Questions For Camille Paglia

I'm a fan of Camille Paglia.  I think that she's an honest and original thinker who is also a gifted communicator.  As such, I take interest in her recent comments at Salon - especially as they pertain to theology.   

Ms. Paglia is an atheist, but of the thoughtful and respectful variety.  She has no trouble identifying the positive contributions that religion has made to society.  As she says:

"I respect every religion deeply. All the great world religions contain a complex system of beliefs regarding the nature of the universe and human life that is far more profound than anything that liberalism has produced. We have a whole generation of young people who are clinging to politics and to politicized visions of sexuality for their belief system.  They see nothing but politics, but politics is tiny.  Politics applies only to society. There is a huge metaphysical realm out there that involves the eternal principles of life and death."

She also has scant respect for atheists who never really did their homework.  She was asked "what do you make of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and the religion critics who seem not to have respect for religions for faith?"

She answered:

"I regard them as adolescents. I say in the introduction to my last book, “Glittering Images”, that “Sneering at religion is juvenile, symptomatic of a stunted imagination.”  It exposes a state of perpetual adolescence that has something to do with their parents– they’re still sneering at dad in some way. Richard Dawkins was the only high-profile atheist out there when I began publicly saying “I am an atheist,” on my book tours in the early 1990s. I started the fad for it in the U.S, because all of a sudden people, including leftist journalists, started coming out of the closet to publicly claim their atheist identities, which they weren’t bold enough to do before. But the point is that I felt it was perfectly legitimate for me to do that because of my great respect for religion in general–from the iconography to the sacred architecture and so forth. I was arguing that religion should be put at the center of any kind of multicultural curriculum."

Fair enough.  But it seems to me that there are questions that atheists should struggle with - ones that I would think would challenge much of the fascinating world-view that Ms. Paglia has developed. If I could, I would ask her:

1. As an atheist, you most likely don't believe in free will.  Do you believe that people should be held accountable for their "wrong-doings?"  If so, why?  Clearly, they have no choice to act in any other manner.
2. Do you believe in concepts like justice and morality which have no scientific or material basis?  What do you view as the source of these concepts? 
3. What is the origin of matter, life and consciousness?  Would our lack of explanatory ability in these matters cause you to suspend your judgement as to weather or not a creative intelligence could have brought them about?  If not, are you accepting your atheism on the basis of faith? 
4. If you believe that life (and as an extension, thought) are the results of blind and impersonal forces, how do you know that your mental faculties are reliable?  Do you have confidence that what your brain tells you (whoever "you" actually is) is coherent?  How do you know?
5. Are any ideas superior to any others?  Given that, materially speaking, ideas are nothing more than haphazard firing of neurons, and that neurons have no actual worth or meaning, how could an idea be said to have any actual value?  As such, should we refrain from all critique of ideas that we subjectively find displeasing? 

That should do for now.  Camille, if you happen to come across this, let's talk!  I would truly be interested to hear what you have to say.

Jerry Coyne: Too Atheist For the Atheists

I happen to have the "distinction" of having been attacked by University of Chicago Biologist Dr. Jerry Coyne on his "Why Evolution Is True" blog during a kind of 6.5 minutes of fame I had online a few years back. Dr. Coyne is the gold standard of militant atheism and speaks with a fervor and certainty that some might associate with religious "fundamentalism." Once in a while, the atheist community comes to recognize that some of their representatives are so utterly disdainful of anything that smacks of theology and so intolerant of any views that diverge with their own accepted wisdom that they become a tad embarrassed.

Such is the case with the general reaction to Dr. Coyne's latest contribution to humanity - a book called "Faith Vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible." Dr. Coyne doesn't believe in free will so I suppose he can't be blamed for writing yet another needlessly judgmental, philosophically unsophisticated and antagonistic work. Then again, since he doesn't believe in free will how could he blame the religious (or anyone really) for holding the views that they do? But Whatever.

Science writer John Horgan has written an interesting piece in Scientific American entitled "Book By Biologist Jerry Coyne Goes Too Far Denouncing Religion, Defending Science."  He also wrote up a review of the book in the Wall Street Journal called "Preaching to the Converted."  Here's a helpful excerpt from that piece:

Coyne’s defenses of science and denunciations of religion are so relentlessly one-sided that they aroused my antipathy toward the former and sympathy toward the latter… He overlooks any positive consequences of religion, such as its role in anti-slavery, civil-rights and anti-war movements. He inflates religion’s contribution to public resistance toward vaccines, genetically modified food and human-induced global warming.

Conversely, he absolves science of responsibility for any adverse consequences, such as weapons and ideologies of mass destruction. “The compelling force that produced nuclear weapons, gunpowder, and eugenics was not science but people.” Right. Science doesn’t kill people; people kill people.

Naïve readers of Mr. Coyne might conclude that science is rapidly filling in the remaining gaps in our understanding of reality and solving ancient philosophical conundrums. He claims that free will, the notion that “we can choose to behave in different ways,” is being contradicted by research in genetics and neuroscience and “looks increasingly dubious.”

As evidence, he cites scientific revelations that our choices are often influenced by factors of which we are unaware. Yes, Freud told us as much, and Sophocles for that matter. But it is absurd to conclude that all our conscious deliberations are therefore inconsequential…

Mr. Coyne’s critique of free will, far from being based on scientific “fact,” betrays how his hostility toward religion distorts his judgment. Evidence against free will, he says, “kicks the props out from under much theology, including the doctrine of salvation.” Mr. Coyne thinks that if religious people believe in free will, it must be an illusion.

Mr. Coyne’s loathing of creationism, similarly, leads him to exaggerate what science can tell us about our cosmic origins. Mr. Coyne asserts that “we are starting to see how the universe could arise from ‘nothing,’ and that our own universe might be only one of many universes that differ in their physical laws.” Actually, cosmologists are more baffled than ever at why there is something rather than nothing… And multiverse theories are about as testable as religious beliefs.

Mr. Coyne repeatedly reminds us that science, unlike religion, promotes self-criticism, but he is remarkably lacking in this virtue himself. He rejects complaints that some modern scientists are guilty of “scientism,” which I would define as excessive trust—faith!—in science. Calling scientism “a grab bag of disparate accusations that are mostly inaccurate or overblown,” Mr. Coyne insists that the term “be dropped.”

Actually, Faith vs. Fact serves as a splendid specimen of scientism. Mr. Coyne disparages not only religion but also other human ways of engaging with reality. The arts, he argues, “cannot ascertain truth or knowledge,” and the humanities do so only to the extent that they emulate the sciences. This sort of arrogance and certitude is the essence of scientism.

Well said, and oodles of fodder for future discussion (especially as Horgan then goes on to make some classical theological errors that, as he explains, have informed his religious worldview) but we'll save that for another post.

Seven Things Atheists Get Wrong

I had been meaning to post this for a while - an interesting perspective from a friend of a friend (David Marcus) at the Federalist:

In a spectacular and telling failure of journalism MSNBC reported recently that Pope Francis “broke with Catholic tradition” by asserting that the Big Bang theory is real. Instantly, the Internet responded with the name Georges Lemaitre, one of the creators of the Theory of Universal Expansion who also happened to be a Jesuit priest. He is also the first entry on a Google search of “Catholic Big Bang.”

That the MSNBC author did not bother to do one search before making a pronouncement about the faith of a billion people displays abysmal incompetence. But it also reflects very skewed and dangerous ideas about the nature of religion widely held in the media and creative class. As atheist Sam Harris put it in his article “Science Must Destroy Religion”: “the conflict between religion and science is inherent and (very nearly) zero sum.” This confrontational attitude ,which is unnecessary and harmful, springs from a slew of misconceptions about religion as a human phenomenon.

1. Religion Is About Morality, Not Creation Myths

It was apt that MSNBCs misnomer about the Catholic view of science concerned creation. Often the origin of the earth and of man plays a central role in the science versus religion debate. There are jokes about cave men riding dinosaurs, deep concerns about our children being exposed to the idea of intelligent design, and disdain thrown upon those who question the almighty power of science. But, frankly, creation, while fascinating, is not the most important aspect of the atheist critique of religion. Morality is. The means by which the earth was made plays an insignificant role in our daily lives. Moral choices, on the other hand, are made every day, and they have long, lingering effects.

2. Religion Is the Foundation of All Morality, Not Merely an Expression of It

The atheist approach to the non-empirical question of “how do we determine right from wrong” tends to be a negative ad campaign listing the horrors done in the name of religion. Whether it is the Inquisition or ISIS, atheists argue that these barbarities stem directly from the intolerance of religious texts and practices. On the surface it can be a persuasive argument, but upon deeper reflection it becomes murky.

Christopher Hitchens, of all people, inadvertently exposed the complexity of religion’s relationship to morality and barbarism in a debate. Confronted with the fact that Stalin was an atheist who committed genocide, he said:

In Russia in 1917 for hundreds of years billions of people had been told that the head of the state is a supernatural power...This has been inculcated in generations of Russians for hundreds of years, if you are Josef Stalin, himself a seminarian from Georgia, you shouldn’t be in the totalitarianism business if you can’t exploit a ready made reservoir of credulity and servility.

Hitchens is too clever for his own good here. In broadening the scope of immoral actions caused by religion to capture the acts of atheists, he broadens it so completely that it captures everything. Hitchens, in his eagerness to blame religion for Stalin’s atrocities asserts that religion is the foundation for all moral choices, not merely those made in religion’s name.

He is absolutely right. All of us, whether atheist, agnostic, or a member of a religion, practice morality based on religion. Without religion there would never have been morality. There was no peaceful, Adamite paradise of moral choice which religion sullied millennia ago. Before religion, there was murder and rape and all manner of horrors just as there are today. It was religion that first sought to constrain human actions through a moral code, not science. The same credulity and servility that led Russia to support Stalin leads us to believe that right differs from wrong and that we must choose (or serve) that which is right.

3. Religion Was the Foundation of Society, Not an Addition to It

In his insightful essay, “Primitive Religion and the Origin of the State”[1] philosopher Marcel Gauchet goes a step farther, arguing that without religion there would be no state. He writes that “by going back in time to the religious tie between supernatural founder-givers and human heirs-debtors, we can elucidate the system of primitive links that produces the social space.” It was this debt to supernatural, irrational powers that created the very notion of acting in accordance with what is good. Whether all, or some, or none of the admonitions in Leviticus or the Koran are really moral is beside the point. They are part of humanity’s search, stretching to the invisible past, for guidelines or maxims that produce good actions and the structures to encourage them.

4. Atheists Do Believe

The question most often posed to atheists who complain about the presence of the Ten Commandments or a creche in public spaces is, “Since you don’t believe, why does it bother you so much?” This is the wrong question. The right question is, “Since you do believe, why does it bother you so much?” Because most atheists do believe, and I stress the word believe, that they are capable of understanding right from wrong. They provide no scientific justification for such a belief because no such scientific justification exists.

5. Science Can’t Teach Us Right from Wrong

Even if it were proven that there is a “generosity gene” or that there are evolutionary advantages to cooperative behavior, such things would not inform us how to act in a given situation. The activation of a gene or the selfless actions of our ancestors may well provide a subconscious impulse for moral action, but that impulse must still be translated to the conscious mind. Upon finding a $20 bill on the floor, we must still decide whether to keep it or look for its previous owner based on stories we tell ourselves. Science cannot tell us these stories, and the moment it tries to it becomes religion.

The idea of a cold finite existence ending in complete oblivion is not the harshest concept an atheist must swallow. Far more present and paralyzing is the notion that our actions are devoid of moral consequence. As Hitchens points out, so ingrained is our credulity towards morality and our servility to it that most people cannot ignore it. It is not merely silly superstitions that atheists seek to remove from our personal and policy choices, it is the idea that an objectively, morally correct choice is even possible. But even if we accept the premise that morality is entirely subjective, we still have to decide how to act.

6. Religion Complements Science, It Doesn’t Oppose It

This is where religion, far from being the natural enemy of science, comes to its aid. Just as believers must always fight nagging doubts about the truth of their beliefs, the atheist must fight nagging beliefs when confronted with moral choices. Just as there is no paradox in a believer knowing that science can reveal important details of how the physical world operates, there is no paradox in an atheist knowing that religion and its ancient history of moral investigation is relevant to moral understanding.

In his masterpiece “The Glass Bead Game,” Herman Hesse envisions a future Europe in which there are two basic powers. The first is the elite group of players of the game, a mysterious enterprise in which all of human knowledge is manipulated and combined to create pure, rational truths. The other is the Roman Catholic Church, which remains essentially unchanged in the world of the novel. Hesse knew that at some points the cold, rational understanding of the world must give way to metaphysical musings. The book’s central character stands between these two powers, influenced by both. Most Americans stand similarly between these obligations to science and to religion.

7. Ignorance of Religion Is Ignorance of History, For Atheists and Everyone

The systematic removal of religious texts, practices, and imagery from our public lives is not a worthy goal. When the Ten Commandments are placed on a wall, nobody believes they are the actual tablets Moses brought down from Sinai’s mount. They are a representation of an ancient message that one can believe is sacred or secular but that one cannot claim is insignificant. It is possible to encounter and explore a religious text without imbuing it with supernatural significance. Harold Bloom does just that in his insightful “The Book of J,” which explores the work of one Old Testament writer through the lens of literary criticism.

Secular approaches to religion such as Bloom’s are far superior to the idea of hiding religion from education or public discourse. We have to understand that for thousands of years our culture and every culture based its moral choices on very simple sets of stories—stories which many of us have stopped telling each other. That has a terrible effect on our ability to understand our culture and its past. Try reading “Moby Dick” without a working knowledge of the Bible. It becomes little more than a tall tale about fishing.

Showing respect for a person or culture’s religious beliefs, even if you disagree with him, is simple common courtesy. I am asking atheists to do much more. I am asking them to understand and embrace the role religion played in creating the world we live in, and to see that religion was not merely the author of good moral choices or bad moral choices but of the very concept of moral choice.

Later in his essay, Harris argues that “religion is fast growing incompatible with the emergence of global, civil society.” This, in a nutshell, is what atheists get wrong. It is only through religion, and its metaphysical, moral obligations that global society is possible at all. As Harris pulls the offending thread of religion out of the global moral tapestry, it falls apart, replaced only with his preferences. In the end the battle, between atheists and believers in the area of moral choice is little different than the battle between Jews and Muslims. All of us have contributions to make, and no side will ever prove its unique power to teach us how we should choose.

[1]Gauchet, Marcel, “Primitive Religion and the Origin of the State,” New French Thought,Lilla, Mark (1994).

The Atheist's Case of Commandment Envy

There's an interesting (and popular) post by Kimberly Winston in the Huffington Post entitled "10 Commandments For Atheists Who Want to Explore Their Values."  There are several aspects of the post that I find interesting.  The first is that this strikes me as yet another example of how unsatisfying atheism must be as a philosophy and lifestyle - so much so that they appear to be in desperate want of ritual and guiding principles. 

This truth is reflected in the spate of atheist books aimed at mimicking theology's (often) enviable mastery of the creation of community and the imparting of meaning to their adherents (see Alain De Botton's "Religion For Atheists" and Terry Eagleton's "Culture and the Death of God").  

So too is there a deep and real human need to live life with purpose and meaning - something atheists can only attempt to do by living according to an agreed upon fiction of their own devising.  As I've said and written many times, if there is no God, then there is no meaning or purpose save what individuals invent to call "meaningful."  Hence, there will be many attempts to co-opt the "good" and desirable aspects of religion to plaster over this glaring (and ultimately fatal) flaw in atheism.  The atheist's only other alternative is to fully accept and embrace the inherent bleakness and lack of hope that is inseparable from his or her world-view - something that most of them are understandably reluctant to do. Therefore, the creation of a 10 Commandments for Atheists is another stab at creating meaning and principle from so much vapor.

Regarding the title, I find it perplexing that atheists would want to explore their "values."  Why?  What values are there to be held in the first place and can any two atheists be said to share a set of these common "values?"  If so, where did they get them from?  From a materialist's perspective, a "value" is nothing more than an electro-chemical impulse that occurs in the three pounds of squiggly pudding encased in the skull.  That pudding produces a lot of those impulses.  Are they in any explicable way different from say a lightning storm?  Does the storm have any "meaning" or "values?"  Clearly not.  It would therefore seem fundamentally paradoxical for atheists to explore their "values."  So much for the title.  How about the "commandments" themselves?

Here's #1:

"I. The world is real, and our desire to understand the world is the basis for belief."

Ok, several questions come to mind.  First of all, what is meant by the "world" - presumably just physicality - in essence a lot of electrons, etc.  Why the desire to understand a large amount of random and meaningless particles?  Also, many atheists believe that there is no such thing as free will.  If that's the case, how would we be able to arrive at any conclusions regarding a things's reality or non-reality given that we are just "programmed" to believe one thing or another. Furthermore, how do we know that our faculties (themselves products of random and meaningless forces) are reliable to begin with?  One may have a desire to "understand the world" but what "belief" could that possibly engender?  Belief in what?

It would probably be instructive and interesting to go through each one but I think this suffices for now to evidence the point I'm making - that atheists would be better off (as some have) acknowledging the limitations of their way of thinking and working on ways of unburdening themselves of the (from their perspective anyway) fictitious and erroneous desire for a coherent and meaningful set of principles for living.  Theology has that one under lock and key.

Conservatives, Liberals and Religion on "The View"

There was an interesting exchange between conservative political commentator S.E. Cupp and Whoopi Goldberg a few days ago on The View.  They were arguing over whether or not it's appropriate to suggest to someone that they should "pray over their food" or maybe just even having to see someone praying in public (it wasn't totally clear from the exchange).

If the former, I would certainly agree with Whoopi that it's pretty rude to randomly critique someone for not "praying over their food" and might suggest that people who do that (does this really happen a lot?) should probably mind their own business.  It's not likely these people will win anyone over by getting in their faces about it.  If someone really wanted to convince another to "pray over their food" - something that Judaism values - it would be significantly more effective to lead such an exemplary life that people will be compelled to wonder "what makes that person so fantastic?" "How can I be more like her?"  They will notice, as they get to know the "food praying person" that he or she has a remarkable relationship to and appreciation for food.  They may become curious and inquire about the practice.

Or maybe not.  But either way, religious people don't do themselves any favors by attempting to guilt people into behaving in ways that they deem fitting and I can't in fact think of a better way to ensure that the person they're trying to "help" will not do what they suggest and will leave the conversation with a bitter taste in their mouths.

Btw -  S.E. Cupp is a model atheist - open minded, non-adversarial and extremely accepting of the religious practice of others.

You can see the view of the whole exchange here.

Where's Waldo and the Teleological Argument

Dr. Ed Fesser has a fun analogy on his blog in the form of a "skeptic" and a "believer" arguing over the existence of the "Painter" of a Where's Waldo scene.  The skeptic says:

 “Painter?  Oh please, there’s no evidence of any painter!  I’ve been studying this canvas for years.  I’ve gone over every square inch.  I’ve studied each figure in detail -- facial expressions, posture, clothing, etc.  I’ve found plumbers, doctors, dancers, hot dog vendors, dogs, cats, birds, lamp posts, and all kinds of other things.  But I’ve never found this painter of yours anywhere in it.  No doubt you’ll tell me that I need to look again until I find him.  But really, how long do we have to keep looking without success until people like you finally admit that there just is no painter?”

And the believer retorts:

“I think you’re overlooking crucial evidence, Skeptic,” Believer says.  “I agree that you’re not going to find evidence of the painter on any cursory examination, or in most of the painting.  But consider that in the upper left corner, among the other figures, there’s a policeman leaning at about a ninety degree angle, yet whose facial expression gives no indication that he feels like he’s going to fall over.  Now it’s possible that he’s leaning on something -- a mailbox perhaps -- but that seems very unlikely given that we see no mailbox, and a mailbox would be too big for part of it not to be visibly sticking out from behind one of the other figures standing around.  No, I think that the best explanation is that there is an invisible figure standing next to the policeman, or at least an invisible force of some kind, which is operating at that spot to hold him up.  And an invisible cause like that is part of what we think the painter is supposed to be, no?  Also, you’ve said that you’ve gone over this painting square inch by square inch.  But we’ve got techniques now to study the painting at the level of the square centimeter or even the square millimeter.  Who knows what we’ll find there?  In fact it seems there are some really complicated patterns at that level and it doesn’t seem remotely probable that any of the figures we do see in the painting could have produced them.  But an invisible painter could have done so.  In fact the patterns we find at that level show a pretty high level of cleverness and artistic skill.  So, when we weigh all the evidence, I think there’s just a really strong case for the existence of a painter of some sort, in fact of a really skillful sort!”

This dialogue is meant to capture the modern debate between atheists like Richard Dawkins and Intelligent Design advocates like Steven Meyer - who is a modern day proponent of a classical line of argumentation for God's existence known as the Teleological Argument.  In a nut shell this argument notes that the world appears to exhibit evidence of design - a heart seems to essentially be a pump, a bacterial flagellum looks very much like an outboard motor and a liver functions very much like a filter.  Scientists like Meyer observe the remarkable machine-like qualities of the various organelles of the cell such as Ribosomes, Golgi an Mitochondria and the DNA molecule and conclude that given the age of the universe, there could not possibly have been sufficient time for natural processes to produce the level of functional information to make these things work.  Truth be told, this argument strikes me as very strong and very intuitively obvious.

Professor Fesser thinks it's all besides the point.  He sees the skeptic and the believer as butting heads over a red herring and that the real discussion should revolve solely around the "Painter."  As he says:

Skeptic’s and Believer’s shared conception of how to determine whether the painter exists is like the dispute over whether William Paley or ID theory provide sufficient “scientific evidence” for a “designer”; whereas the correct conception of how the painting points to the painter is like the conception of God’s relation to the world one finds in the cosmological argument rightly understood -- understood, that is, the way Aristotelian, neo-Platonic, and Thomist and other Scholastics understand it.  It is not a question of natural science -- which, given the methods that define it in the modern period, can in principle only ever get you from one part of the world to another part of it, and never outside the world -- but rather a question for metaphysics, which is not limited by its methods to the this-worldly.  (See the posts collected here for what’s wrong with “design inferences” as usually understood.  See the posts collected here for what the cosmological argument, rightly understood, has to say.)

To change the analogy slightly, it’s as if the New Atheist on the one hand and his “theistic pesonalist” and “design inference” opponents on the other are playing a pseudo-theological variant of Where’s Waldo? (also known as Where’s Wally?)  The New Atheist thinks that the problem is that too many people refuse to admit that Waldo is nowhere to be found in the picture.  The theistic personalist and the ID theorist think the problem is that the New Atheists refuse to see how strong is the evidence that Waldo is at such-and-such a place in the picture (hiding behind a bacterial flagellum, perhaps).  The classical theist knows that the real problem is that these guys are all wasting enormous amounts of time and energy playing Where’s Waldo instead of talking about God.

We hear in these debates about “open theism,” “process theism,”  “onto-theology,” “neo-theism” and so on.  Perhaps we need a new label for the essentially creaturely or anthropomorphic conception of deity that gets endlessly hashed over in pop apologetics and pop atheism while the true God -- the God of Athanasius and Augustine, Maimonides and Avicenna, Anselm and Aquinas -- gets ignored.  Call it “Wally-theism” or “Waldo-theology.”

Food for thought.  Read the whole thing  here.  


 

Sartre, God and Morality

The ongoing conflict in Gaza has me (and many others) ruminating on the nature of good and evil - something that Jean-Paul Sartre had something to say about.  This is an essay by my favorite contemporary theological philosopher Edward Feser on the topic.  If you've never read him you should.  He has the rare gift of being able to articulate extremely advanced and difficult concepts in a fun and relateable style.  Here's what he says:

If God is dead, is everything permitted? Yes and no. There is a connection between the existence of God and the possibility of morality, but it is not as direct as many religious believers – and some atheists – think it is. Take Jean-Paul Sartre, about whom Bill Vallicella has been writing a series of interesting blog posts this week. Sartre was an atheist, and he held, famously, that in a Godless universe there can be no objective standards of moral value. Why did he think this? First of all, because standards of moral value presuppose, Sartre maintained (correctly, in my view), that there is such a thing as human nature. But in a Godless universe there can be no such thing as human nature. Why not? As Bill reconstructs Sartre’s argument:

The argument seems to be:

There is no God
Essences or natures are divine concepts
-----
There is no human nature.

Another argument Sartre may have in mind is this:

Man has a nature only if man is a divine artifact
There is no God and hence no divine artifacts
-----
Man has no nature.
But as Bill goes on to point out, a problem with this argument is that it is not as clear as Sartre thinks it is that there being such a thing as human nature presupposes that essences are divine concepts or that we are divine artifacts. For example, Aristotle held that there is such a thing as human nature, but (despite his belief in an Unmoved Mover of the universe) did not think of us as divine artifacts.

What is going on here, I surmise, is that Sartre has uncritically bought into the modern notion that to attribute purposes to natural objects and processes is ipso facto to commit oneself to a divine designer a la William Paley. And as I have been pointing out in a series of posts on teleology, Paley, and related matters, that is an error, at least from an Aristotelian-Thomistic (A-T) point of view. For A-T, the natures and final causes of things are immanent to them. Natural objects are not like machines, the parts of which have no inherent ordering to the end they serve, so that the parts cannot even be made sense of as serving a common end apart from a “designer” who forces them into their machine-like configuration. Rather, that a heart (for example) is “directed toward” or “ordered to” the end of pumping blood is something true of it simply by virtue of its being a heart at all, and would remain true of it whatever its cause or even if (per impossibile) it had no cause. For A-T, the natures of things can be known, at least in principle, entirely apart from questions about their origins, and human nature would still be what it is whether or not we were created by God. Sartre would need an additional argument against views like Aristotle’s, then, before he could make the case that in a Godless universe there could be no such thing as human nature and thus no objective source of value.

Does that mean that there is no connection between theism and morality? By no means. For whatever Aristotle believed, Aquinas and his followers argue (e.g. in Aquinas’s Fifth Way) that the existence of final causes, and thus of things having the natures that natural objects do in fact have, must ultimately be traced to the divine intellect. It’s just that the inference is not as direct as Paley, Sartre, and other moderns think it is. As I have pointed out before (following an observation made by Christopher Martin) modern philosophers tend to think that it is easy to get from the existence of purposes in nature to the conclusion that God exists, but frightfully difficult to show that there really are any purposes in nature. Classical philosophers, by contrast, tend to think that it is obvious that there are purposes in nature, and that where the real philosophical work comes in is in showing that these purposes entail the existence of God. It can be done, but a middle stage is required between the premise “Final causes exist” and the conclusion “God exists.” (For an exposition of how this will go, see the section on the Fifth Way in The Last Superstition, and, especially, the longer exposition in the relevant section of Aquinas.)

So, one way in which morality does depend on the existence of God is that morality presupposes (as Sartre correctly recognizes) the existence of essences and final causes, and these in turn must ultimately be explained in terms of God (but only via arguments that are less obvious and direct than Sartre supposes). That is, it depends on God in the way everything depends on God. Is there any specialdependence of morality on God, though – some way that it depends on theism in the way other aspects of the natural world do not? Yes, in two respects: First, for moral imperatives to have the force of law in the strict sense (and not merely as the course of action wisdom recommends if we seek to fulfill our nature) ultimately requires that they be understood as having in some sense been issued by an authoritative lawgiver. Since the existence of God can (according to A-T) be proved by rational arguments, so too (for that very reason) can the existence of such a lawgiver. There is no appeal here to “blind faith,” and to bring God into the picture is perfectly consistent with the imperatives of natural law being natural (as opposed to resting on special divine revelation). Still, there is an irreducible theological component to morality when it is understood in itstotality, even if much of it can be known completely apart from God. (See the “Ethics” chapter of Aquinas for the complete story.)

Second, given that the existence of God can in fact be rationally established (as, again, A-T maintains), a complete system of morality is inevitably going to make reference to our distinctively religious obligations. Furthermore, there are requirements of the natural law that would, at least as a matter of psychological fact, be very difficult for us to live up to if we had no hope of a reward in the hereafter for injustices and hardships suffered here and now. Religion thus serves as a practically indispensible aid to morality. (Again, see Aquinas, and the section in TLS on natural law, for more.)

Now if there is a sense in which morality does ultimately rest on the existence of God, does that not entail that my criticism of Sartre is mere quibbling? It does not, for this reason. If the A-T view of morality is correct, then even if morality ultimately depends on God, we could nevertheless discover a great deal about our moral obligations even if we did not know that God exists. Compare: We can discover a great deal about the way the natural world works via empirical scientific research, without making any direct reference to God and His purposes. To know about the periodic table of elements, for example, does not require that we first prove God’s existence, even if God’s existence is the ultimate explanation of the periodic table (because it is the ultimate explanation of everything). Similarly, we can to a large extent understand human nature even if we bracket off the question of God’s existence. And for that reason, we can know a great deal about what fulfills our nature – and thus about the content of our moral obligations – even if we do not think of that nature as given to us by God.

Hence when Sartre finally met his Maker and was asked to account for (say) his notorious sexual immorality, or his support for communism, we can be confident that said Maker would not have been impressed had Sartre replied: “But Lord, I honestly did not know that You existed!” We can imagine God responding: “Even if I were to grant you that dubious proposition, how is it relevant? You didn’t need Mearound to tell you that promiscuity and mass murder are evil. Your knowledge of human nature was enough to tell you that.” And were Sartre to reply: “But I honestly didn’t believe in human nature either!” perhaps God might say: “Oh, please. Next you’ll tell Me that you weren’t certain that the empirical world was anything other than a dream!” For it takes an enormous amount of self-deception to get oneself to doubt that there is such a thing as human nature, just as it would take an enormous amount of self-deception to get oneself seriously to believe that one’s entire life is only a dream. In particular, and in both cases, it takes the sort of self-deception only intellectuals are capable of – the sort embodied in bizarre revisionist systems of metaphysics of the kind rife in modern philosophy.

Be all that as it may, the point is that the A-T view of things does not, as the careless reader might have supposed, make things easier for the secularist, morally speaking. On the contrary, it makes things much harder on him. For, contra the implications of a Paley-style view of God’s relationship to the world, ignorance of the Author of nature does not excuse ignorance of the nature of things, and thus it does not excuse ignorance of the demands of the natural law. You can know that things have natures and final causes – and thus you can know what morality requires of you at least in general terms – whether or not you know that there is a God. And that is one reason why it is a more than academic matter to point out where Sartre goes wrong in his claims about the relationship between theism and morality.

Bonus observation: As Bill notes, Sartre took the bizarre view that to believe in an objective source of morality somehow entails looking for an “excuse” to avoid taking “responsibility” for one’s actions. Bill notes some of what is wrong with such a view. But why would Sartre think it at all plausible in the first place? Here, I speculate, we see the malign influence on modern moral theorizing of Kant – in particular, of all the Kantian stuff about heteronomy versus autonomy, and about how our moral dignity requires that we be conceived of as “self-legislators” and “ends in ourselves.” On this view, unless the demands of morality can be interpreted as in some sense self-imposed – as something we bind ourselves to, by virtue of being rational agents – then morality could only be a restriction on our freedom and dignity. In particular, human dignity requires (on this view) that morality not be seen as imposed on us from outside – by nature, say, or God. If you believe such blasphemous liberal modernist tosh, then perhaps Sartre’s characterization of the idea of an objective moral standard as an “excuse” to avoid taking “responsibility” for one’s freedom might seem halfway plausible. If not, then you might consider Sartre’s view as (possibly) yet one more decadent riff on this poisonous Kantian theme.

Here endeth the rant about Kant. But more later.

The Smackdown of Pop Atheism Rolls On

Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Dennett et al made a big noise and undoubtedly affected a lot of people with their brash, combative and "in your face" style writing and speaking.  They garnered a lot of attention. Unfortunately for them they also attracted the attention of some people who had a lot more training and experience with philosophy and theology (what they attempted to engage in in the first place) and who proceeded to unmask their ignorance on the topic.  My favorites are David Berlinski, Edward Feser and Moshe Averick who are all linked on the home page.

Today I came across something from Slate's Book review entitled "Know Nothing: the True History of Atheism" by Michael Robbins.  In reviewing a new book by Nick Spencer called "Atheists: the Origin of the Species" he makes several good points.  The first is that Pop Atheism generally busies itself attacking straw men - defeating arguments and concepts they invented themselves and that the other side isn't putting forward.  For instance, someone like Richard Dawkins believes that there is no way to evidence something's existence without reference to a material characteristic - we need to be able to measure it, test it, hypothesize about it, etc - and if this cannot be done then the thing does not exist.  Ironically, Dawkins's supposition is itself immaterial (impossible to measure, etc) and this subject to the same non-existence he claims for metaphysics. As Robbins comments on this point "Richard Dawkins claims that religion is a 'scientific' theory, 'a competing explanation for facts about the universe and life.'  This is - if you'll forgive my theological jargon - Bulls***."

Another popular straw man is God Himself.  Outside of being wantonly offensive to millions of people, descriptions of the Deity of classical monotheism like Dawkins's are simply not describing the one that is easily found (if you've bothered to read a bit) in classical theology.  So as he generously offered "The God of the Old Testament is a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, insecticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sado-masochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."  Uh huh.  One wonders about his relationship with his father.  In any event this is all simply absurd, inaccurate and illogical.  Robbins again - "if your idea of God is not one that most theistic traditions would recognize, you're not talking about God...but even more damning is that  such atheists appear ignorant of atheism as well."

"Atheists used to take the idea of God Seriously.  That's why they mattered."


 

Freud Liked (Some) Faith

It's well-known that Sigmund Freud was an atheist and believed that religiosity was a "neurosis" (though he held that this wasn't a pejorative word per se). Despite this, Freud believed that there were a number of tangible benefits that could be gained through engagement with theological thinking.  Lacy Cooke of Faithstreet outlines some of these benefits in a piece called "How Sigmund Freud Got Religion."

Freud was impressed by Judaism's insistence that there be no visual representation of the Divine and felt that this practice helped devotees with abstract reasoning - so much so that he believed that "Jewish thought laid the foundation for intellectual progress in the western world."  He also felt (despite his own lack of it) that a belief in a Creator helped improve the mind and that the "Jewish People were able to develop introspection through their faith in God."

It's unfortunate that so many contemporary atheists are unable to perceive and appreciate these benefits.  At very least, it would allow them to conduct themselves in a respectful manner towards people of faith and thus contribute to the general societal harmony.  In truth, there's a growing "second wave" of atheists who do just that.  Publications to date include: "An Awareness of What's Missing" by Jurgen Haberman, The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality by Andre Comte-Sponville and Alain de Botton's "Religion For Atheists."

What these atheists have come to realize is that they've thrown the baby out with the bath water and there is quite a lot that we all want and need as human beings - deep and fundamental things like meaning, ritual and community - to be found in theology.  I'm all in favor of a reformation within the cynical and acrimonious incarnation of the "new" atheism and see this explicit recognition as a good first step.  I'm hopeful that with further research and introspection that some of these folks (as many have done before them) will come to appreciate that not only was the baby worth saving but that the bath water was pretty important as well.  

Science Discovers Atheists Don't Exist

I was a little surprised to come across this link today: "Scientists Discover That Atheists Might Not Exist, and That's Not a Joke."  According to the article "cognitive scientists are becoming increasingly aware that a metaphysical outlook may be so deeply ingrained in human thought processes that it cannot be expunged."  It's not new information to anyone that human beings are "hard-wired" for numinous experience - for having a specific sense or experience of something transcendent in their lives.  As a believer in spirituality I obviously have no issue with that as it would be absurd to imagine that the Creator would not have endowed us with the capability of recognizing His existence.  What I don't like so much are the "side effects" of the researchers conclusions and how they arrived at them in the first place.

The central premise of the findings is that in as much as we have no free will - we have no choice but to believe in transcendence.  As they state, "evidence from several disciplines indicates that what you actually believe is not a decision you make for yourself.  Your fundamental beliefs are decided by much deeper levels of consciousness, and some may well be more or less set in stone."  It's true that many atheists don't believe in free will but I would think that this is one of those areas for potential agreement between believers and non-believers.

If there's no free will, then naturally there is no morality and no reason to hold anyone accountable for their behavior.  Despite the obvious veracity of that idea we don't seem to find anyone, anywhere, embracing it or acting as if it's true.  To me that has always indicated that atheists actually do, deep down, believe in a transcendent morality (an absolute code of right and wrong) and they only pay a sort of intellectual lip service to the idea that there isn't and that we're truly not free.  As the article notes - people "are only aware of some of their religious ideas."  As I've noticed that atheists are (generally) uncomfortable with the idea that they are compelled into believing what they do (including their atheism), so am I, as it would make all of Jewish practice a ridiculous charade.  For a comprehensive take on the Jewish notion of free will have a look at Rabbi Akiva Tatz's new book on the subject "Will, Freedom and Destiny."

The piece then goes on to list many of the benefits that religion (which we have no choice but to embrace due to our lack of free will and which is programmed into us by evolution) that atheists knowingly or not participate in.  For instance:

• Some sort of ritual when a loved one passes on
• An abiding interest in morality 
• Belief in some sort of  "supernatural surveillance" (Karma, the Universe, God, etc)  in keeping people on the straight and narrow
• The recognition of an "unnamed, unidentified payback mechanism" that dispenses justice - and is frequently seen in books, films, etc.

In short, the piece, though I contest its free-will assumption, is making some good (and obvious) points:  A) Human beings need and depend on the transcendent, B) Atheists (being human) also depend on and function in the world of the numinous and C) "religion" is the best vehicle for meeting these fundamental needs.

As the piece correctly concludes "we might all be a little more spiritual than we think."

The "New Atheists" Are Not Logical

As I've mentioned before, the "New Atheist" crowd are a group of people with above average intelligence who happen to be gifted in the art of the spoken and written word.  Richard Dawkins is a biologist by training, Chris Hitchens was a journalist, Sam Harris was trained in neuroscience (plus a BA in philosophy).  Of this group only Daniel Dennett has advanced training in Philosophy - receiving his Ph.D from Oxford.  As such, the first three could be forgiven to some extent for failing to truly understand what it is that they claim to be refuting.  Dennett, it would seem, has no excuse.

This group has done inestimable harm to the general public by wrapping their flawed and incomplete comprehension of theology in a veneer of erudition and confidence.  Often more bluster than substance, these aggressive and often intolerant people are long on attitude and short on facts.  For instance, Richard Dawkins believes that he refuted the Cosmological argument in "The God Delusion" by claiming that the main thrust of the argument is that "everything has a cause" and therefore "what caused God?"  The only issue is that no one ever presented the argument like that - not Aristotle, nor Aquinas, nor Al Ghazali nor Maimonides.  The argument has always been that "that which begins to exist has a cause" which closes the loop on the "what caused God" rebuttal.  So one of two things is possible - either a) he was unaware of this - which would seem highly unacceptable for someone writing a book refuting God's existence (without refuting any of the actual arguments that theists make in favor of His existence) or b) he did it willfully - which is deceptive and intellectually dishonest.  Which one do you think it is?

Ok, so maybe they're not that versed in classical theology but they sure can think!  Isn't the force of their reason enough to put the last nail in the coffin of the the folly that is religion?  Not so much.  I recently came across an essay by Ian Kluge on a website called www.bahaiphilosophystudies.com that outlines the (very many) logical errors in the writing of these four men.  His stated aim of the piece is not to demonstrate their lack of theological prowess but rather to "show that their reasoning is not to be trusted."  Here's a sample from the Hitchens section:

I.  GOD IS NOT GREAT by Christopher Hitchens

# 1: much of this book is an extended non sequitur: proving that God does not exist is logically distinct from God’s nature, i.e. God may be evil but He may exist nonetheless.

# 2: It is also a category mistake, i.e. confusing the category of existence with the category of ethics. Goodness or badness cannot prove that something does or does not exist.

# 3: “It must seek to interfere with the lives of nonbelievers or heretics or adherents of other faiths.” (p. 17): Besides being an error of fact, this is non-sequitur: it does not follow from the fact that some religions have ‘interfered’ that all have or that all “must” do so as part of their inherent nature.

# 4: This is also an unsupported assertion and an sweeping generalization (fallacy of accident), i.e. a confusion/conflation of ‘some’ with ‘all,’ i.e. a failure to note exceptions.

# 5: “Once again, religion has poisoned everything.” (p. 27) Rhetorical exaggeration: this has no reasonable content, i.e. is logical and scientific nonsense, i.e. this is not a proposition that is amenable to scientific testing and has no scientific meaning at all – which leads Hitchens into inconsistency since he thinks our thought should be scientific.  It is irrational: how could religion poison mother’s milk, the manufacture of ball-point pens, and the activity of bird-watching? What does “poisons” actually mean? If he means it as a metaphor it is either an example of poetic license, hyperbole, in which case there is no point trying to prove it – it can’t be; or it is meant literally, then H has discovered scientific evidence of a new agent that can poison mother’s milk, the manufacture of book-ends and prospecting for beryllium. He provides no such evidence. This claim is pure rhetoric, i.e. has no reason to support it but relies on emotional connotations.

He makes 119 points in part I and an additional 180 points in part II.  Read it and see if you feel that these folks are the brilliant thinkers they are purported to be.

Bravo Mr. Kluge...