one, the stance your doctor uses when he treats you; the other — “faith,” whatever you want to call it, at least we can agree that the other is something else.
September 5th, 2012 at 6:02 am
Very good. So true. Now tell me: what does science tell us about that imagination (you know, the one required for science to function in the first place)? Not only is neuroscience (the closest discipline to the question) silent on the topic — it has no research plan that could even go there! But no: this hard empirical fact could not possibly be evidence for “the image of God” (if you close your eyes tight enough, cover your ears, and shout your materialist dogmas loud enough)
September 7th, 2012 at 2:26 pm
Doug, I’m not sure why you think science is not addressing the topic of imagination, since it seems to be one of the hottest topics in science today. A few relevant books published recently, representing the work of scholars working at the intersection of a variety of “brain sciences”-related fields, include _The Neural Imagination_, _Imagination and the Meaningful Brain_, _Emotions, Imagination, and Moral Reasoning_, _A Universe Of Consciousness How Matter Becomes Imagination_ — the list goes on. Whether or not science has solved a particular human enigma yet does not mean it doesn’t have a highly successful track record of doing so. By contrast, religion has a very, very poor track record of providing explanations about what the universe is made of and how it came to be, so poor in fact that most of its “explanations” can now only be taken not literally, but in the vaguest metaphorical sense.
I am not “shouting materialist dogmas” — I’m doing what seems reasonable, which is to adopt the method that results in actual answers. Again, this is why we go to doctors and not shamans when we get sick: we trust their method for gaining knowledge (the same method, incidentally, followed by science, broadly speaking).
September 7th, 2012 at 3:32 pm
Hi Ashley, you write:
I’m afraid that you are slightly misinformed here — which “human enigmas” has science such a “highly successful track record” of “solving” exactly?
FWIW, my entire career (still going strong) is in cognitive science, and I can quite contentedly assure you that the contents of the books that you cite are attempts to engage the problem of imagination, not anything even remotely approaching “solutions” to it.
September 8th, 2012 at 1:58 am
Doug, please stop quoting things as I’ve said them. I never used the word “solutions.” You claimed: “Not only is neuroscience (the closest discipline to the question) silent on the topic — it has no research plan that could even go there!” I showed you evidence to the contrary. Once we could barely imagine having answer to the question: what is color? However, scientists and philosophers worked on this problem for hundreds of years; now the impossibility of answering that question seems almost silly. That’s how it works.
As for being misinformed, it may be you that’s missing something. I’m a historian of science. Questions like “why is the sky blue?” — “What is this strange place we inhabit?” — “What are stars?” — “What is the moon?” — used to inspire spiritual awe because of the seeming impossibility of answering them. However, some enterprising people built some tools to study the stars above them and the dirt beneath them — to study them not with the goal of “discovering God” (that would be circular reasoning indeed) but as material objects — and, lo!, suddenly we understand we inhabit a planet, circling a star, in a galaxy among galaxies. The night sky still inspires awe, just not the (in my mind rather cheap) awe of not knowing any better.
So, I repeat: science — a method of acquiring knowledge about reality that really has only been around about 400 short years! — absolutely has an amazing track record of discovering all the crazy, wonderful things about humans and our planet. There is every reason to expect that the recent flurry of attempts of neuroscientists (et al.) to engage topics like “imagination” and “creativity” will be fruitful.
Note also that “not having answers” is different than “not capable of providing answers”, the latter being a stronger claim. The former is easily refuted by the points above; the latter is more difficult to answer, since it requires knowing the future. We may discover that science is not be able to say anything on some topics because it is a human enterprise, undertaken by humans with a human perspective. To admit as much is hardly, however, a point in favor of theism, but is simply to admit to the natural limitations of the brain of the human animal.
September 8th, 2012 at 5:57 am
@Ashley, you wrote:
you did no such thing. Using the word in the title of a book is not evidence of progress toward the understanding of what that word represents.
But seriously: as a historian of science, you owe it to yourself to read “The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science” by E.A.Burtt — it will help to explain that questions like “what is color?” haven’t so much been “explained” as “reframed”. That is, the question used to mean something much more than what it does now — and only by reducing the question (i.e., eliminating such still-unexplained mysteries like the human quantification of color, and even more subjective and interesting phenomena like synasthesia) can we even begin to pretend that the question is answered.
September 8th, 2012 at 6:14 am
@Ashley, you also wrote:
Funny you should put it that way: “every reason”… from where I sit, you have faith that this flurry will be fruitful, but you have made a fundamental category confusion between the third-person, empirical domain of science and the first-person, subjective experience of “consciousness” “imagination” or “creativity”. You just can’t get there from here.
But don’t take my word for it: you are young — pay close attention to the research and its results; don’t take the press releases on face value; dig deep and understand the actual science… decades from now, if you are honest, you’ll either conclude that this old guy was right all along, or you’ll be vindicated (apologies in advance that you won’t have the opportunity to tell me of your victory).
September 8th, 2012 at 11:17 am
“from where I sit, you have faith that this flurry will be fruitful, but you have made a fundamental category confusion between the third-person, empirical domain of science and the first-person, subjective experience of ‘consciousness’ ‘imagination’ or ‘creativity’.”
1) No. This is a confused notion of faith — akin to saying I have “faith” that the sun will rise tomorrow. 2) Again, no. Whether or not science has anything meaningful to say about qualia is a fascinating question, but we’re not there yet in this very, very basic conversation. Perhaps we can agree that, broadly speaking, science investigates phenomena and reality as material (note this isn’t really “third-person”). It does not follow that something like “imagination” or “creativity” could not be addressed as a material neural phenomenon. Now you could counter that science has only explained PART of what imagination is, since it hasn’t addressed experience — but a) this is a very open question, and b) our conversation now has absolutely 0 to do with theism or the existence of God.
September 8th, 2012 at 2:41 pm
@Ashley,
Our conversation has everything with the existence of God. Without God there is no communication. There is certainly no explanation for communication, let alone language, from a materialist perspective. (And no need to point me to Tomasello or Bickerton, or any of the other recent books on the subject — they are all honest enough to say that their ideas are really “just so stories”)
September 3rd, 2012 at 11:37 pm
Tom’s latest reply to Phil again not only exhibits a number of disappointing fallacies but misses a few key points. E.g.: 1) No one seems to be arguing against the existence of THEISM — that would be absurd — but against the existence of a GOD; seriously unclear thinking here! 2) To argue “Christian theism” is the reason for inexplicable events is not an argument FOR “Christian theism,” but a tautology; 3) I don’t think Mr. Torres has backed down from repeatability, and if he has, he shouldn’t have. Repeatability is a target for most of the hard sciences; this doesn’t make it the only valid way of attaining true and justified beliefs, just one of the easiest/best ways in most cases. You can put aside repeatability all you want, Tom; you still haven’t gotten to true/justified beliefs through any reasonable methods. I keep expecting more but this is just more of the same I’d get at a megachurch!!
September 4th, 2012 at 4:47 am
1) excellent point, though Tom was almost certainly using “Theism” as shorthand for “Theism is true”=”God”.
2) I missed any hint of this “argument” — care to share where you found it in Tom’s post?
3) Repeatability is good, when it is available. But (as Phil correctly states), it is not a necessary condition for knowledge.
September 4th, 2012 at 7:09 am
Thank you, Doug, for responding before I saw the question. One more point: I am 100% confident Phil knows I’m not arguing for the existence of Christian theism; and that my references to Christian theism are (depending on context) either arguments that it is true or else implications following from its truth.
September 4th, 2012 at 5:35 pm
@Ashley: note how all the atheists in this Google search use the expressing “evidence for Christianity” as shorthand for “evidence for [the foundations of] Christianity”… (we all know that Christianity has existed for a good long time)
September 5th, 2012 at 7:29 pm
Ashley, you say,
I only put aside repeatability where repeatability is an inappropriate epistemic method or criterion.
The reason you haven’t seen me get to justified beliefs is because the debate has not reached that point. So far what I’ve been doing has been showing that some of Phil’s epistemic requirements are illegitimate. It doesn’t bother me at all to hear you tell me I haven’t done something I haven’t tried to do.
At the end of my most recent post I outlined a catalog of ways to justify belief in Christianity, and I invited Phil to ask questions about one or two of them at a time. When and if he does, we will reach the point where I will begin to supply what you think has been missing.
September 5th, 2012 at 2:13 pm
I enjoyed your latest reply, Tom. Encouraging you onward!
September 5th, 2012 at 8:28 pm
Thank you, SteveK.
September 6th, 2012 at 10:56 am
I have two comments on Phil’s post, How Not to Define God Out of Existence.
First up, I’m less than impressed by the suggestion that, “the gaps available for supernatural deities like the God of Christianity to occupy are shrinking at an exponential rate.” This has become something of a new-atheist cliche, and it rests on some very muddled thinking about God.
If “God” were nothing but an explanatory place-holder, then this claim would have at least some semblance of validity. If “God” were the kind of answer that one offered when seeking a law-like description of the behaviour of the universe, then it would be the poorest kind of answer, since it contains no law-like elements (although, to its mild credit, it at least posits a law-giver).
But “God” isn’t merely a word used in an explanatory role: it carries an ontological commitment. If God actually exists, then no amount of God-free-explanation on our part causes Him to exist any less. Consequently, an ability to provide God-free-explanations for things does not count as evidence against His existence. If God actually exists, then the advance of science does not diminish His role: rather, it exposes in ever advancing detail the wonder and greatness of his handiwork. Phil’s assertion that advancing science reduces the space in which God could exist rests on the assumption that he does not, in fact, exist.
Second, there is an important question that I raised in my previous comment, which remains open: “can the epistemic methods which Phil supports allow knowledge of God if He does, in fact, exist?” In his current post, we see a reiteration of his assertion that the evidence does not support the existence of God, like so.
This does not adequately answer the question: the question was whether his methods could discover the existence of God (or Allah, or whatever) if God actually existed. Perhaps the implications of this question are not obvious, so I will elaborate on it.
The 20th century philosopher, A. J. Ayer, proposed the “criterion of verifiability” in his influential book, Language, Truth, and Logic (p.16). This principle declares that in order for a statement to be “factually significant” (i.e. meaningful), one must know “how to verify the proposition which it purports to express.” That is, certain observations should lead to one accepting it as true, or rejecting it as false. If no observational criteria are given, then the statement is not “factually significant”.
A statement can be ludicrous and still be factually significant. Take the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, for example. In all my years, I have never seen any evidence for the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The first piece of observational data (i.e. “evidence”) that I would need in order to verify its existence would be a large, sapient, flying creature composed of spaghetti and meatballs. I have never seen such a thing, and I have heard no reliable reports of anyone else doing so. Indeed, that which I have observed about sapient beings and spaghetti dishes leads me to believe that the two categories are mutually exclusive, but show me the flying, sapient pasta, and I’ll reconsider.
I’m not convinced that Phil’s claim regarding the non-existence of God is “factually significant” in the sense required by Ayer. What we chiefly need in order to make it so is for Phil to provide a description of the kinds of things that he could (in principle, at least) observe that would persuade him that God exists. He has asserted on numerous occasions that he has never seen any supporting evidence, but he still hasn’t specified what that supporting evidence is — what it was that he failed to find. Clearly his criteria will differ from mine in relation to the non-existence of the FSM, because God is not a physical being, and direct observation is therefore not a possibility.
Unless there is some possible-in-principle observation that would persuade Phil of God’s existence, then he doesn’t really have a evidence-based belief in the non-existence of God. Instead, by Ayer’s account, his claim that “God does not exist” is simply devoid of meaning. I’m not sure that I agree with Ayer on that point, but I will say that Phil is, in the absence of clear criteria for his evidence, either using “God” in an essentially meaningless way, or using an empirical approach to a problem that admits no empirically-based solution.