Sloppy
Alister McGrath is tiresome – in the same (agonizingly familiar) way so many theists and defenders of theism are tiresome. Tiresome via misdescription, is what they are. Strawmanism for short. They keep saying (over and over and over again) that atheists say X when atheists don’t say X, or Dawkins says Y when Dawkins never does say Y. Funny that (apparently) no editors ever strike them over the head and say ‘Stop that, he says no such thing.’ I would, if I were their editor. I’d love to strike them over the head.
Deep within humanity lies a longing to make sense of things. Why are we here? What is life all about? These questions are as old as the human race. So how are we to answer them? Can they be answered at all? Might God be part of the answer?
Sure, it ‘might,’ but so might a lot of things. Or not. That doesn’t get us very far.
Richard Dawkins, England’s grumpiest atheist, has a wonderfully brash way of dealing with this. Here’s how science would sort out this muddleheaded way of thinking: everyone else just needs to get out of the way, and let the real scientists, like himself, get to work. They would have these questions sorted out in no time…Science has all the answers…
Smack! Bad, Mr McGrath; do it over. He says no such thing. ‘Brash’ yourself. Accuracy counts.
This is what he says.
McGrath imagines that I would disagree with my hero Sir Peter Medawar on The Limits of Science. On the contrary. I never tire of emphasising how much we don’t know. The God Delusion ends in just such a theme. Where do the laws of physics come from? How did the universe begin? Scientists are working on these deep problems, honestly and patiently. Eventually they may be solved. Or they may be insoluble. We don’t know.
Maybe McGrath confuses saying ‘scientists are working on these deep problems’ with saying ‘science has all the answers.’ But if so, that doesn’t say very much for his care in reading and analysis.
I think you’re confusing “Prof Richard Dawkins”, scientist and populariser of science, with “Fundamentalist Atheist Dawkins”, the imaginery bogeyman of religious believers and appeasers everywhere.
Ohhhhh, two different fellas is it? I didn’t realize. Thanks ever so – that clears that up.
snicker
I think TGD may hold the record for the book most commented on by people who admit they haven’t read it.
I’m not suggesting McGrath didn’t read it, but maybe he was watching telly at the same time.
Dammit, I’m getting tired of the religion-debunking business here. As a Christian, I don’t claim, dogmatically, to know that the propositions in the Nicene Creed are true. I’ve taken the leap of faith because (1) I enjoy religion and (2) I want be be able to hope, however desperately, for the possibility of post-mortem survival. So what?
There’s a lot more nonsense out there to debunk and most is a heck of a lot more fashionable and more dangerous than speculation about the structure of the Trinity. In most of the Global North religion is a spent force and even in the US, for all the publicity the religious right gets, it’s going down fast.
Dawkins et. al. are taking on an easy target–giggling about the silliness of the lower classes and third world peasantry and flattering their readers with the assurance that they’re ever so much more clever.
You don’t claim to know, H. E., but some people do. And McGrath claims that Dawkins says what he doesn’t say. It’s not as if dogmatism is a rara avis, surely.
Boy, I hope you’re right that the religious right is going down fast. I’ll be ecstatic if in a year or two or five I can say ‘You know, H. E., you were right!’ I’d love to be wrong to think they’re a threat.
I don’t think that’s fair to Dawkins though. I don’t think he’s giggling at all – I think he finds it very worrying.
HE Baber: “I’ve taken the leap of faith because (1) I enjoy religion and (2) I want be be able to hope, however desperately, for the possibility of post-mortem survival. So what?”
These are your choices.
What you can’t do is claim that, just because I haven’t taken your “leap of faith”, that
1) lacking belief in god, I can’t find answers to questions of “what life is all about”; or
2) I HAVE taken a “leap of faith” but of a different kind (ie in the belief that there is no god).
These are, however, amongst the most common objections to critics like Dawkins and they are the reason why so many responses (religious and otherwise) to atheists are tiresome.
And it is not as if atheists haven’t made these same simple points many times over.
Keep your “leap of faith” but don’t tell me that my world is diminished in some way because I lack belief.
One of the main threats made by religions, which we “debunkers” never tire of pointing out, is that all sorts of moral pronouncements, from the alleged necessity for keeping women from being educated and the necessity for surgical interventions to remove their ability to feel sexual pleasure to (in more civilized countries) the alleged immorality of abortion in all cases — to mention just the moral judgments limiting women’s liberties — is that religious people believe that there is in fact some super-human super-intelligent being who makes these commandments.
If we can get people to give up this unfounded belief in this “commander-in-chief,” we might make some more progress in bringing civilization to the human race. That is one reason we “debunkers” keep at it.
If you, H. E., don’t know that the Nicene Creed is true, including the statement of the existence of God, then would you be willing to admit that the claim that Christians generally make to know all about morality because God revealed it to them is also unsupported by any evidence?
H.E. I appreciate your stance but I’m not so sure religion should be spared the debunking simply because once a person starts making choices and voting based on superstitious leanings instead of rationality it ‘ain’t so good for a nation.
Now if one has a rational ‘faith’ as I like to think I do perhaps it is neither here nor there.
But such people won’t make Dawkins a boogeyman or misunderstand hisvery pertinent message.
PM –
surely you mean “STRIDENT atheist Dawkins”?
And H.E.:
Might I recommend a small experiment ti test your “fundies going away” hypothesis?
Travel around your vast & varied nation wearing a “Gay Pride” t-shirt, or “God is a Delusion”, something of that order, and see how far your 1st amendment rights are respected by your fellow citizens…
(and before ya ask, I’m married to an American, and have creationist Baptist in-laws, so I’m not speaking from ignorance…)
:-)
OB correctly points out that the writer has falsely stated Dawkins position. She could also have said the ‘might not’ part of the argument is a devious rhetorical trick called ‘Argument from Ignorance’.
H.E. Baber, I agree that the godly-thought-bashing can be tiresomely repetitive, but this post is valid criticism of a single crooked argument. No hyperventilating, no extension of the crookedness to all theists – the pure stuff.
Fist, ‘But what of that greater question: what’s life all about?’, says McGrath. Answer: it’s not ‘about’ anything. Why does it have to be? This is teleological thinking: the thinking that says there is a purpose to everything that is preordained, that someone, somewhere (usually God) has set in motion. No, things happen. Life is not about anything, only inasmuch as we ascribe meaning to aspects of it – meaning borne out of our own experiences as human beings with cognitive abilities; meaning that is valid only as far as it sits within a context that itself is full of other meanings, interpretations, hopes, fears, concepts, ideas, facts, knowledge, supposition, superstitions.
Then McGrath says this of Owen Gingerich of Harvard University, who published God’s Universe, and Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project, who brought out The Language of God: ‘Both these scientists, with a long track record of peer-reviewed publications, made the case for belief in God as the best and most satisfying explanation of the way things are.’
Scientists who believe in God are happy to believe only that God set in motion and maintains all the complexities that they have discovered. It’s easy to say, ‘We’ve discovered a bit about how things work; we’ll never know how it all began, so we’ll say God started it.’ Not a rigorous argument. Perhaps God did, but we have no evidence; it’s just supposition; it fills the gaps. Catholics have taken on board all kinds of things that men were burned at the stake for believing, because they can simply reconcile them within their worldview and say this is all part of God’s complex and awsome universe. As I say, maybe it it, but I’d need a lot of evidence.
I’ve posted a reply to this site, saying some of my usual things about detectability, and the untruthfulness of believers ……
But why do they do it?
It is obvious that McGrath thinks he is answering Dawkins, but he isn’t, and in fact he is making untrue statements, because he, as a professor of theology (!) only too clearly, cannot see the argument(s) being presented against belief without evidence.
Actually it is pathetic and sad, or would be, if he and others like him did not muddle, delude and sheep-lead so many other people.
“I think TGD may hold the record for the book most commented on by people who admit they haven’t read it.”
Including dsquared and the majority of reviewers even in otherwise reputable magazines like newscientist.
“Deep within humanity lies a longing to make sense of things. Why are we here? What is life all about? These questions are as old as the human race. So how are we to answer them? Can they be answered at all? Might God be part of the answer?”
The last question is a bit tacked on. And it’s not really part of alonging to make sense of things. Quite the opposite. Bat rhetorician. No cookie.
As Andy A points out it is strange that a couple of scientists giving up on a rigorous examination of nature and rushing into print saying ‘God did it’ is bruited abroad by the superstitious as ‘proof’ of the aforesaid deity’s existence.
To me, it simply undercuts their credibility as scientists. But then I would say that wouldn’t I?
Dirigible wrote: ‘Bat rhetorician. No cookie.’
Bat rhetorician? I like it:)
Me too, H.E., me too. Religion might be nonsense but it’s not exacty *fashionable* nonsense. Been around a little too long for that.
Religion itself is not exactly fashionable, but there is a kind of second-order fashionability to it. It is fashionable to pay it elaborate (and special) respect and deference.
“It is fashionable to pay it elaborate (and special) respect and deference.”
In the States perhaps, but not really in the UK. Over here denigrating and mocking religion (especially Christianity) is really the norm in polite middle class company. That is why some people get a bit tired of the noisome self-regard that they detect in the foghorning of Dawkins et al.
So I’m told. I always retort with the Guardian, but then my informers say that doesn’t count, the G is too peculiar for it to count. Okay; maybe so. Furriners miss these nuances.
However, H E is in the US, so she’s at least geographically as able to notice the fashion as I am. But she might point out there are other fashions too, which is fair enough.
Dsquared has a weak spot when it comes to Dawkins – I’ve even seen him defend Midgley’s attack. Again, I think it is what he represents, rather than what he says.
Dsquared?? Dsquared is riddled with weak spots. The guy’s a swiss cheese.
OB – Actually, I think the Guardian is pretty typical of a certain strand of left-wing thought in the UK. In fact, I like the Guardian, and while there are columnists I disagree with, I think there’s an interesting spread of opinions to be found in it.
I think AM is confusing what I (and, I suspect, Dawkins) think – i.e. that science if can’t provide the answer to any given question, like “why did the big bang happen” or “why is the universe here” then there is no other method which would enable us to answer the question, with an altogether more spurious faith-like notion that the answers to every question worth asking will eventually be discovered if we use the scientific method. There may be things which are simply a priori unknowable from our place in space and time – there may be limits to what we can ever know about where the universe came from – but acknowledging that possibility doesn’t make theology any more meaningful a pursuit.
Oh, and “what is the meaning of life” just strikes me as one of those ill=formed questions, like “why is red?” or “how is music?” but anyway….
(1) Check the empirical data: the fastest growing “religious group” in the US is the “unchurched.” And the religious right is indeed going down. Depending on how you define “conservative evangelical” the figures some sources give are as low as single digits in the US (check Barna)
(2) I don’t think anyone’s world is “diminished” because they don’t believe in God any more than I think anyone’s world is diminished by not believing in Platonic forms. Why should I? It’s just metaphysics.
(3) Of course the claim SOME Christians make to “know all about morality because God has revealed it” is absurd. Ethics is a field in philosophy and many Christian philosophers don’t do ethics any differently than secular philosophers. I am a preference Utilitarian.
(4) I don’t think religion or anything else should be “spared debunking.” I just think that as a matter or priorities, and interest, there’s a lot of nonsense that’s more dangerous and a lot more fashionable that should be higher on the priority list for debunking.
I dunno, OB. Have a soft spot for McGrath. Especially because it’s combative evangelicals like him who defend an idea liberal Christians – whom I would have more sympathy from – seem to have given up on. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity – to do some Yeats quoting of my own ;-)
I’ve not read Dawkins’ latest. As I mentioned before. Have other (theistic and non-theistic) fish to fry at the moment. But I’ve read Dawkins claim elsewhere that the existence of God is, indeed, a scientific hypothesis. It doesn’t do if he backtracks on the claim elsewhere – he made the claim. Now this is acutely problematic from a philosophy of science (not to speak of a philosophy of religion) standpoint. And it is only on this basis that one, like Dawkins, could proclaim the existence of God to be _improbable_ – rather than “necessary” as some bold theists would claim, “impossible” as some bold atheists would claim, “unknowable, therefore irrelevant”, as some more timid atheists would claim. It is only on the condition that God is seen to be a contingent being – one potentially within the purview of scientific method – that Dawkins’ claim make sense.
And in that particular context, it does seem to me that McGrath’s remark is quite accurate.
Maybe McGrath confuses saying ‘scientists are working on these deep problems’ with saying ‘science has all the answers.’ But if so, that doesn’t say very much for his care in reading and analysis.
But the two are not that easily to seperate. There’s 1) Science has all the answers, right here, and here they are – which no scientist in their right mind would advocate; 2) Science (as natural science) has potentially all the answers, we just haven’t found them yet – which is an arguable (if IMO wrong) position, and one which Dawkins at least in his reply does not repudiate; 3) Science (as natural science) does not have (and cannt have) all the answers, as there are a priori philosophically specifiable limitations on the kind of problems natural science with its methodology can deal with and not.
Certainly even McGrath does not argue for Dawkins holding 1). I would interpret him as stating Dawkins holding 2). And there’s an argument to be had there. I’m not at all convinced Dawkins does not have a blind spot towards the humanities, philosophy, etc.
H.E.Baber’s last point is wrong.
I don’t think there is anything that is more dangeous and needs debuking more thoroughly than (some extreme forms of) religious belief, and the consequences that flow form the actions of those holding those beliefs.
The born-again brain-dead, the Dominionists, Ahmenidjad, Hizbollah, the Taliban ………
And Dawkins is almost certainly correct.
If “god ” exists, then this god thing should be detectable, shouldn’t it?
Erm …….
John M “Over here denigrating and mocking religion (especially Christianity) is really the norm in polite middle class company.”
Yes, but only as long as the religion doesn’t begin with “I”…
GT, nope, because whenever questions of detectability come up suddenly the theists retreat from their particular god (with his miracles and other divine interventions) and adopt a minimally specified divine being defined in such a way as to be unfalsifiable.
“Bat rhetorician? I like it:)”
Yes, I think I’ll keep it. ;-)
Actually, yes – because they are trying to have it both ways …
As you say, the theists suddenly retreat into handwavingbullshit, until you go away, and then they come back again.
I think this is one of the things that has got up Dawkins’ nose to the point where he has written TGD. It certainly gets up my nose, because it is downright dishonest and evasive and slippery and ….
Oh, a PS: “Bat rhetorician” – remeber that, in the bible, bats are classed as “Birds” – I have yet to see a fundie wriggle out of that one …..
How many bats were there on the arc. And how can they know ?
OB
– ok can I suggest you run a competetion for the majority (I suspect, and including me) of readers here not I the know to come up with the best definition for the term “Bat rhetorician” ?
Or if it’s just me bieng an ignoramus can someone explain ? Thanks.
“I think AM is confusing what I (and, I suspect, Dawkins) think – i.e. that science if can’t provide the answer to any given question…then there is no other method which would enable us to answer the question, with an altogether more spurious faith-like notion that the answers to every question worth asking will eventually be discovered if we use the scientific method.”
I wonder. Maybe, but I kind of doubt it – because AM is all grown up after all, and he does have a grown up job at Oxford, and that would be a pretty gross confusion.
It’s a gross confusion and yet it’s one that turns up (as I mentioned) over and over again. It’s the guest that never leaves.
And I don’t think it’s mere, either; I don’t think it’s a minor or trivial matter; I think it sows contempt and hatred for science among people who don’t realize what a canard it is. I don’t think that’s a useful or respectable thing to do. I think McGrath is doing a bad thing by recycling it yet again.
“I dunno, OB. Have a soft spot for McGrath.”
Nope. Not gonna do that.
“But I’ve read Dawkins claim elsewhere that the existence of God is, indeed, a scientific hypothesis. It doesn’t do if he backtracks on the claim elsewhere – he made the claim. Now this is acutely problematic from a philosophy of science (not to speak of a philosophy of religion) standpoint.”
Okay, I’ll bite; what does that mean? Is it for instance “acutely problematic” to claim that the existence of God is at least a scientific hypothesis even if it may be other kinds of hypothesis as well?
But more to the point, I don’t buy it anyway, because (sorry for familiarity) to most believers, especially to the kind of believers who feel entitled to inject their religious beliefs into public questions, that’s exactly what the existence of God is – except of course in the sense that they don’t want science sticking its big nose in. But most believers believe in God the person who really exists and really wants them to do this and not that. I never see the point of pretending otherwise – unless it’s for the sake of saying ‘No Trespassing.’
Hmm, perhaps it is acutely problematic because Merlijn is thinking of the magic undetectable pixie god, rather than the interventionist 10 commandments ramifications-in-real-life one?
Probably. But then the magic undetectable pixie god is not the issue, because undetectable gods don’t tell people what to do, so people who believe in them don’t use the pixie to back up their commands or demands or suggestions. The pixie doesn’t exclude gays or dalits, the pixie doesn’t tell women to shut up or cover up or stay home or get pregnant. I don’t care about the pixie, and I don’t think it’s what I’m arguing about. I don’t care about the undetectable gods, I don’t think any of us do, it’s the ‘detectable’ ones we have issues with.
Although, with the line “It is only on the condition that God is seen to be a contingent being – one potentially within the purview of scientific method – that Dawkins’ claim make sense.” he might be making a play for the even less respectable Plantinga territory.
For me the most puzzling (and irrelevant) criticism of Dawkins is the ‘arrogance’ one. You see it all the time. He is arrogant. Even some atheists agree. In fact the first time I ever watched him speak (on some YouTube video) was after following a link from some atheist blog in which the word ‘arrogant’ was used to describe him.
How come I can’t see it? I see a deeply concerned man with strong views, but not an arrogant one. His manner to me is not arrogant. He listens carefully to what people say, and addresses what they say. To me an arrogant person is someone who does not listen and does not consider other views. From what I can see he does both. And then he addresses what people say. Even if I were a religious person, I can’t imagine being reluctant to talk with him, because he comes across as a person who will LISTEN. (And then disagree, but in a reasoned way, and not aggressively or rudely.) I might not agree with everything he says, but I do not get the feeling that he would put me down for disagreeing.
Is it just that people do not like what he says? Or is it the accent? What? Where is this famous arrogance?
One of the clips I’ve seen cited as a demonstration of his ‘arrogance’ is the one where he visited Haggard’s church in the U.S. When I watched that, I saw a very puzzled and disturbed person, not an arrogant one. Haggard, on the other hand … his method of argument was to NOT listen, to tell Dawkins what Dawkins believed (and get it wrong), and to accuse Dawkins of arrogance AND of ignorance of his (Dawkins’) own field.
All I could think was, ‘Why is Dawkins being so POLITE to this idiot?’
Funny you should mention Plantinga, PM – just read his “God, Freedom and Evil” a week or so ago. Not sure what to think of it. I am attracted to a free will theodicy, but Plantinga kind of sells away the store in defending divine omniscience as compatible with free will: there’s no inherent contradiction between humans who have libertarian free will and an omniscient being who knows the outcomes of those free actions – but that would be an omniscient being to whom all possibilities are actual, to whom there are no “potential” futures, and who is wholly outside of time. Such a God would exist in a wholly abstract form. And I think even OB or you could assent to the existence of God as an abstract concept.
In a way I think the dichotomy between magic undetectable pixie Gods (of whom the above one is an example, I think, despite Plantinga’s conservative religious views) and the interventionist fire-and-brimstone one is too stark. In a way, I do actually believe God “tells me things” in that I think reason and perhaps (some very basic) morality are of divine origin, existing outside and above us: but that does not make them any less common to humanity (regardless of the religious views or lack of them of that humanity). There’s an important difference between stating that “We cannot have morality without God” in the “religion is the source of morality” sense and the “God is the source of morality” sense. In that in the latter morality is not conditioned upon belief (just as God being a condition for existence would not mean one has to believe in God in order to exist). And the former view deserves all the scorn it gets around here.
Which gets me to OB’s point. It is true we continuously get to this point. But I think it’s a very problematic one, in that there is very often a switch between particulars (the particular bad policies proposed by particular religious spokespersons, on which I generally tend to agree with OB) and the general (religions as such, or even Christianity as such). I am not at all sure how abstract or concrete or anthropomorphized the actual conception of God “most people” believe in actually is; I am not at all sure how valid your intuition about “most believers” is. For once, you state often that you cannot square the transcendent nature of God with features such as a loving nature, personhood, etc. which are ascribed to him in the Christian tradition. As I indicated above, I agree to a certain extent. But that merely means that Plantinga’s conception of God may be problematic, philosophically: it does not mean that Plantinga does not really believe in it. I suspect most people’s garden-variety or less garden-variety philosophical ideas of the universe, the meaning of life, etc. can be shown to be incoherent if enough of them are teased out. The magic indetectable pixie God may be coherent; so may be the vengeful fire-and-brimstone God – but that does not mean “most people” either believe in one or the other, or switch between them.
I think what “most believers” believe in may be ultimately unknowable. Most people believe they have two hands; but people’s beliefs about their hands are rather more static, explicit, continuously confirmed by experience, than their beliefs about God which remains a metaphysical ultimate which lies at the edge of their thinking, the clarity of which varies from moment to moment, etc. This is probably why I prefer to argue either quite abstractly (existence of God) or quite concretely (stupidity of this or that religious spokesperson – though I often do not comment on your statements about this subjects since I tend to agree with them anyway). But I tend to have problems with generalizing about the opinions and the reasoning of the typical religious believer, which lies in between.