Harris on Collins
Sam Harris has harsh things to say about Francis Collins’s book. “His book, however, reveals that a stellar career in science offers no guarantee of a scientific frame of mind,” he observes, then he quotes from the book:
As believers, you are right to hold fast to the concept of God as Creator; you are right to hold fast to the truths of the Bible; you are right to hold fast to the conclusion that science offers no answers to the most pressing questions of human existence; and you are right to hold fast to the certainty that the claims of atheistic materialism must be steadfastly resisted….
You are “right”? What does he mean? Morally right? To “hold fast” to truths that aren’t truths? To hold fast to certainty? Not much sign of a scientific frame of mind there, all right.
On a beautiful fall day, as I was hiking in the Cascade Mountains … the majesty and beauty of God’s creation overwhelmed my resistance. As I rounded a corner and saw a beautiful and unexpected frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet high, I knew the search was over. The next morning, I knelt in the dewy grass as the sun rose and surrendered to Jesus Christ.
Because…JC put the waterfall there? And froze it? And arranged that it should be a beautiful fall day when this one particular guy saw it? But what about this other time when someone else rounded a corner on a cold rainy windy day and couldn’t see the waterfall at all because she was too wet and miserable and busy wishing she were home with a brandy and some out of season strawberries?
Harris comments:
One would hope that it would be immediately obvious to Collins that there is nothing about seeing a frozen waterfall (no matter how frozen) that offers the slightest corroboration of the doctrine of Christianity. But it was not obvious to him as he “knelt in the dewy grass,” and it is not obvious to him now. Indeed, I fear that it will not be obvious to many of his readers. If the beauty of nature can mean that Jesus really is the son of God, then anything can mean anything.
Collins rhapsodizes:
No, this God, if I was perceiving him at all, must be a theist God, who desires some kind of relationship with those special creatures called human beings, and has therefore instilled this special glimpse of Himself into each one of us. This might be the God of Abraham, but it was certainly not the God of Einstein…. Judging by the incredibly high standards of the Moral Law … this was a God who was holy and righteous. He would have to be the embodiment of goodness…. Faith in God now seemed more rational than disbelief.
Oh, right. The special moral goodness of humans shows how specially moral god is, and thinking so is more rational than not thinking so.
The Big Bang cries out for a divine explanation. It forces the conclusion that nature had a defined beginning. I cannot see how nature could have created itself. Only a supernatural force that is outside of space and time could have done that.
Well, bud, I tell you what, if you cannot see how nature could have created itself, I cannot see how a supernatural force could have created itself, so there. I know, the idea is that it did it by being supernatural, but, see, that’s not actually an explanation, it’s just a hand-wave. When you come to something you can’t see how it happened, the right answer is not ‘magic’ or ‘supernatural’ but just ‘I don’t see how.’ That’s because they come to the same thing, but ‘I don’t see how’ is more honest.
There’s more. More recycled bad arguments from Collins and protests from Harris. Worth reading.
The subtitle of this book is “A Scientist Presents Evidence for Faith.” Are these kinds of arguments supposed to be considered “scientific?” No, apparently Collins finds God the old-fashioned way, standard apologetics which have nothing to do with science. It could have been titled “A Plumber Presents Evidence for Faith” or “An Accountant Presents Evidence for Faith” or “Your Kindly Old Grandad Presents Evidence for Faith.”
But of course, titles like those would not excite those people who want to see a “reconciliation” between science and religion. Look, they are coming together! Science shows there is a God! Sorta. Well, good enough…
Let me play! Let me play!
I cannott see how a gambler like Warren Buffet can possibly be worth more money than me. Therefore, he isn’t.
I’m rich! Rich, I tells ya!
B&W favourite Steve Fuller, has a review in this week’s New Scientist of Francis Collins’ book:
“LET me start by declaring an interest: I am that Steve Fuller who gave evidence for the defence in the trial over whether intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution in schools in Dover, Pennsylvania, last year. And books like this persuade me that I did the right thing.”
To be perfectly honest, I’m not really sure what Fuller thinks of the book. I think he didn’t like it (so the book might have some point after all) but is all his stuff as poorly written as this?
(The introduction of the review is online at the New Scientist site but you have to be a subscriber to read the whole thing.)
I recommend this video of James Watson and E.O. Wilson being interviewed by Charlie Rose. It’s mostly about Darwin, but there’s a gratifying moment when Watson calls Collins a “whacko” while referring to him as the only religious scientist he knows. E.O. Wilson says he knows none.
It’s close to an hour long, but worth it if you can keep busy with tasks not requiring intellect.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6927851714963534233&q=label:watson+and+wilson
[Well, bud, I tell you what, if you cannot see how nature could have created itself, I cannot see how a supernatural force could have created itself, so there.]
Since a natural phenomenon ought to be comprehensible but a supernatural one not necessarily so, this is a bad argument, whatever the correctness of its conclusion.
Surely a supernatural phenomenon must necessarily be incomprehensible, so, as OB points out, it has no place in trying to model or understand the natural world. It seems a perfectly good argument to say that what cannot be understood cannot be used to explain what cannot be understood.
Ho hum.
Seems like no matter what your previous education, training, or discipline…
Supernaturalist is as supernaturalist does.
Yet again.
Ah well. But to be honest, did anyone really expect any better?
I also read the Fuller review of the book in New Scientist. As Michael G says, you can’t really tell what he thinks of it, and is somewhat interestingly argued. As an example of his confusion Fuller ends his review with…
“From nature to the Bible, God’s work can be understood only in the original, be that mathematics and DNA, or Hebrew and Aramaic.”
Which is utter tosh. What are the things between nature and the Bible? If he means everything why doesn’t he say so, or does he just mean the covers of his favourite hard bound edition of The Good Book.
How is DNA an ‘original’? Does he mean a specific strand of DNA is original, is there some ‘Ur-DNA’ out there, in which case how many generations back do you have to go to get the ‘original’ one? Does he mean DNA in general? In which case the noun ‘original’ (go look it up) is not really appropriate, but it cleverly, and falsely, conflates the Bible and DNA by doing so, making them both into created works.
As for the Bible (assuming of course that a God exists and that the Bible is his revealed work), do we get to include the Gnostic scriptures in the Bible, after all they predate the Council of Rome in 382 which standardised the Bible, surely they count in Fuller’s epistimology of originality. What else in Aramaic would be useful?
I could go taking that one sentance apart, but I’ll leave that as an exercise to the reader. The rest of the article is filled with such nonsense.
“Since a natural phenomenon ought to be comprehensible but a supernatural one not necessarily so, this is a bad argument, whatever the correctness of its conclusion.”
Well it was meant to be a bad argument, wasn’t it: it was meant to be the mirror image of Collins’s bad argument: I don’t understand, therefore the explanation is supernatural. It’s the part after the “so there” that’s the argument. As Mike says, “what cannot be understood cannot be used to explain what cannot be understood.”
As for the Big Bang, I believe Dave Barry has the best guess about it–as I recall he wrote that it might have happened due to faulty wiring.
That would raise the question of who wired it, but since they didn’t do that good of a job, then they can’t be that worthy of my attention…
What I can never understand is the pious bleatings that Jehovah is such a MORAL FORCE FOR UNTAINTED GOOD AND PURITY(in caps deliberately). The Jehovah of the Bible, to me, seems like a right bastard. There’s a reason 1/3 of the angels “rebelled” perhaps?
As for the supernatural argument, I’m less convinced by the atheist argument that there can by definition be no supernatural forces otuside nature. I don’t believe the theists descriptions and definitions thereof, but I retain a bit of skepitcism that human logic and observation of the material world is everything, or that our physical universe is everything. I have no problem accepting that there is a supernatural creator force outside time and space, I just don’t believe in the one forcefully promulgated by the godbotherers. (If I’ve gotten anything from this site, it’s the wonderful British skeptics’ colloquial phrases).
Brian
“Godbotherer” is good, but a bit long and somewhat awkward with that repeated syllable at the end. More important, it implies the existence of a god. I prefer “godmonger.” It’s shorter, easier to say, and retains the vowel harmony of “godbotherer.” The best thing about it, though, is that it carries the negative connotation of pushing something negative, as in “warmonger.”
[it was meant to be the mirror image of Collins’s bad argument]
but that’s the respect in which it doesn’t work; “this is incomprehensible so it cannot have a natural/supernatural explanation” is a sketch of a valid argument (if you add the missing premis that everything with a natural/supernatural explanation has to be in some particular way comprehensible), but most people would accept the missing premis that natural phenomena have to be comprehensible in some sense (they need to obey some rule of cause and effect), but not the missing premis for supernatural explanations.
“I’m less convinced by the atheist argument that there can by definition be no supernatural forces otuside nature”
Is that the argument? It’s not the argument I make anyway (but maybe that’s not what you mean). I just dispute the claim that there can be something supernatural that is nevertheless involved with nature. It seems to me it’s either out or in, either natural or supernatural; it can’t be both (or at least I don’t see how it can be both). Theists often make these claims about supernatural causes of whatever they don’t understand or can’t explain – but those are causes of natural things – so they can’t be super.
“I retain a bit of skepitcism that human logic and observation of the material world is everything, or that our physical universe is everything”
But I don’t think that at all (but maybe you’re not addressing me). I have no problem with thinking there are unknowables. I just dispute the claims of theists that there are unknowables and theists know all about them.
I wasn’t really directly addressing you, Ophelia. I think your last clause sums it up pretty well. Hence, my self-definition as a “militant agnostic.” I’ve also been accused of “being angry at God” but my response is-how can any thinking, rational human being not be angry at the Jehovah presented in the Bible?
Just saw the Guinness ad. Drink Guinness. Advertising is good.
Damn. wrong thread.
Hmmmm… I do believe that there is room for “Scientist finds faith” literature – I must say I kinda like Arthur Peacocke’s books in that direction. I don’t think any such argument can be scientific in the strict sense, but it should be able to fulfill _some_ criteria of coherence, intellectual honesty, etc.
But the Big Bang quote you posted is disappointing, and the conversion experience makes me fear the worst. I’ve never liked infinite-regress arguments against religion because they seem to me to impose a model of causality on something that cannot be captured as such (causality involving time), but reasoning such as this (“the Big Bang must have been caused by something!”) invites those arguments.
Either God is immanent, and should be looked for right here and now instead of in internal contradictions such as “before the beginning of time” or “outside of space”. Or there is no God.
So I broadly agree with the atheist argument against supernaturalism, at least that of the Evangelical Christian variety Collins seems to be beholden to. But I do not think Theism necessarily entails those.
Thinking on further, I suppose what I have a problem with is “Faith” as opposed to Theism. Collins’ waterfall experience etc. would suggest to me a kind of religious conviction that is simply too close to heart to examine and argue critically. Which would make it a pretty stillborn attempt at reconciling science and faith – as the latter is pretty much by definition not probed with the same kind of intellectual rigour as the former.
Nothing wrong with that, but perhaps you don’t want to write a book about it.
[Either God is immanent, and should be looked for right here and now instead of in internal contradictions such as “before the beginning of time” or “outside of space”. Or there is no God.]
This argument is surely not consistent with physics as we know it. We know that there can be self-contained regions in time and space (Steven Hawking proved that this could be possible in black holes). So I don’t think that “before the beginning of time” or “outside of space” are internal contradictions.
But wouldn’t say the “inside” of a black hole still be _in_ time and space – just severed totally from other regions of space? Besides, “before” and “outside” imply some kind of spatial or temporal relationship, which is hard to envision with say isolated spacetimes as in black holes – which, at least to my understanding, can’t really be said to be “before” or “after” or “at the same time” as time.
I see what you mean, but “before” and “outside” could be replaced with “not after” and “not inside”, which would leave the proposition repaired; the universe was created by something that was not part of it temporally or spatially.
OK, but wouldn’t it become very difficult then to see creation itself as a temporally bounded act? E.g. as setting the Big Bang in motion, after which naturalistic forces would take over. For all we know, creation could be a continuous process; or the universe could have been created at the end of it in some kind of backwards causality.
Once you would start seeing God as indeed not part in any way of space and time, I think it becomes hard to justify why exactly the Big Bang needs theistic justification. Why not the existence of the Universe, or regular natural laws itself (which is in my mind a more fruitful track anyway).