One through seven
Okay more on agnosticism and doubt and certainty and ‘faith’ and dogmatism or fundamentalism. Dawkins has a good discussion of agnosticism in The God Delusion. Page 46:
There is nothing wrong with being agnostic in cases where we lack evidence one way or the other.
He cites Carl Sagan on the question of the existence (or not) of extraterrestrial life.
…we lack the evidence to do more than shade the probabilities one way or the other. Agnosticism, of a kind, is an appropriate response on many scientific questions, such as what caused the end-Permian extinction.
He draws a distinction between two kinds of agnosticism: temporary-in practice, and permanent-in principle. The first kind is legitimate where there is an answer but we lack the evidence to find it. (He doesn’t add, but I would, that there are countless questions which we will always lack the evidence to answer. Who ate what for breakfast in some backwater village in China on some arbitrary date ten thousand years ago for instance – and a pretty much infinite number of questions of that kind.) The second kind is legitimate for questions ‘that can never be answered, no matter how much evidence we gather’; an example is whether you see red as I do.
You can probably see where this is going. Some people think the question of God’s existence belongs in the permanent-in principle file, and they are the ones who are going to think Dawkins is too dogmatic and that he expects science to answer questions that it is unable to answer in the same way it is unable to say whether you see red as I do. Dawkins defends the view that agnosticism about the existence of God belongs in the temporary-in practice file. Either God exists or it doesn’t.
It is a scientific question: one day we may know the answer, and meanwhile we can say something pretty strong about the probability.
People have thought before that various things were beyond the reach of science, sometimes at the very moment when someone was proving them wrong in the lab down the road.
Contrary to Huxley, I shall suggest that the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis like any other…God’s existence or non-existence is a scientific fact about the universe, discoverable in principle if not in practice.
I think that clears a few things up. For one thing, I think it contradicts Mark’s* accusation that Dawkins doesn’t grapple ‘with the possibility that there are areas of experience on which reason and experiment can throw no or little light’ – he labels a whole branch of agnosticism just for precisely those areas and gives an example of one. I think there are a lot of reviewers and columnists who think and say that – so if you encounter any, just turn to p. 47 and you’ll be able to show them wrong. (Maybe then they’ll just say ‘But I don’t mean things like whether you see red the way I do, I mean things like love and meaning.’ But you will have tried [and you can just say ‘but the principle is the same.’].)
Then he does the spectrum of probabilities, the 1 through 7 that Jean mentioned. 1. is ‘Strong theist. 100 per cent probability of God. In the words of C.G. Jung, “I do not believe, I know.”‘ 7. is ‘Strong atheist. “I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung ‘knows’ there is one.”‘ He would be surprised to meet many people in 7, but includes it ‘for symmetry with category 1, which is well populated.’ Good point! And rather amusing.
6 is ‘Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist. “I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that [it] is not there.”‘
I pondered 6 and 7 for a bit, wondering if I was being intellectually dishonest, if actually I might not be a 7 – but I quickly remembered that I’m not, because I really do have no difficulty with the thought that for all I know the universe is a piece of lint in God’s pocket. I might be close to a 7 on the question of an interventionist God though, a prayer-answering God, a God that gives a crap about humans. I think that God is so very very conspicuous for its absence that it’s very hard to believe it even could exist. I also think it makes a kind of sense to say that unbelief can be a 7 while belief can be a 6. I really, thoroughly don’t believe God exists – but that seems to me to be compatible with agreeing that I don’t know that it doesn’t. Is that coherent? I think it is – if only because belief is one thing and knowledge is another. The idea of God meets a wall of incredulity in me – but that still doesn’t amount to my thinking I know that no God exists. (Or maybe I’m just running the two Gods together here – I really don’t believe the interventionist, personal God exists; but I don’t know that there is no God in some other universe. No…I don’t believe that God exists either – but it’s a different kind of not believing – based in just not knowing. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that I don’t believe the local God exists and also that I believe it doesn’t, while I merely don’t believe the non-local God exists.
Dawkins says on p. 51, after his brief discussion of 7:
Atheists do not have faith; and reason alone could not propel one to total conviction that anything definitely does not exist.
That reminded me of a passage in George Felis’s article ‘What Atheism Isn’t’ in the New Humanist:
Every atheist I’ve ever encountered cares very much about evidence and reasoning and is deeply suspicious of faith. On the whole, atheists lack belief precisely because they find the reasons that religious believers give for believing to be insufficient justification at best…
That’s it you see. We want good reasons for believing things. That’s all. It’s not asking so much.
*I apologized to him for a revoltingly abusive email G Tingey sent him which cited and quoted me, and he answered very kindly, so now I feel repentent for being so, er, rough, myself.
We atheists try a little too hard sometimes, I think, to present ourselves as reasonable and open-minded, which we overwhelmingly are. However, the anthropological evidence is just too abundant to give much serious consideration to the god idea. The most primitve peoples attributed agency to virtually everything, resulting in a kaleidoscope of pantheisms. As human society progressed, people developed polytheism, which basically took their own rulers and added a supernatural element. As civilization advanced, monotheism was invented, because people for the first time were trying to reconcile religion with the beginnings of philosophy. Now with advanced science, monotheism has to make itself ever more vague in order not to be risible.
If we really were unable to explain where this bizarre, extremely pervasive idea of deity came from, it really might be reasonable to say that a god really might exist in some heretofore not understood way. But let’s face it, that’s not the case. Anthropology has taught us a great deal about where this divisive and destructive idea came from. You might as well say that since we don’t actually know everything there is to know about men and women, that really there’s a possiblity that women *should* be subjected to men. Who here is only a 6 on a 7-level scale opposing that idea?
It’s sort of like someone looking at a barrelful of BBs and saying that s/he has faith that there are exactly one million. And, of course, no one is allowed to actually count them. What are the odds that this person is correct? We can’t say with absolute certainty that there aren’t exactly one million, but reason tells us that it’s highly unlikely. So a reasonable person would be a pretty convinced “a-millionist.”
women *should* be subjected to men
subjugated, not subjected
“I really, thoroughly don’t believe God exists – but that seems to me to be compatible with agreeing that I don’t know that it doesn’t. Is that coherent? I think it is – if only because belief is one thing and knowledge is another. The idea of God meets a wall of incredulity in me – but that still doesn’t amount to my thinking I know that no God exists.”
Yes, 100% coherent. We shouldn’t let agnostics drive the terms of this debate. They are “don’t know” people. It doesn’t follow that atheists think they know. We just believe (with some level of confidence) that there’s no supreme being.
Strictly speaking, you could be both an agnostic (don’t know) and an atheist (believe not). In practice, I think we use the word “agnostic” to describe someone who doesn’t know and also doesn’t believe. So it’s someone who is sitting on the fence.
I’m curious whether Mark would agree with my definitions. I have sent him something about this. My understanding is that, as an agnostic, he is a person who has no belief at all about the existence of God, like I have no belief at all about whether there’s extraterrestrial life. But we’ll see if that’s what he’d say about himself (I hope).
On the one hand, Doug, I wholeheartedly agree with both your reasoning and your conclusion. On the other hand, I think you may be missing Dawkins’ point (and OB’s point in quoting him).
Fallibilism is and must be a first principle for any genuine critical thinker. Yes, you’re right: Based on an overwhelming and unified array of evidences, there are no gods of the types described by and worshiped in any of the world’s religions, current or historical. But if that conclusion (or any conclusion) is genuinely based on reasoning from the evidence, then it MUST be revisable in light of further evidence.
No, there’s probably no contradictory evidence coming our way – only more of the same. But one simply cannot rule out in advance evidence that one has not seen or that does not yet exist. That’s why any open-ended sort of inquiry permits no answer stronger than Dawkins’ 6.
Even the sneaky, manipulative, and fundamentally dishonest enemies of science and reason at the Discovery Institute understand this basic principle of fallibilism, although they never actually follow it. That is, while they don’t actually DO any critical thinking, their entire politically-motivated P.R. campaign is based on understanding and attempting to exploit the rules of critical thinking – hence the “teach the controversy” strategy. Oh sure, the “controversy” isn’t grounded in any actual evidence. But if they can fool people into thinking that their tired, oft-refuted creationist objections and arguments from ignorance somehow constitute actual evidence (and some people are always willing to be fooled), then it follows from the broad principles of critical thinking (as well as from the more specific and codified principles of scientific reasoning) that the conclusions of evolutionary biology must be modified to accommodate this “new evidence.”
I find it interesting that the principles of critical thinking are so clear and unavoidable that even those who seek to subvert critical thinking must still do their best to give the appearance of following the rules. They willfully violate basic principles of reasoning and argumentation, but they do everything they can to conceal their violations. More, they even do their best to claim that their opponents are breaking those rules – hence the creationists’ constant whining about scientists supposedly ignoring or suppressing evidence.
The willingness of the enemies of science and reason to both flout and attempt to exploit the principles of critical thinking is, I think, all the more reason for the defenders of science and reason to adhere to those rules both scrupulously and publicly. Avoiding claims of absolute, unassailable certainty is not only principled, it demonstrates those principles – and makes the contrast between critical thinkers and those who avoid or oppose critical thinking all the more stark and clear.
I get what youse are saying, but I just keep getting the impression that the god idea gets some kind of special status that it doesn’t deserve. What about the idea that females ought to be virgins when they’re married? Some people offer that up as a divine principle, but we can explain how that idea developed anthropologically. Who amongst us is only 6/7 opposed to that as some kind of divine law?
Sure, maybe there’s some kind of arcane trick that, when all females refrain from vaginal intercourse before the magic ceremony, ensures that society somehow heals itself, but what are the odds of that?
I guess I just think that we materialists keep letting the idealists frame the arguments for us. Modern science shows that they’ve lost. Why are we so humble?
Jean in another thread Potentilla sugested the term agnodeist-atheist in order to describe an atheist who is open to the posibility that some form of higher power could not be ruled out.
“agnodeist-atheist”
Agnostic means you are not sure whether God exists or not. Atheist means you do not believe in God. Bolting the two together is silly, mischievous, and ignores Dawkins 6/7 distinction.
But I see a useful rhetorical annoyance here. Possibly we could call people who believe in God “incomplete atheists” or “partial atheists””. They are almost atheists, but have just one more deity to unbelieve before they get there. I don’t expect this to stick, but I do expect it to explain just how much of a howler “agnodeist-atheist” is.
G: “I find it interesting that the principles of critical thinking are so clear and unavoidable that even those who seek to subvert critical thinking must still do their best to give the appearance of following the rules. They willfully violate basic principles of reasoning and argumentation, but they do everything they can to conceal their violations. More, they even do their best to claim that their opponents are breaking those rules – hence the creationists’ constant whining about scientists supposedly ignoring or suppressing evidence.”
G. Would it be useful to distinguish between rhetoric and formal argument in these discussions? If you help the observer know how the manipulation works, rationality cannot help but be strengthened in my opinion.
dirigible – “agnodeist-atheist” was actually a suggestion for a label for someone (Ophelia, in fact) who is a 6 point something in relation to there being no personal God (ie an a-theist), but rather more agnostic about Spinoza’s God (deism).
Inelegant, because of the mangling of the Greek root, I’ll agree. Silly and mischievous seems rather harsh.
The other thing missing is a defense of the idea of a reasonable belief.
Every person, no matter how well educated has a very wide range of ideas that are assumed true because the holder knows OTHERS have tested them. For most non-creationists, the deep intellectual structure of evolution is pretty much taken on trust, because we know how the mills of science have ground it and are satisfied that we can go as deep into the evidence as we wish without shaking the principles.
This ‘rational ignorance’ is well grounded. But theist rhetoric manipulates it to seem the same as religious faith wherein when we go into it there is a point quickly reached where you can only ground something in ‘faith’ and ‘scripture’. These two points of ignorance at first look seem very similar, but the science toolkit is always available to go further.
I think ordinary people need the ability to know when this switcheroo is happening, and that they can themselves follow it further using those tools.
Doug – both your examples of “unthinkable” 6/7 positions (whether women should be subjugated to men and whether women should be virgins at marriage) are normative claims, whereas being a 6/7 atheist is a position about a factual claim.
Fallibilism doesn’t work in the same way for normative claims. Rather than saying that there’s a very small chance that the normative claim might be true in all circumstances (ie for all women always), one might say that there are probably a small number of individual cases where the claim might be true.
“Agnostic means you are not sure whether God exists or not. Atheist means you do not believe in God. Bolting the two together is silly, mischievous, and ignores Dawkins 6/7 distinction.”
The root of “agnostic” is the greek for knowledge. It’s, um, rather natural to interpret it as meaning “doesn’t know”. To keep the two concepts separate, I think in practice we add on “has no belief either way.”
Atheists go further than “not believing in God.” They substantively believe there’s none. (subtle distinction, but important).
But in principle you could both believe there’s no God, and, because you’re a 6/7, think you don’t know. Just focusing on etymology and not usage, the label “agnostic atheist” makes sense! In practice, it’s contradictory, because it connotes someone who (1) doesn’t know and doesn’t have a belief either way, and (2) believes there’s no god.
Karen Armstrong writes that “During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the word ‘atheist’ was still reserved exclusively for polemic The term ‘atheist’ was an insult. Nobody would have dreamed of calling himself an atheist.
It is also asserted that atheists are quick to believe in God in times of crisis—that atheists make deathbed conversions, or that “there are no atheists in foxholes.”
With such pejorative terms attributed to atheists – it must indeed be very tough being an atheist. Atheists must feel like all other marginalised people who are on the outside.
potentilla — Of course you’re right about the examples I came up with being normative rather than factual. I was trying to come up with something better than the Flying Spaghetti Monster or the orbiting teapot. Looks like I failed.
I realize now, after some pondering, that what was bothering me was that 6 out of 7 just seemed too weak, but as a purely symbolic representation, as opposed to what we think the likelihood of there being no god is, it works just fine. Following this line of thought, I think I might actually prefer 4 out of 5.
“I get what youse are saying, but I just keep getting the impression that the god idea gets some kind of special status that it doesn’t deserve.”
I’ve had the very same thought. Surely we are 7/7 on such religious questions as the virginity of Mary, the divinity of Jesus, unbelievers going to hell, the resurrection, reincarnation, caste distinctions,etc etc. When we say 6/7 on God, are we being unnecessarily wishy washy, just because God is the common denominator of a lot of religions, or something that especially huge numbers of people are sensitive about? I wonder.
Yeah, I logged on to the official website of the American Atheists. There is very interesting stuff there to peruse in order to sharpen ones knowledge on the subject. B&W news has linked to it before from what I gather.
I am too much of a scientist geek to be comfortable about being a 7/7 about almost anything. Maybe even anything at all. As Doug says, 6/7 or 4/5 is just symbolic; 99.9 recurring would do just as well.
And perhaps I am more like a real 6/7 in relation to deism, hence agno-deist, however much of a howler dirigible thinks it is.
The factual/normative question is interesting. I can’t think of any other question of fact in relation to which so many people believe something which is, to many other people, just factually (as opposed to normatively) wrong. All the examples I come up with (eg alien abduction) are only believed by a tiny minority. Or alternatively they are “facts” relating to an individual about which almost everybody has neither knowledge nor interest (like most drivers believing they are better than average).
This apparently unique characteristic of god/religion was the reason that I only moved from being agnostic to atheist once I had discovered an acceptable alternative (evolutionary) explanation for the universality of god.
Jean K., your list of specific claims you’re certain beyond any reasonable doubt are false is *exactly* why I made sure to introduce the idea of an open-ended question when I was talking about fallibilism and the principled open-ness to further evidence.
For quite specific claims, one can reasonably say something like this: “Look. I’ve examined all the evidence there is, and there’s no further evidence forthcoming on this particular issue, and the claim is definitely bullshit. You can *alter* the claim to mean something else if you want, but the claim as it stands is just nonsense on stilts. Go away. We’re done. Class dismissed.” I would certainly put most or all of the specific religious claims you listed in that category.
But for open-ended claims, such as the notion that some kind of entity that it is reasonable to refer to as “God” by some definition or other might exist, one cannot in principle go beyond Dawkins’ position 6: “Your claim is vastly unlikely to be true, and based on everything I can see before me now (and the lameness of your arguments in favor of it) I have to judge the claim false. But it remains barely possible that some further evidence or reasoning could convince me otherwise. However, as you’ve trotted out everything you have right now – and not only failed to convince me, but embarrassed yourself in the bargain – will you please go away now?”
I give the mock quotations to indicate just how fine the distinction really is in practice between the two positions. And, frankly, I think they shade into each other fairly often. What constitutes an “open-ended” question is probably no more amenable to precise delineation than how few hairs a man has to have on his head to be considered bald.
@ ChrisPer: In terms of this principled position on openness to further evidence, I think the question of how open-ended the claim is (or isn’t) is a more useful distinction than “reasonableness” for the simple reason that it’s more definable – although still quite fuzzy around the edges.
Also, I understand what you mean about the usefulness of drawing the distinction between rhetoric and formal argument. I’d do that more if I could, but I generally find that it can’t be done without being completely tendentious. I’ve been teaching critical thinking classes for years, and one of the things I’ve found is that the distinction between a really bad argument and a non-argument is very fuzzy. It’s easy to identify rhetorical fallacies in individual premises or reasoning steps, but classifying an entire passage as purely rhetorical (thus by formal definition a non-argument) rather than a reasoned argument is a much dicier proposition. In the end, just calling bad arguments (and arguers) on rhetorical fallacies – along with all the other categories of fallacies they commit – seems a more productive strategy. The key to success in that endeavor is being able not just to identify what fallacy is being committed, but being able to explain why it’s a fallacy and to give examples that make it more obvious than the case in front of you.
“In practice, I think we use the word “agnostic” to describe someone who doesn’t know and also doesn’t believe. So it’s someone who is sitting on the fence.”
Aha! I hadn’t thought of that. That helps to make sense of the whole thing.
I’ve realized that belief and knowledge are more distinct than I had quite grasped before. I did, in the process of discussing it, decide that I can believe that X-not while still fully agreeing that I don’t know – which caused me to pay more attention to the way belief is different from knowledge. I don’t feel any epistemic guilt about strongly believing that God doesn’t exist, but I would feel a powerful internal resistance to saying that I know God doesn’t exist. That’s one way of gesturing at how the two differ. (I think one reason I would feel the powerful internal resistance is because it angers me intensely when theists claim to know various things that they can’t know – it angers me as illegitimate and coercive and presumptuous. The whole idea of claiming to know what I can’t know is thus repellent.)
I think there’s quite a strong case for separating out the God of any particular religion – where I think I’m almost at 7, against the much less specific claim that the universe had an intelligent, purposeful creator. On the latter question, I think I’m much closer to being what I would think of as an agnostic. I honestly don’t know *anything* about what lies beyond or before the universe. I’ve got grave doubts about the extent to which such a creator actually *explains* anything (who, after all, created the creator) but I don’t know how I can rule it out.
But the idea that the Xtian God exists? I can’t disprove it in the logical or mathematical sense, but the idea that such an entity could exist strikes me as absurd. What, after all, is it playing at? Why make such an issue of faith? Why set down how you want people to live in a single book, compiled at a very specific time in man’s history, available only in certain languages at certain times? Why lace that book with contradictions and absurdities (flat earth, young-earth creationism, etc)? If you want people to live in a certain way, why not just spell it out?
Or if you don’t want people to be ‘good’ only because they know you exist, why hint at your existence, and your wishes for us at all? Why not just leave us to get on with it?
That strikes me not as a god who is subtle, or works in mysterious ways, but as one who is downright perverse and mischievous. Far simpler, far better and far more likely, this god just does not exist at all…
I suppose what I’m getting at is that it isn’t merely that there’s no evidence that such a god does exist, but that I really struggle to see why a god of such description ever *would* exist. What on earth is it for, what conceivable rationale could it have for its actions?
Take together the very plausible explanations for why we might invent such a god (when the god is ‘designed’ by a committee of humans over thousands of years, incoherence and perversity is exactly what I would expect), the lack of evidence for the existence of such a god, and the lack of coherent rationale for believing such a god *would* exist, and I’m a 6.99
Dare I suggest that it might save a lot of time if folk just used some version of “skeptic”? “empirical skeptic”, say, or “rational skeptic”…??
maybe “bloody-minded stubborn b@st@rd skeptic”…?
:-)
The trouble with ‘skeptic’ is that some religious believers and some postmodernists like to hijack it for nefarious purposes. It has to be used with caution.
Patrick – “I can’t disprove [the existence of the Xtian God] in the logical or mathematical sense”
There’s an interesting argument by Chad Docterman to the effet that the Xtian God is logically impossible. He argues, amongst other things, that the idea of a perfect god is incompatible with a creator god – if a god is perfect, it makes no sense to say that this god ever wanted or decided to create something new. I don’t know who Chad Docterman is but for his arguments see eg http://www.update.uu.se/~fbendz/library/cd_impossible.html
And there are a couple of Prometheus books: one on arguments for the improbability of God, the other on arguments for the impossibility of God. I haven’t read any of the impossibility one (because I don’t have it and haven’t requested it from the library yet). The improb one is interesting.
“if a god is perfect, it makes no sense to say that this god ever wanted or decided to create something new”
A Lacanian God? :-) Yes, perfection doesn’t exactly imply lack. Although of course the free-floating rhetorical logic of theology allows us to argue that God would be less perfect if he had not created Creation, because this was a good act (because God has done it and God is good), and had God not made it he would therefore not be perfect.
We then get on to what a mess Creation is…