Why is there bumping rather than nutting?
Michael Ruse is explaining about religion and morality now. It’s way deep.
Is there a place under the accommodationism canvas for the non-believer? I think there is for I aspire to be one such person. As…argued at length in my book Science and Spirituality: Making Room for Faith in the Age of Science, I believe that one can argue for all of modern science and yet agree that there are certain questions that science leaves unanswered: Why is there something rather than nothing? What is the ultimate ground of morality?
I believe that although one need not turn to religion — I am simply a skeptic on these sorts of questions — it is legitimate for the believer to offer answers.
What does he mean “legitimate”? It’s not a crime; the believer has a legal right to offer answers; but that doesn’t mean the answers are any good, or interesting, or well reasoned, or worth paying attention to.
“Legitimate” isn’t the right word, because it’s beside the point. Legitimacy is not the issue. The issue is why should anyone care what “the believer,” qua believer, “offers” on questions like why is there something rather than nothing and what is the ultimate ground of morality? The answers that religion “offers” to those questions are dogmatic and stupid and wrong, and thus they are worthless, so why does Ruse bother with this elaborate minuet of deference to them when he doesn’t buy them himself?
Who knows, and who cares, except that I have a heightened awareness of Ruse’s malice toward unapologetic atheists at the moment, so I feel like pointing out what pointless deepities he’s giving us here.
Sorry! Comments not closed, was an accident. Comment away.
pointless deepities
Such a good way to describe this kind of thing.
:)
Apparently science can make a fairly good stab at the first question. As to the second: there is no “ultimate” ground of morality. What would that mean? And why is it necessary? Morality evolves. If there is an ultimate ground, then it can’t. That’s what the Roman Catholic Church thinks, and it’s morality is fucked up. This is a pointless deepity. In fact, most religious questions seem to end in pointless deepities. That’s a great word! Is it yours, Ophelia? Give us an etymology.
I’m afraid I would be even harsher. We reject alternative medical therapies as dangerous, because they are pretend expertise with an irrational foundation, so perhaps we should reject religious views as actively dangerous, because they are also pretend expertise with an innapropriate basis. What is the difference between religious views on mental illness that lead to beliefs in possession and religious views on morality that lead to discrimination and hatred? None at all, so why are religious leaders listened to at all on any subject?
The more I read the views of people like Ruse, the less tolerant I am becoming, and feel like ranting, as above.
Ophelia, is deepity a coinage of yours? I vaguely remember it associated with Daniel Dennett.
Oh no, Brian, it is indeed Dennett’s.
Kitcher:
That’s the thing, though, isn’t it? They aren’t. So, no matter how much you stand willing to view religion as centered in social practices that inform and enrich human lives – Wasn’t it Hitchens who said he covers his head in the temple and removes his shoes in the mosque? – you will still be regarded as hateful because you challenge the doctrines. Ruse seems to think that’s a fair deal.
Stephen Fry: So you’re offended. So fucking what?
I miss religion sometimes much the same way I would suppose a cleaned-up addict misses their drug of choice. Maybe other people experienced it differently than I did, but to be honest, it wasn’t the answers that “science doesn’t have” that provided me with such intense feelings. It was completely acts like praying salat, giving du’ah, and fasting during Ramadan with other Muslims. I don’t think religion really offers any answer to why there’s something rather than nothing, and I don’t think that’s what most believers are after anyway. The high-minded ontological questions are in my view generally act as a sort of after the fact rationalization for chasing that high.
Sorry, should read *completely non-epistemological acts like praying* and the last sentence shouldn’t have *are*. My English sucks this morning for some reason.
Oh, no! Not the “Why is there something rather than nothing?” argument!
As if “nothing” is easy, and “something” takes a supernatural effort to achieve. On what basis does Ruse know this to be the case?
It’s the height of presumption to claim to know which questions science will never be able to address, as well as thinking that just-so stories from believers will fill the bill.
Well, now, I’ve never been addicted, but those lysergic acid amides…
Seriously, DA, thank you for reminding us that religious experience isn’t just about ideology and truth claims.
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From what I can tell, he’s saying something like this: “if skepticism is the hole that we’ve dug for ourselves, then it’s up to everyone to find their way out of the hole, using whatever tools are at their disposal.” So I wouldn’t call this a deepity unless you think skepticism is epistemically illegitimate.
The thing is, skepticism *is* illegitimate — it’s not a viable epistemic doctrine. ‘inference to the best explanation’ is a sexy and relatively novel sort of reasoning that cuts through skepticism like a hot knife through butter. From that point of view, it seems like Ruse is doing epistemology in the 18th century, as if philosophy came to a halt once Hume died.
as if philosophy came to a halt once Hume died.
You mean it didn’t? Dang, I’ve got another 2 and a half centuries of reading to catch up on.
Since Hume died a lot of philosophers have been desperately trying to resist his insights. As a result, it has, in fact, been very difficult to build on Hume and make progress.
My comment at HuffPo got screened. *eyeroll*
Apparently calling Ruse “incredibly arrogant” and “condescending” is out of bounds?
Or it could have been where I suggested that he treats religious people as if they were too “stupid and emotionally fragile” to defend their beliefs and thus attempts to do the job for them.
Either way it’s an annoyance (not that HuffPo comments are my preferred medium for discussion anyway).
That’s interesting Russell. I remember that Searle in his book Mind, presented an argument to refutes Hume’s views on causation. Not sure what a philosopher thinks of Searle’s work. I think Russell, in his History of Western Philosophy, reckoned that Hume’s insights were difficult to resist. But that was written 60 years ago and Russell was past his philosophic prime then.
Maybe I’m dirty-minded (entirely possible), but the title of this post seems somewhat pornographic. Are you trying to take up the slack for Greta while she’s on a short blog break?
My comments were lifted too. I accused Ruse of being a hypocrite (which he is). Apparently he is also a moral coward.
The term “Deepity” was from Dennett’s daughter, not Dennett. As I recall it was in reaction to something he said at his dinner tabel. “Daddy said a deepity.”
There’s bumping rather than nutting to prevent cruelty to animals.
Ruse used to be much less squishy – he still flirted with subjectivism, but seemed to have no truck with cosying up to the religious. Recently (and I do mean now a large portion of his career – for 12 years at least) he’s gone over the edge, alas.
“Why is there something rather than nothing?”
Sorry, Frank Wilczek has answered that: Because nothing is unstable.
Pornographic…well I think of “nutting” as being an innocent pastime of taking a basket out into the woods in autumn to collect hazelnuts. I don’t know what you could possibly have been thinking of, Rieux…
I think perhaps Rieux was thinking ‘rutting’ at least that’s what it’s called here in England.
That’s your story and you’re sticking to it, eh? You’ll never challenge Greta for the title of Porniest Atheist Blog that way.
Egbert, dude—is it that difficult to take the word “nut,” turn it into a gerund, and recognize the dirty-mind potential in it?
Heh – well I was thinking you meant testicle as opposed to rutting, but rutting is quite good, especially since then you get humping.
And yet, in sober truth, I think bumping and nutting is funnier than humping and rutting, so there you go.
Templeton to Ruse “check is in the post” that is all that needs to be said on this article.
Brian, I think there are three major developments that are worth keeping in mind when it comes to the response to the skeptic that might be worth looking into. The first, which I mentioned above, is the idea of abductive inference — or inference to the best explanation — which allows us to sidestep the problem of induction, even if it cannot be solved. The second is called contextualism, which is not quite as promising, but still a candidate that’s worth paying attention to.
Third, there was Kant’s transcendental idealism. And as far as cognitive science / psychological methodology goes, Kant has outlived Hume. For instance, the statistician Karl Pearson advocated a roughly Humean view on causation, but (whatever its merits) that perspective is not especially popular. Although I doubt there’s any consensus, my impression is that people are more inclined to treat causation as part of our toolbox of innate concepts.
My evolving thoughts on the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” are currently that the answer is in fact concealed in the question itself, and it’s just hidden somewhat by the phrasing.
Any answer that is “something” just further recurses the question. What we really want is a “nothing” that causes there to be “something”. So let’s phrase it that way:
Q: What is the nothing that causes there to be something?
A: Nothing.