We have long promised to more systematically cover these guys who generate so much fun sniping on our blog here, and as of last Sunday, the full as-of-now-regular podcaster lineup (myself, Seth, Wes, and Dylan; we will still have some guests on, though) recorded a discussion of:
-The first two chapters of Sam Harris's The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
-The last three chapters of Christopher Hitchens's God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
These fellows do not so much answer the question "is there a God?" as the question "should we be religious?"
Harris claims that faith, defined as believing something without evidence, is morally irresponsible: it leaves us open to believing all sorts of destructive things, and there are portions of all the major Western religious texts that, if taken literally and without the need for rational justification, command abominable things. Religious moderates, by extension, are on Harris's view in the awkward position of not being able to condemn the extremists in the way that would be necessary to quash them: the extremists are, after all, just acting out fully the principles commanded by the faith that the moderates profess to embrace.
Hitchens presents a big book of anecdotes about terrible things done in the name of religion. Like Freud, he thinks the fundamental tenets of the worlds religion are superstitions that adults in the modern age have any business believing and thinks religious leaders to be for the most part a bunch of power-grabbing phonies.
Dawkins, a prominent evolutionary biologist, presents a positive argument that a creator-God is problematic, namely that there's no way such a God could do all that is described of him and still be simple, i.e. not in need of further explanation. Any alien being, for instance, no matter how radically more advanced than ourselves (and godlike in our eyes), would still have had to evolve through something akin to natural selection, so a God conceived as the first explanation of everything almost certainly couldn't exist.
Dennett is rather the odd duck here, and is likely in this category for publicity reasons more than anything else. His book is not a screed against religion, but instead a presentation of various scientific analyses of religion by other people and an argument that more of this would be good, and that it needs to be done without tiptoeing deferentially around the subject matter. See my notes on the first couple of chapters. Like Harris and the rest of them, though, he is worried about the destructive potential of religion (this whole movement is a reaction to 9/11), and argues against the idea that the persistence of religion must be due to its inherent value to us. Instead, it may be akin to a harmful virus that has evolved ways to ensure its own continued replication (e.g. the self-defensive parts of religion, where you're not allowed to question it) while not necessarily benefiting its hosts (us). Only continued, rigorous study will tell us.
Spoiler: Dennett wasn't actually discussed until the last 10 minutes of the episode, by which point most participants were tired enough to have nothing to say about him.)
As a response to a few points made by the above authors (mostly Dawkins), we all read an essay Wes found from Wittgenstein scholar Anthony Kenny: “Knowledge, Belief, and Faith” (abstract here), which you could find in chapter 14 (p. 179-199) of his 2008 book From Empedocles to Wittgenstein: Historical Essays in Philosophy.
I wonder whether faith is really as irresponsible as Harris makes it out to be. Don’t we frequently place our faith in other people (e.g. friends, family, etc.)? Don’t atheists of the scientism variety have faith that everything will eventually be explained by empirical science? Hope you will have touched on these questions. 🙂
Hi Manuel,
1. I fear you create a straw-man by describing “atheists of the scientism variety [who] have faith that everything will eventually be explained by empirical science.” What the most “scientistic” of atheists will say is that the absence of scientific explanations for a given phenomenon (e.g., the origin of life) don’t you to therefore affirmatively posit a supernatural explanation. In short, I defy you to identify any atheists of the scientism variety who have declared that science will eventually answer all questions. Even Harris will concede that some things may well remain mysterious for a while longer, and perhaps forever.
2. Treating evidence-based beliefs and faith-based beliefs the same confuses the different definitions of the word “faith”:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/faith
1. confidence or trust in a person or thing: _faith in another’s ability_.
2. belief that is not based on proof:_He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact_.
Beliefs we form by observing the physical world are not the same as “faith” as used in the context of religion. I have “faith” the sun will rise tomorrow, but only because the empirical evidence so far demonstrates that the sun has always done so. Sure, I can have “faith” in my close friends, but only to the extent that they have proven themselves deserving of such faith. If they fail to repay that $100 I loaned them, my faith will rapidly dissolve.
By the same token, scientists had “faith” in Newton’s theory of gravity, but only until Einstein’s theory of gravity (and more importantly, the experiments _demonstrating_ Einstein’s theory of gravity) proved Newton wrong.
All of these various acts of “faith,” if you want to call them that, are merely beliefs contingent upon evidence. Which means such beliefs don’t constitute “faith” at all; they are merely tentative beliefs we hold so as long as the evidence supports them. To conflate faith-based beliefs with evidence-based beliefs under the rubric “faith” is to commit a linguistic error.
Put another way: I love my wife, and I also love beer, but I’m using different definitions of “love” when I say such things.
Religions demand faith in a supernatural deity _despite_ the lack of any empirical evidence; and moreover, despite considerable evidence of the deity’s absence. Thus, religious belief (i.e., “faith”) differs from my belief that I’ll go to work tomorrow.
“despite considerable evidence of the deity’s absence”
Do you mean an absence of evidence, instead of evidence of absence?
Sorry, I was unclear. Yes, I actually did mean “evidence of absence,” which I know is a play on the usual locution.
I was obliquely referring to the theodicy issue. In other words, the cruelty and randomness of the world tends to affirmatively indicate that it was _not_ designed for our benefit by a loving, caring deity.
“In other words, the cruelty and randomness of the world tends to affirmatively indicate that it was _not_ designed for our benefit by a loving, caring deity.”
This hardly exhausts the concepts of deity, it seems merely evidence to suggest that any proposed deity might not posses the attributes attributed to it by one particular faith group. An advocate of Hindusim might say these are exactly what you would expect from a deity who is not bound by our conventions with respect to values or morality.
It appears to me that to have evidence that dsicounts the existence of something you need to have a pretty good grasp of what it is in the first place.
When a doctors concludes that he has “evidence of the absence of cancer” he is merely saying that there is no evidence to indicate the the presence of that cancer we can with a reasonable degree of probablility infer that it is not present in someones body.
Personally, I am happy to say that the absence of evidence gives me no good reason to believe an entity exists, rather than to say I have evidence of non-existence.
But hey, I like Parmenides:
“…that it is not and that it is right that it not be,
this I point out to you is a path wholly inscrutable
for you could not know what is not …
nor could you point it out.”
Daniel: The notion that the world is a uniform system of natural causes, i.e., philosophical or metaphysical Naturalism, the stance which many people, including perhaps most scientists, mistakenly equate with science as such — is this not a form of faith? What evidence is there for such a belief?
Hi Tom,
I’ll grant that you can’t prove causality is true, or at least I’m too dumb to know how. But it seems to me that doubting causality leads to radical skepticism, not religious belief. Until I find a more entertaining quote, I’ll temporarily and perhaps hypocritically align with B. Russell with respect to that particular issue:
Folks eager to hear our thoughts on this might turn to our William James podcast re. “The Will to Believe:” http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2010/07/18/episode-22-more-jamess-pragmatism-is-faith-justified-what-is-truth/
I don’t think the analogy to faith in a person to faith in a proposition works, and “faith” in scientific method isn’t a good description of that (i.e. if some method is shown not to work well, it’s open to revision, where that’s not the case with articles held by faith), but there’s something to be said for sort-of-Kantian regulatory principles, e.g. the aims of science, that are not themselves given by experience. C.S. Peirce is also relevant on that point: http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2010/06/09/episode-20-pragmatism-peirce-and-james-2/.
These linguistic distinctions are precisely what I’m looking for in the coming podcast. It is all too easy to dismiss “faith” without having properly defined what it means. I would love to hear a precise definition of this word (or as precise as one can get), because it may mean a whole host of things, like “unjustified belief”, “belief in the metaphysically impossible”, “belief in the unlikely”, “spontaneous belief”, etc. I myself am an atheist about the popular gods, but I wonder if faith in, say, Spinoza’s or Leibniz’s god, would be equally reprehensible as faith in Yahweh or Zeus.
@Daniel: you seem to be the of the combative sort (at least that’s how you came across when you “defied” me), but I’m not. I just asked a couple of questions; I did not assert anything. Nice to meet you!
Hi Manuel,
Nice to meet you as well! For better or worse, I find discursive argument the quickest way to identify areas of agreement and disagreement. If that leaves me open to being called combative, well, I’ll accept that. But when I say “I defy you to…”, I’m just using a common idiom which means “I challenge you to…” There’s no hostile intent behind the words, though of course, yes, I am pointing out what I believe to be an error in your reasoning.
Returning to the issue, if you can’t or won’t identify a scientistic atheist such as described in your initial e-mail, then I think I provided a meaningful response to your question. I’m not simply gainsaying you for its own sake.
I believe Harris and Hitchens have said things to the effect that the less dogmatic your belief, then, yes, the less reprehensible your behavior. Deism is less “bad” than theism, etc. But at the same time, Hitchens (at least) would say that you’re not really religious in any meaningful sense of the term, either.
Of course, I’m merely characterizing what I think Harris or Hitchens would say, based on their past recorded statements. Whether a deistic or pantheistic or panentheistic faith is more or less “reprehensible” (or “admirable” for that matter) requires a value judgment, so I’m not sure how one could “correctly” answer your question.
Hi again,
Ok, then I misinterpreted your intent. It’s just that the word “defy”, I don’t know, has certain connotations for me. In any case, no big whoop.
Also, I’m willing to concede the bit about scientistic atheists. There may not be anyone who actually (or publicly) believes that science will ultimately explain it all. Then again, on the remote possibility that there is someone who does believe that (and my guess is that there is), wouldn’t we say that he has “faith”, even if not religious faith?
Regards.
Yes Manuel. Physicalism, Materialism, or Naturalism as a philosophical stance about what the world ultimately consists in such that the world ought, should, in principal be completely amenable to scientific causal explanations–this is a “faith” in the sense of a religion-like stance toward the world.
Daniel, although you’re probably right that most scientistic atheists won’t claim that they “have faith” that science will eventually answer all the questions. However, this is essentially their belief when they will not accept any theory other than a naturalistic one for the complexity in nature. To provide one example: Richard Dawkins was interviewed about intelligent design and when confronted with the irreducible complexity of the bacterial flagellum submitted by Michael Behe as evidence of design, his response was that Behe should just keep working harder to find the naturalistic explanation. I don’t fault him for this as a scientist, and I am not a strong adherent of intelligent design. But clearly, this is the mindset of Dawkins and most scientists not only in the laboratory, but also in their overall worldview. In my mind, this is a kind of “faith”: that is, naturalistic science may not have all the answers but it eventually will.
How is that type of faith different than faith in a deity? The decision about possible answers to a question about any phenomenon is answered beforehand depending on the individual’s “faith”.
Hi Russ,
1. Just to clarify what I said earlier: I’m not suggesting that scientistic atheists claim one thing yet believe another. I’m extending them the courtesy of accepting their claims as sincere. Once we start implying that folks are not quite honest about what they “really” believe, where does it end? You could start impugning my “real agenda,”* and I yours. I don’t think it’s kosher to talk about what these hypothetical scientistic atheists “essentially believe”.
2. Referring to someone specific like Richard Dawkins is more productive. But I fear you’ve begged the question, given the way you characterized the issue. _Was_ Dawkins confronted with the irreducible complexity of the bacterial flagellum? Or was he confronted with a mere assertion that the bacterial flagellum contains irreducible complexity? Those are two very different ways to describe what happened.
Furthermore, if we characterize the confrontation as between “Dawkins vs. Behe”, then it sounds as though each interlocutor has an equally compelling argument. But in fact, Behe is considered a crank by the entire scientific community. And on matters scientific (e.g., whether bacterial flagella truly demonstrate irreducible complexity), they would know, right? Even Behe’s own employer–Lehigh University–publicly renounces his views daily to anyone who visits their website:
http://www.lehigh.edu/~inbios/news/evolution.htm
So I think Dawkins can be forgiven for suggesting that Behe ought to go “check his math,” and return after he has peer-reviewed scientific evidence for his claims. If Behe purports to provide scientific evidence of intelligent design, then he needs to play by science’s rules. It says nothing extraordinary about Dawkins’ (or the scientific community’s) “worldview” that Behe’s scientific evidence was deemed a fail.
3. I believe I’ve already explained in the thread above the difference between (a) belief in a well-accepted scientific theory (like gravity), and (b) belief in religious dogma. Belief in scientific theories can and do change over time, and only in response to replicable empirical research. To the extent that you want to characterize believing your own eyes as “faith,” it’s grounded in nothing more than “faith” in causality.** Belief in religious dogma, on the other hand, ignores empirical evidence. Instead of searching for beliefs that confirm to the evidence, religious faith searches for evidence that confirms its beliefs. To my mind, that’s looking through the wrong end of the telescope. (Which is a shame, as I feel religion is more productively sought after you stop looking through the telescope. OK, I’m just making up metaphors now.)
*In the interest of full disclosure, I’m open to and interested in exploring religious belief. But to me it’s always going to be more vague and agnostic and elusive and self-doubting, oscillating somewhere between Spinoza, Pascal and Wittgenstein.
**My guess is that Tom M. might have some valid (or at least interesting) objections to accepting causality on faith. And sure, that’s maybe a fruitful line of discussion (or is it?). Nevertheless, the natural response to rejecting causality would be radical skepticism, not religious belief.
Mark, Seth, Wes: On the theme of science and religion, have you guys considered discussing any of the Intelligent Design literature? I recently read for the first time some of Michael Behe’s “Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution” and found it more substantively argued than I would have expected. Behe is a serious working scientist and is clearly not a “Creationist”. He grants common descent of species and the dating of the universe by physics. His argument strikes me as a sincere public plea to consider the empirical data of molecular biochemistry as evidence against an unjustifiably entrenched Neo-Darwinian orthodoxy about gradualism. He puts forth trenchant criticism against chauvinistic scientism but also urges that the hyped-up culture war between science and religion is a red herring and has nothing to do with the argument for inferring intelligence from the empirical data produced by molecular biochemistry. There is a particularly relevant chapter on “Science, Philosophy, Religion”.
Hi Tom, I’ll take a look — as weak as I think the intelligent design arguments are, I suppose it’s fair to check this out, especially given your recommendation.
Hi Tom and Wes (and hopefully Dylan, if you’re out there reading this),
I’m not a scientist, and I have only a limited scientific education. I think that makes me pretty much typical of most people commenting on this subject on the PEL blog.
Why is that relevant? Behe’s work purports to be science, and not philosophy. To be considered good science, and not spurious science, there are rules and tests to which Behe’s work (including “Darwin’s Black Box”) must be subjected. Specifically, it must be submitted and assessed per scientific peer review. To my knowledge, none of Behe’s work has undergone such scrutiny. This is a problem.
Tom, if any of us non-scientists were to find Behe’s arguments compelling or not, how much of that is a function of us being unaware of the scientific counter-arguments? I don’t just mean from a pop-science loving, NYRB-subscribing, I-took-organic-chemistry-in-college level, but from an “I’m-also-a-working-scientist-and-I’m-up-on-the-latest-literature” level?
As a lawyer, I followed the 2005 _Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District_ case with some interest. In no small part, that’s because the federal judge in Kitzmiller was also not a scientist, and yet he was forced to make a judgment call on the validity of ID in a way that _really mattered_. (That is, would he allow it to be taught in schools or not?) Here’s how he approached it:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District/4:Whether_ID_Is_Science#Page_87_of_139
To try to be fair to Behe, here is a video of him being interviewed by noted linguistics professor John McWhorter. I like McWhorter a lot, and I highly recommend his audio lectures on language. But I thought McWhorter was too much of a fan (and not enough of a physical scientist) to properly probe Behe. Nevertheless, perhaps it’s worth nothing that McWhorter is a highly intelligent and educated guy, who was also taken with (or taken in by?) Behe’s work:
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/22075
Some musing on Philosophy, Theology, and the Desire for The Maple Kind
“[Infinity]: ya’ know I just couldn’t stop thinkin’ about it…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGeKSiCQkPw
Infinity is a haunting abstraction resulting from how our curious brains are wired. I am not particularly prone to vivid memories, but I can recall when I was very young, around six or so, wondering how everything could have begun from nothing. It has always stuck with me as a strong experience.
Our cognitive structures both generate but at the same time is unable to deal with the reasoning problems that result from infinities, God, and other irrepressible hopes. Even the reasoning of a computer program gets stumped (e.g., ERROR: Division by zero). There are some basic explanations for the ubiquity of such human affects rooted in our seeking/desiring mode of navigating our umvelt.
Numbers are abstractions primarily of extension: two is wider than one, which is wider than ½, etc. But no-width (zero) is no number, as is unbounded width which may be seen as the inverse of zero. And there are many other interesting things we deal with when we generate other abstractions or desires with which we cannot find satisfacory closure.
In our drive for “You know, the maple kind,” our desires to have what we want usually leads our reasoning to unsettled conclusions – like the taunted video dog hoping that the chicken covered with cat food might still somehow be for him.
And that need to explain! Take hylomorphism – the Aristotelian ontology in which nature is composed of substances, each of which is a two part epoxy-like compound of prime matter (pure potential) with a specific form (actuality). Substances cannot exist in the absence of either part, and neither part is self-sufficient. For living substances, the form is referred to as soul: for plants, vegetable soul ‘acts’ in a nutritive manner, while for animals, the soul comprises activities of nutrition and affect (sensation and desire).
Aristotle gives a pretty rational paradigm, a set of Kantian specs, a system for explaining things — until we inject infinity. For pre-Darvinian evolution types, like Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, man had to be distinguished from our video dog. Thus, human substances were composed of matter informed by ‘rational’ souls that could act nutritively, affectively, and ‘intellectually.’
Intellect, they held, was given only to humans: only human brains formed mental concepts (abstractions) from sense perceptions and make judgements with them (thus, only humans could act immaterially just as their God-concept acts). Theologian Thomas went further than philosopher Aristotle by positing that the human soul, being capable of forming concepts and willful judgements, was acting immaterially, and this meant that, like God, human souls must be immortal.
Of course we know from 18th and 19th century thinkers like Hume, Darwin, Walt Whitman, and James, as well as all modern cognitive research that mammals share common cognitive structures all based on emotion. Anthropocentric rationalization granting ontologic uniqueness to the human soul results, I suggest, from the same affective cognition that drives our wonderful video dog to hope for more than what the situation affords.
‘The maple kind’ elicits desires that, like the rush of wonder at eternity, is a fleeting experience, often sought, but seldom presented. It’s sort’a like what the Beatles sang “Oh that magic feeling”
Daniel said: ”Religions demand faith in a supernatural deity _despite_ the lack of any empirical evidence.” I must take issue. There may not be enough evidence to convert a skeptic but to say there is not “any” evidence is simply wrong.
Bertrand Russell said he could not believe in God because there was not “enough” evidence. But even he didn’t say there was “not any evidence”. And if there is “not any evidence”, then why did the philosopher Antony Flew eventually adopt a theist position after holding an atheist position for most of his life. He has said it was because of scientific discoveries made at the macro and microscopic levels. I assume he was referring to the anthropic principle at the macro level and the incredible amount of information discovered in DNA at the molecular biological level. Let me be clear: Flew is not a Christian. He is a theist probably much in the same way Aristotle in positing a prime mover. Both Aristotle and Flew posit a first cause for the complexity they observe, i.e. empirical evidence.
The question is not whether there is evidence for/against God. There is evidence for both. The only thing I can conclude is that each of us has a different threshold for the amount of evidence we require to make a decision one way or the other.
Hi Russ,
Your 3rd paragraph is well taken, and a good point unto itself, but it doesn’t contradict the quote you provided in your 1st.
There may well be people who adopt a religious belief because they think empirical evidence supports their belief. But that’s not what the revealed religions themselves demand. And the Abrahamic faiths are all considered to be revealed religions. As revealed religions are the ones that usually stir up the most debate, and the ones that dominate Western culture, I’ll stick with them. So my quote above asserts that such religions demand adherence whether or not you feel the evidence supports them. (That’s why faith is considered a virtue, for example, because it’s so hard to attain, and different from knowledge — see Kierkegaard.)
That doesn’t contradict the notion that there are those who feel that the evidence _already_ supports belief in a supernatural being we call God. But, if you feel belief in God is supported by evidence in the same way that belief in gravity is supported by evidence, you have to then address why the scientific community, evaluating the very same evidence you do, haven’t come over to your view. I would have to conclude it’s because the definition used by most scientists on what constitutes evidence differs from your definition of what constitutes evidence.
That ties into the question that kicked off this thread. “Faith” in gravity is not the same thing as “faith” in a supernatural deity, which is what I think Manuel was getting at in his comments above. The shortest answer I can offer is that we have not yet adopted the same definitions of “faith,” or “evidence” or “belief”, for that matter. The confusions caused by ordinary language are causing confusion over the propositions we’re all making in this thread.
Tom, the arguments for design will be discussed on episode #43 – Mackie on Theism (already recorded). Although Intelligent Design is not explicitly mentioned as a hypothesis (there is so much baggage attached to that term) we do look at whether the universe has marks of design.
The episode isn’t up yet, but it should be available fairly soon.
The tendency to confuse the map with the territory is a form of belief. All of us who take our language and concepts more literally and less metaphorically participate in this all to common human mistake. Granted, belief in mythological literature is an extreme form, but neo-atheists have formed a “counter-ideology” that is equally based on the falsehoods inherent in conceptual based certainties. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_semantics which is another way of stating much of what Ludwig Wittgenstein was concerned with.
What if we think about the dispute science and theology as a contest of rival hypotheses? If we take a charitable view and suppose that the scientist and the theologian are both looking at the same empirical data with fair and honest eyes, then what we have is two very different views even though they both purport to explain a common set of data. In short, you have two opposed notions even though both of them are attempting to explain the same thing. So what you have is a rivalry that can’t be decided on the basis of evidence precisely because the evidence is the part that is not in dispute. The argument is about whose explanation works better AS an explanation. This is like the pessimist and the optimist. They both read the same newspaper but they draw very difference conclusions from the same news. And to make this charitable framing work, we’ll exclude people who don’t respect journalism or otherwise refuse to deal with the facts. We’ll say people with that kind of faith just don’t get to play this game.
James’s pragmatism was practically invented to grapple with this kind of rivalry. As he saw it, the difference comes down to one’s temperament and personal motives and the various worldviews can be roughly sorted into two rival camps; the rationalists and the empiricists, which are the lovers of the One and the many, the lovers of unifying principles and the lovers of the plural facts. In his time, the contest between theism and materialism was waged mostly by the Hegelians and the positivists. We’re never going to get anywhere, he thought, unless and until the two sides admit that personal feeling have everything to do with it. Let us first confess our motives, he said. And this is the part that usually goes unspoken in this debates, even though it’s a very powerful factor in the construction of our philosophies.
Take the typical objections to materialism, for example. The theist wants to believe in the creator because he has a powerfully negative feeling about implications of materialism. If the universe is a collection of physical forces that operate according to causal laws, then everything that human being care about is just a kind of freak accident and everything we do will eventually evaporate into nothing. The fact is, eternal oblivion scares people. It creeps them out, big time. James thought the rationalists were a tender-minded type that just hated that sort of vision. The tough-minded empiricists, on the other hand, are comforted by the hardness and certainty of the facts. They shudder at the apparent otherworldliness of their rivals and otherwise see them as out of touch dreamers.
Pragmatism was offered as a mediator between these rival views. Let’s admit that all our philosophies are hypotheses, he said, and that’s fine as long as you treat them as such. The idea here is that one’s hypothesis shouldn’t become some kind of intellectual resting place but as a program for more work. The value of the hypothesis has to be measured in terms of what happens when you set it to work in experience, when you act on that belief. Worldviews are not the sorts of things that can be verified by direct observation or the results of any particular experiment but this approach is empirical in a broader sense, in the sense that the idea is tested in experience.
Roughly, the theist says that mind came first, a divine mind that created the physical universe and the materialist says that the physical universe came first and consciousness emerged at some point in the process of evolution. At the end of his life, James became very attracted to a kind of pan-psychism wherein mind and matter are co-eternal aspects of the same reality, that mind evolved along with matter so that “mind” was never entirely absent but grew in complexity along with everything else. In this view, there is no divine mind directing things from above nor does the universe operate according to mechanical laws. Evolution is driven from within, so to speak, by the increasing “intelligence” of the evolving systems themselves. Then the amazing complexity of biochemical systems doesn’t have to be explained by mechanical laws or supernatural intelligence. Instead we attribute the “intelligence” to the biochemistry itself. You still have natural selection going on, but it’s not random chance or mechanical operation. Instead, like sexual selection, the evolving creature plays a vital role in the evolutionary process by making spur of the moment “decisions”, although of course we have to expand the meaning of “decision” to include actions based on something less than rational deliberation, on something much simpler like basic instincts, desires and tendencies. On this view, the natural laws of physics are re-imagined as extremely persistent patterns of preference. The range of options and behavior is so very small that it works to think of them as operating according to unbreakable laws, but thinking about them differently does not alter the data. The empirical reality remains the same, the dials and gages still say the same thing, but now you’ve explained it in such a way that the whole universe has changed. Now the whole thing is alive and aware at some level, however small, instead of universe as a dead machine or as a supernatural miracle. Theism and causality both go out the window. I’ll confess that I’m glad that window is open. Seems a lot less stuffy in here all of a sudden, you know?
Thanks for creating this virtual space, gents. I’m very much enjoying the shows and this forum and it definitely looks like I’m not the only one.
When discussing this topic, there is one aspect I hope you’ll bring out regarding faith. I have found that most people have some sense of “purpose”. Atheists or theists alike… say scientists, believe there’s some value to the pursuit of knowledge. They believe that they are doing something of value when they get up and go to work etc… I see no rational basis for this sense of purpose, which it seems like humans may need to survive/function. I am not specifically talking about morality here… I’m talking about something more general… perhaps an aspect of morality… This sense of purpose seems like a part of human psychology… it seems somehow connected to religion… If we truly want to honestly end religious thinking… then doesn’t this sense of purpose also need to be eradicated? both seem faith based to me.
Sometimes people say, “we can give ourselves a purpose”… but this seems to me like an act of faith to me… Say a purpose like “I will act to improve the wellbeing of the human species.” If it was arbitrary, how can it fullfill a need for purpose…
From my position as something of a theist, I think Sam Harris refusal to deal with the is/ought distinction in his assumption that we can all mean the same thing and something good by happiness is a great example of the problem with the new atheists. Harris’ position seems so attractive and plausible because the hard work of establishing a societal norm that it is better to give than to receive, and as someone’s gram-gram put it ‘it is better to be truthful and good, than to not’ has already been done. Faced with a man whose happiness is his honour, Harris has not much to say about what he ought to do when a female relative of his has been raped or trapped in adultery. That hard work is a set of metaphysical problems, and answers unavoidably take the form of bedrock existential commitments.
I feel like theists spend a lot of energy trying to show atheists that the ground they think they have – the default position – is itself ungrounded, and atheists spend a lot of energy trying to convince theists that
1. it is at least authentic to be ungrounded, not grounded in falsehoods, and
2. it is very ground-like if people would just check it out.
Excited about hearing this podcast!!