Despite the disdain of
So many things are stupid. This is stupid.
Our culture has become impoverished by certainty…Doubt and its religious cousin agnosticism, a word rarely heard nowadays, may have fallen out of fashion, but they have much to teach us, despite the disdain of Richard Dawkins, who famously wrote in The God Delusion: “I am agnostic only to the extent that I am agnostic about fairies at the bottom of the garden.”
And then Christopher Lane cites the disdain of some religious boffin, right?
No.
No, his only example of disdain for doubt (and agnosticism) is Richard Dawkins.
That’s stupid.
It’s just plain stupid. As if* Dawkins were the most dogmatic person on the face of the earth! As if there were no other examples! As if theists were all full of admirable doubt while atheists are all brainlessly certain. As if Lane couldn’t think of one single other person to stand for excessive certainty.
It’s stupid, it’s lazy, it’s stale, it’s cheap. It’s time for people to do better.
The debates about religion and science that flared in the 19th century predate by almost two centuries the “new” atheism that has evolved today, undermining many of its claims for originality.
It doesn’t make claims for originality. Stupid, lazy, stale, and cheap.
*Even if you agree that Dawkins is especially “certain,” even in this particular passage, which I don’t.
in general, agreed. however,
and again:
‘other’? i don’t think dawkins is dogmatic.
What’s infuriating is that what NAs have been saying, loudly and for some time now, is the exact opposite—that we’re not “new.” Where have we made claims for that sort of originality? I’m baffled.
The giveaway for ‘agnosticism’ is that self-proclaimed agnostics never for one moment advocate applying the same standards of proof to other types of propositions that they advocate applying to propositions about God. A consistent ‘agnostic’ would never get out of bed, for fear that the floor might — in spite of all appearances to the contrary — not be there, never eat breakfast for fear that — in spite of all appearances to the contrary — it might be poisoned.
But if you advocate a position that claims physical evidence is no reason to accept the non-existence of God, you should apply that to other propositions as well. An ‘agnosticism’ that extends only to God-propositions is as much special pleading as any other apologist’s claim.
Helen – snerk – yes, I re-read the post before reading your comment, and saw that it looked as if I were saying that. Not what I intended! I’ll update.
It’s a rather confusing text.
Atheism doesn’t make any claims, it’s the usual misrepresentation of atheism as a dogma. Is this approach calculated, or the result of ignorance? It’s difficult to believe that wanker has read any of Dawkins’ books with any degree of comprehension. Agnosticism was probably reasonable in the 19th century but not after 150 years of scientific progress.
Unfortunately,this sort of ‘critique’ is inevitable once atheists start the intellectual version of internecine feuds.
I’m quite pleased, actually. I was in a mood to blog, but had completely run out of ideas. I needed something to get the old stridency going, so I can get out my soapbox and preach. Lane has done it. I needed that.
Impoverished by certainty?
Twit.
That is a very strange position, especially since doubt is the bedrock of Dawkins’ disbelief in fairies. He doubts their existence. I think Christopher Lane is confusing “doubt” with “belief”.
Ah but you see Dawkins is quite sure he doubts the existence of fairies. That’s way too much certainty!
I have that kind of certainty myself. I’m very sure I don’t believe god exists (or fairies either). I’m also, and therefore, very sure I haven’t been given any good reason to believe god exists, because if I had, then I would.
I think people like Lane, and Mark Vernon, and all the people who argue this line, confuse that sureness with certainty that god doesn’t exist. It’s not the same though.
:D Let me think about that while I follow this white rabbit down a hole…
Are we supposed to have faked doubts, or hype the miniscule doubts we have in order to appear to consider questions that have been decided? But we don’t need to do that! Instead we can reopen questions when new evidence suggests that we should. This excess doubt is a pose, and I can’t help noticing that it acts to enable irrational belief. It’s a kind of negative faith, the belief that something might be true if it isn’t strictly false, and if it might be true it’s OK to say it is.
Doesn’t increased certainty come with increased knowledge… isn’t that kinda’ why we pursue knowledge. You would hope we would have learned something over the last 200 years. It’s funny how all his example show the positive uncertainty associated with the theologians (uncertainty about false ideas), He seems to miss completely the notion that sometime certainty is justified.
Got to love how he singles out the certainty of new atheist then turn right around and complain that we are not original. Doesn’t being not original make you not new,
love the poll at the end of the article Agnosticism as wish washy… is in the lead
The other annoying thing about these people is that atheism and agnosticism are irrelevant to each other. Agnosticism is not knowing, atheism is not believing. Even believers don’t claim to know–otherwise it wouldn’t be called faith. Anyone claiming to know anything about God is a fool, but that doesn’t mean that you stop using the null hypothesis.
Yeah, it’s that way for me, too. I don’t know how it was for you, but I was given plenty of reasons to believe a god exists, and they all turned out to be very bad reasons once the tiniest bit of doubt was applied to them along with some attempts to clarify things. Doubt does have a way of putting a damper on a wild, childlike imagination, but it also opens new doors of insight that you don’t get from anthropomorphizing every little thing (in a way, fairies and gods only differ in size).
Right. I suppose a large part of the problem is that all of these words have so many different nuanced usages that they can often be used in opposing ways. What Lane is accusing Dawkins of is not really not doubting but denying something which Dawkins surely isn’t doing. Things attributed to gods are, at this time, easily ascribed to other phenomena. I like how ernie keller says it in #11; this excessive doubt that Lane espouses, which doubles back on itself and doubts reality, is really an irrational belief or a negative faith based on the tiniest of possibilities.
In what way? As “wishy-washy boneless mediocrities who flapped around in the middle?” Someone actually mocked Darwin in this way? Or Spencer, or Eliot, or Huxley? Who exactly has said that? Who has ever made such a sublimely ridiculous comparison? Who?
No, no, no, no. No. No. It only highlights the utter lack of thinking on your part, Mr Lane, and the intellectual bankruptcy of contemporary religious apologists masquerading as agnostics.
Ophelia, I love this post. Just sayin’ :)
And oh my, Lane’s article is embarrassingly bad. It’s built upon a complete (and perhaps intentional?) misunderstanding of his chosen topic and targets.
And this passage is a little misleading:
Lane doesn’t provide sufficient context here. When looked at in conjunction with the paragraph that follows it, that quote from TGD really isn’t arguing what Lane thinks it’s arguing (or wishes it were arguing). Here’s a Google Books link to the page in question.
A militant fundamentalist Victorianist. Bit of a change, I suppose *yawn*
You’re so right.
Ah, yes. Straightforward. That is something that we must never be, lest it stay our hand when we feel compelled to convey bullshit. Nothing quite angers me like the celebration of doubt. In every other realm of human experience, doubt is something to be resolved. But, somehow, when it comes to the supernatural, doubt is something to be sanctified and honored.
“Stupid, lazy, stale, and cheap.”
And dishonest.
Religious apologists are often sure of the truth of what they believe but aren’t sure just what it is, so they criticise others for being sure of its untruth.
@RJW, #5:
I’m going to give a minor dispute to this. We do make at least one claim, namely that god doesn’t exist, or if you prefer, that he almost certainly doesn’t exist. That doesn’t make it dogma, however.
On the article itself, it seems a college research paper on the history of agnosticism, with a little bit of argument tossed in for fun. Perhaps the argument is more fully developed in the book? At any rate, what argument there is for doubt is somewhat weak, and almost seems like what he’s really aiming for is skepticism and a willingness to entertain new evidence when presented with it. It is quite possible to be convinced that there is no god, or fairies, while still being completely willing (perhaps even eager) to entertain evidence to the contrary. A generalized, high energy, more-courage-requiring (really?) doubt is unnecessary.
It shocks me knowing that Lane has exaggerated his stupidity to book length. The Age of Doubt: tracing the roots of my professional embarrassment.
As a professor of literature he likely assumes nothing falls outside his purview, while the fact that he’s a Guggenheim recipient demonstrates there is no just god.
Lucien:
No—the way a whole lot of us define atheism, we don’t.
This stuff leads to some dust-ups with P.Z. Myers and others about “dictionary atheism,” and it’s not as if prominent atheists are careful about the way they use the term (the Dawkins passage being quoted by Lane in the OP is an example)—but there are a whole lot of us who conceptualize atheism as the lack of belief in gods, not (solely) the belief that there are no gods.
I think Roger @21 nails it.
As for “doubt”, there’s a difference between doubting the existence of some unknown doG, totally disbelieving the existence of YWHY, alLah. Ganesh, Thor, Odin, Yamantaka etc and just not knowing if there actually is or is not some disembodied entity outside the universe that we can never know about. And you can do all three at once. The people without doubts are the religionists.
I am so excited to say this (drum roll please…):
@Rieux 24: I entirely agree with you!
This “certainty” that us gnus are supposed to luxuriate in is presumably being invoked by Lane on the premise that atheists support a rational, scientific view of the world. That of course simply illustrates how little Mr. Lane must know about science. After all, the most important tool in a scientist’s kit bag is doubt. The willingness to doubt that those experimental results are correct, and so check and recheck the protocol; run and re-run the experiment. The willingness of the theorist to doubt his/her own thoughts and try to find ways that experimenters can falsify their hypothesis.
Doubt is what materialistic science does.
Thanks for the link, Rieux. I was not aware of that distinction (I would’ve called “weak atheism” agnosticism, but the distinctions in that link seem reasonable), and retract my previous statement regarding atheist claims as an over-generalization and a misunderstanding on my part.
I will say that I claim there is no god, though I’m willing to be proven wrong.
I still find the believe there’s no god/ lack belief in a god distinction to be quibbling. You either think there are gods in the world or you don’t, surely?
I still prefer a short form: gods are fictional. Like wizards, they are a concept that only exists in storytelling, not in the real world.
@22 Lucien Black,
“I’m going to give a minor dispute to this. We do make at least one claim, namely that god doesn’t exist, or if you prefer, that he almost certainly doesn’t exist”.
Well…I really don’t agree. I prefer the following definition of atheism -“There is no credible evidence for the existence of God,gods or for any supernatural phenomena”. That’s an hypothesis that’s obviously falsifiable. So really,by that definition, it’s not appropriate for atheists to make negative claims, we can have opinions, of course.
In my personal opinion God “almost certainly doesn’t exist”( which I interprete as that the probably of the existence of a creator deity is vanishingly small). However,I don’t know how I could defend that position scientifically, other than to say “there’s no evidence”.
SAWells:
I suppose “quibbling” is in the eye of the beholder, but I think the weak/strong distinction is a meaningful matter of precision. (That formulation of yours—”you think there are or you don’t”—is notably ambiguous, given the informality of the language; does “I don’t think there are gods” mean exactly what it says, or does it really mean “I think there are no gods”?)
Would you say that you believe there are an odd number of atoms in the universe? If you’re not willing to accept that belief, does that force the conclusion that you believe that there are an even number? (Note that that’s actually a question of existence/non-existence—of an odd, un-paired atom.)
A positive claim of (or belief in) absence and a refusal to make a claim seem pretty clearly distinct to me. Then again, I am an attorney. (Cough, cough, burden of proof….)
RJW:
Okay, but a- means “without,” and theism means “belief in god.” How one gets “credible,” “evidence,” or “supernatural phenomena” (in the general) out of that I don’t understand.
For whatever it’s worth, a rather large number of atheists, for a rather large amount of time, have stated a definition of atheism that is no more and no less than the absence of god-belief. Isn’t anyone going to the orientation sessions these days?
Back to the original point, I find it deeply ironic that when you look at the central argument in this case – whether you should always remain agnostic about the existence of God or Gods and thus one has no basis to argue one way or the other on the matter – appears to be a synthetic construct.
One never encounters it in a truly pure form in real life. It seems to be, not an argument, but rather a tactic, designed to deflect the attention of those who want to get to the heart of the question.
In other words nobody really lives the life of such an agnostic, taking all God hypotheses as unapproachable by reason or evidence.
The larger religious community is too large a group to discuss in one reply but if we limit ourselves to discussing the use of this ‘agnostic’ argument as used by the accomodationists we encounter in the skeptical/philosophical/scientific community I think a definite pattern emerges.
The accomodationists I am talking about (Mooney/Plait/Ruse/Rosenau/Scott etc) have many views that align with those of the gnu community. They are skeptics at heart – evidence is required before a hypothesis is taken to be ‘believable’. And by ‘believable’ I mean provisionally accepted, but given enough supporting evidence the probability of approaching ‘truth’ can be very high (for instance the evidence that the Earth is a sphere or that it orbits the Sun is so great that we say we are certain that this is the case (when what we mean is that we think the probability that the hypothesis is correct is very high).
However, this skeptical approach does not seem to extend to all fields of study. While these accomodationists are never ‘agnostic’ when it comes to anti-vaccination, anti-global warming, anti moon landing or pseudosciences like homeopathy, a curious dichotomy appears when we approach the question of religion. And not all religion.
I say not all religion because the accomodationists in fact treat most religion in the same way gnus treat religion – they refuse to accept the basis for scientology, they dismiss the possibility of tribal Gods or the Scandinavian, Egyptian, Aztek, Greek or Roman Gods, all for the reason that there is no evidence to support these stories.
Even Christian creationism is dismissed for pretty much the same reason. The argument that God might have carried out miracles in the past that are undectectable today because ‘God carried out the miracles in the past and thus they are currently undetectable as violations of the laws of physics’ (an explanation that could logically explain a six thousand year old earth and the Noachian flood story) are dismissed because we have a scientific explanation for the world that better explains the evidence.
Yet – what happens when instead of creationism you bring up standard christianity (Jesus, the son of God, was born of a virgin and had the ability to carry out miracles, who came back to life three days after he was killed and who ascended bodily to a different dimension called heaven where he lives with the creator of the Universe/Multiverse – of whom he is a part (like the Borg?)
In that case we are told that we must remain neutral. We cannot question these ‘miracles’ for one simple reason. That reason is that it is possible that ‘God carried out the miracles in the past and thus they are currently undetectable as violations of the laws of physics’. In other words exactly the same explanation that is dismissed in the case of creationism.
Why the selection here? Why is one religion subject to scientific scrutiny while the other is immune to it? Both make claims about things that happened and are currently happening in the material world. Yet only one should be subject to skepticism.
One is forced to paraphrase the British comedian Caroline Ahearn in her Mrs Merton character who once asked the beautiful 25 year old Debbie McGee why she had married the sixty year old troll lookalike like TV personality Paul Daniels:
“Debbie, can you tell us, what did a beautiful young lady like yourself see in the multi-millionaire Paul Daniels?”
In this case the question posed is:
“What do accomodationist skeptics see in the politically powerful, financially wealthy and media friendly Christianity hypothesis?”
The real irony here is that when we start to pose the same questions to Christianity as we do to any other hypothesis (from homeopathy to creationism) we are faced with those who adopt a position of what can best be described as fundamentalist agnosticism – a dogmatic assertion that we CANNOT question this belief.
Hey, thanks for posting this article … it gave me some food for thought :) and I came up with this criticism for the article: http://random-excurse.blogspot.com/2011/05/doubting-case-presented-for-doubt-p.html
If you find the time to go through it, please do … and if you don’t like the advertising nature of the post, feel free to withhold it … I would appreciate some constructive criticism though since I feel like a few things in there are a amiss …
Thanks :)
@Rieux- I think I’m coming from a simulations point of view; I have a mental model of the world which includes certain entities and types of entities as real things (people, cats, chairs etc.) and which doesn’t include others (pixies, wizards, gods). Is that believing in no gods or not believing in gods? I don’t really see an important distinction.
On the atoms analogy, as a scientist, I’d be happy to say: there is some number of atoms in a given volume of the universe, we don’t know what that number is, ergo we can’t know if it’s odd or even. But we can distinguish clearly between a zero and a non-zero number of atoms; the number of atoms in the universe is observably non-zero. The number of gods is not observably non-zero and all known gods are fictional characters in stories; I’m not including them in my mental model of reality unless someone actually produces a real god.
My worry is that if somebody asks me if I believe there are no gods and I tell them I do not have a belief that there are gods, they are going to look at me like I’m some kind of lawyer :)
I think you are mixing up ‘belief’ and ‘certainty’.
There are many things in life you can say you believe (that alien abductions don’t take place, that the Patterson film of bigfoot was a guy in a gorilla costume, that the earth goes around the sun) – all without admitting absolute certainty. I think the question of God (especially the sort of God described in standard christianity) fits into such a category.
In other words I think it is OK to say “I don’t believe in God” while it is overreaching to state “I am certain that there is no God”.
As for the question of the ‘dictionary’ definition of atheism, I think PZ got this one wrong. I tend to agree with Sam Harris on this question for the simple reason that ‘atheism’ is a rather broad category that can include strong atheists (“there is no god”), weak atheists (“there is no evidence supporting theism”) and even accomodationists (“the evidence for theism doesn’t convince me but liberal religion has its good points and is to be encouraged”).
@Sigmund: I didn’t mention certainty, did I? Gods are not the sort of thing that I have any reason to put in the category “real things”. So I don’t. All the usual caveats about certainty and proof and hyperbolic doubt and so on are pointless; they apply to all empirical claims anyway.
Some specific gods can be definitively rejected, to as much certainty as any empirical claim can ever have; for example, “the God who carried out Noah’s Flood” does not exist, as there was no such flood.
@SAWells, I see a critical problem with that kind of argument.
The argument itself is common to non creationists and accomodationists who utilize it to suggest that the creationist argument is somehow that much weaker than the liberal christian argument.
For instance the argument is based on the assumption that one is arguing against a Ken Ham style creationist who reads all the scientific evidence as supporting flood geology (grand canyon, fossil layers getting more complex because the smarter animals were killed last etc).
However creationist arguments are not always of this type. For instance the Omphalos hypothesis, that God made it ‘look like’ it was an old rather than young earth is logically consistent with the scientific evidence (so long as you admit that God can do miracles). Indeed it is logically consistent with the scientific method since it actually makes predictions (it predicts that everything we find in nature in future will be consistent with an Old Earth with no sign of the intervention of God!).
The standard liberal christian story also states that God can and has done miracles. Now, given the tiny faction of the Universe that the Earth occupies and the small proportion of time that human history spans, the difference between the Omphalos miracle and the Jesus miracles is a lot smaller than the average liberal christian would seem to think. Remember, we are talking about the creator of the universe – whose abilities, intellect and motives we cannot imagine – where the Earth itself should only be a grain of sand in a Sahara of creation. That he could do the Jesus stuff but be unable to do the Omphalos stuff makes no sense when you think of it in context with the vast scale of the Universe.
In other words an Old Testament God who did the young earth stuff is not inherently more unbelievable than a liberal christian New Testament God.
At least two quotes for the day in here (I say at least because I haven’t read all of every comment yet) –
Agnosticism is not knowing, atheism is not believing
Mark Fournier # 13
Religious apologists are often sure of the truth of what they believe but aren’t sure just what it is, so they criticise others for being sure of its untruth.
Roger # 21
James – :- )
Fatima – I’ll read it.
I agree with the more cautious limited definitions of atheism; one reason to prefer those is that they’re easier to defend. That’s not just narrowly practical – if they’re easier to defend, that indicates that they’re more reasonable. More reasonable is good.
Slightly off topic but relevant to some recent discussions, Chris Stedman has a new article on the Huff Po.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-stedman/we-havent-won-yet_b_857239.html
It’s not a criticism of gnuy atheists! (Yay!)
Unfortunately it’s so sickly sweet that it makes you wish he’d get back to writing about the terrible gnus!
Being annoyed I can stand. Being completely nauseated by articles like the above I can do without.
The idea of using Professor Dawkins as a punching bag to sell books is getting rather old now.
@Reiux #31
But to me it isn’t really meaningful at all. Would you use the same distinction when arguing about the existence of invisible dragons in your garage or a jolly old elf named Santa Claus both of whose existences have as much evidence on their side as any god’s? In that sense, weak atheism is still presenting theists with a privilege above believers in invisible dragons and Santa the way Christopher Lane’s agnosticism is.
Ick. Chris Stedman has been plugging that article on Facebook since Monday…I could tell it was going to be sickly-sweet, and sure enough. Sigh. He’s a born preacher.
Aratina:
Yes!
(We “weak” atheists have decided to take on the demeaning quality of our adjective by ostentatious displays of strength—such as, here, biting bullets.)
Again, weak vs. strong is a matter of precision within full-blown philosophical debate; it’s not terribly relevant to informal, day-to-day life. In the latter context, believing in an absence and lacking belief look pretty much the same: one treats not-believed-in entities much the same way as one treats believed-in-absence entities. But in the former context, putting the burden of proof where it belongs—i.e., not with the skeptic—seems like a pretty big deal to a lot of us. “There is no X” is a positive assertion about the world that demands evidence, whether X is God or Santa; when we’re armwrestling with religious apologists, I think it’s important to make it clear that the onus is on them, not us.
Just for the record, though, this “weak” atheist doesn’t think “strong” atheists are unreasonable or extremist or anything derogatory. I think the weak/strong divide is fundamentally about how we conceptualize “belief,” and how we approach philosophical debate as opposed to less formal contexts. The differences between “weak” and “strong” are frequently pretty minor, and most of the “strong” atheists I know have perfectly worthwhile reasons to be “strong” atheists.
All of which is just to say: I am not an ostentatious-agnostic-style concern troll!
See? Easier to defend. What I said.
Well, if I have to suffer through Stedman’s latest bit of treacle-with-a-little-bit-of-bathos-on-top, then so do all of you. Just a taste, mind:
Oh, the huge manatee. The “idyllic 1990s?” “Living in a time of war?” You’d think he was a public schooler wrenched from reading Latin and thrust into the air raids and blackouts.
“Science is a form of applied doubt”
– The Professor, in the excellent Radio 4 series Old Harry’s Game
Josh – well I was going to say how unkind, but your comment made it worthwhile. Heehee.
Really though. Royal Academy of Over-writing. He needs to get over that right smart quick. That’s not substantive or political or gnu-v-anti-gnu or anything like that; it’s totally about the writing. Easy there fella – put the weapon down slowly – s l o w l y………
Yeah, but I used more words. Obviously you’re not an attorney.
Yes, Ophelia, it is all about the bad writing. Chris needs a good editor – I mean that sincerely, not as snark. I needed the overwrought beat out of me with a red pen years ago, too.
The piece lacks overall perspective and proportion; it shows off his young age to a disadvantage. It’s unnecessarily melodramatic; the things he’s trying to express would sound more compelling and arresting without the written equivalent of the tearful 15-second-long soap opera close-up before commercial.
And it’s too self-regarding. Look at what I did in response to 9/11; I stopped thinking of me, me, me, and prayed for other people. Just thought I’d tell you that so you’d know how really very good I am. Eesh.
Josh, you need to play ‘This is the end’ by The Doors or ‘Voodoo Chile’ by Hendrix while reading the second segment to get the proper effect.
Rieux – you sound like Alan Shore that time, when he was trying to browbeat the head of a school into admitting his (Shore’s) client’s daughter, and the head did some browbeating back – in a tone of infinite weariness, “Oh God you’re a lawyer.”
That. I hate self-regarding writing. I’ve developed a real mental allergy to it.
@Rieux #45
We do have evidence that there are no gods and no Santa, though. For example, in every pertinent place we’ve looked for gods, we’ve discovered evidence against their existences, and while the evidence against the existence of Santa does not cover as much ground as that against gods, it is just as conclusively against Santa’s existence.
I would separate reasons for positively asserting atheism into four columns:
Evidence shows that phenomena attributed to a god are actually caused by natural means.
The description of a god contradicts facts about reality or suffers from its own internal contradictions or incoherence.
A god’s description has been watered down to the point of an invisible dragon in the garage or a cosmic teapot or an Omphalos memory implanter.
A god is not a god at all but merely an object that has been mistakenly, usually intentionally, given the label “god”.
The first reason renders gods unnecessary and actually makes them quite problematic insertions, putting the onus on the theist to explain the absence, which is what something like evolution does nicely. The second reason asks theists to critically analyze their own claims and to consider things a little more deeply than they might be used to, such as “How can your god have a mind but also be immaterial?” The third reason allows us to instantly dismiss the theist’s claim on the grounds that it makes no difference at all to how things were, are, or will be; that god might as well not exist (it is a true “nothing”). The fourth is an attempt to say that yes, we believe that thing you call “God” exists too whether it be a stone or the sun or the cosmos–we just don’t worship it (something Dennett often tries to clear away at the start of discussions about the nonexistence of gods).
So I see many ways that atheism is more than a lack of belief even though it is founded on doubt–doubt in the claims being made by other people throughout history that there are gods.
Yes, but to say “there is no X” is different from saying “I believe there is no X” since the way we use the term “believe” is generally based on high probabilities rather than absolute certainties.
For example, I believe there are no aliens abducting rednecks for anal probings.
I believe there are no bigfoot primates in North America.
I believe there is no such thing as a Santa who flies to every childs house on Christmas eve.
One need not be agnostic about such statements nor should you need to state them in a logically perfect manner (I do not believe in a Santa who flies to every childs house on Christmas eve).
Aratina is correct that religion (more specifically, politically powerful religions) are subject to special pleading on this question.
I guess the difference I am seeing between weak and strong atheism is: “Stop bothering me until you back up your claims!” from the weak side and “Now that you’ve bothered me, you’re going to get an earful of possible reasons why you are wrong!” from the strong side. Is that conception of mine too full of straw?
There are gods I’m sure don’t exist: in particular, the popular-with-theists three-omni god is clearly contradicted by large amounts of evidence.
Beyond that, if someone wants to play dictionary-chopping “what does atheist mean?” I want them to define “god,” clearly and consistently. When I know what they mean by “god” I may be able to answer the question of whether I merely see no evidence for its existence, or whether I am confident it does not exist.
What Rieux said is relevant –
That’s what I’m talking about, at any rate. Sure, in conversation and in my head, I’m free with “there is no god,” “god doesn’t exist,” “I believe god doesn’t exist,” “I don’t believe god exists,” and everything in between. But for actual argument – the more precise and limited versions are useful. They may reduce the time you have to spend agreeing that you’re not certain that there is no god, that you can’t prove that there is no god, that there is a lot we don’t know, etc etc etc.
Deist, atheist, agnostic, doubter, skeptic? A `grook’, if anyone here remembers what they are:
“INTERVIEWEE
Am I pro, or anti, or ex, or ult-
ra this, or that, or the other cult?
I am questioned with such pertinacity
that, once for all, I can only say
I am simply here on a passing stay
in a perfectly private capacity.”
Sigmund @38
It’s important to make two distinctions: The “Omphalos hypothesis” is an explanation (that explains nothing), not a scientific hypothesis. And while it can be said to track with scientific observations it is itself far removed from the scientific method. I’m not saying you deny any of those points, but I think it deserves mentioning.
In a time before Anthony McCarthy turned Thoughts from Kansas from distasteful to unpalatable, John Pieret, JJ Ramsey, Josh Rosenau and a few others defended the Omphalos position in the comment thread.
The fact that Rosenau et al. are willing to defend the Omphalos hypothesis demonstrates how committed they are to gutting science in order to save it. Science is not neutral toward unfalsifiable hypotheses.
If I understand my history correctly—and I may not, exactly—a similar idea was proposed to Galileo by one of the leading church guys who was trying to shut him down.
It was proposed that Galileo claim that the Earth was the center of the Universe, in accordance with scripture, but everything moves in just such a way that it’s observationally equivalent to the Earth and planets orbiting the sun.
The math is pretty much the same either way—all you need is a couple of extremely convenient relativizing axioms, and the two theories make exactly the same predictions. To simplify the math, you can even factor out the relativizing axioms—by hypothesis, they have no net observable effect, so the two theories are identical after the factoring, and it’s a matter of interpretation of the factored-out axioms whether they represent anything real. You can do the calculations exactly as if the Earth orbited the sun.
As if.
If you follow the line of argument that the Omphalos apologists use, it applies equally well to Galileo and heliocentricism.
You can say that wasn’t a scientific question whether the Earth orbits the sun or vice versa, because the two theories made the same predictions, so it was just a philosophical choice which is preferable, not an empirical scientific choice, and Galileo was offering a mere philosophical opinion above his scientific pay grade, at variance with sophisticated theology, when he opined that the Earth orbited the Sun.
As if.
Whoooo, really? They defended Gosse’s hilarious claim? Golly.
Ugh, wait… I haven’t actually read that thread myself… it looks to me like they’re not defending omphalism per se, at least in that thread—they recognize that it’s ridiculous.
My comment was based on their past history of acting as if scientists are out of line to to object to omphalos-like theology, where scientific facts are brought into (alleged) accord with religious beliefs by positing unobservables that magically make things untestable.
Either way, I think the analogy to Galileo applies. The kind of compatibilist apologist theology they do frequently defend has the same basic problem. They pretend that unfalsifiability of religious claims is a get-out-of-jail free card, scientifically, rather than being what scientist generally think—a oood sign that the extraneous, conveniently unfalsifiable propositions are very probably wrong, or not even wrong. (That goes along with pretending that the success of methodological naturalism isn’t evidence that philosophical naturalism is true—even though their own favorite philosopher of science, Barbara Forrest, agrees with most philosophers of science that it clearly is.)
Or as the creationists like to say, “Same facts, different interpretation.”
I think it was in “The Discoveries an Opinions of Galileo” that I remembering reading about the suggested attempt to salvage the literal interpretation of Scripture by lying. And it is an apt analogy. I should clarify that Rosenau et al. do not support Omphalos as being true. They defend it by insisting it can only be addressed philosophically, not scientifically. Once they remove the possibility of evidence and objectivity from the debate, then anything goes apparently. This, I believe, is the tactic of propping up Omphalos: that their approved version of religion is safe from science.
Rosenau, 2009:
That’s another of those things that bug me, about both non-creationist theists and their helpful anti-gnu chorus – that they consider the refusal to accept some religious claims (e.g. OE creationism) to be a perfectly acceptable and valid application of science yet will not accept as valid the application of science to other religious claims (e.g. Jesus’ resurrection).
Gnu: “Excuse me, non-creationist Christian, but why don’t you believe in the literal account described in Genesis?”
Non-creationist Christian: “Science, of course!”
Gnu: “What about Jesus rising from the dead and performing miracles? Can we apply science to that?”
Non-creationist Christian: “No, of course not – what a silly thing to say! Why, the two are completely different. How unsophisticated of you to even suggest it.”
Gnu: “Isn’t that a rather unreasonable double standard? Magic is magic, after all.”
Anti-Gnu: “Sit down and shut up. You’re being mean and strident and hurtful. They’re perfectly entitled to their unreasonable double standard.”
Gillt: In what sense did anything I write “defend[] the Omphalos position”? I think it’s wrong, I wrote that it’s not science. It is not a defense to note that the issue of Omphalos is not evidential. What evidence would you propose that would allow us to empirically falsify the claim of appearance of age? The whole bloody point of Omphalos is that any evidence of the earth’s real age was hidden by an omnipotent, omniscient deity who would, by assumption, be capable of perfectly disguising the earth’s real age. How could you empirically falsify it? How is that a scientific issue? Omphalos is wrong, but not because of science, and that’s not a defense.
Josh Rosenau said
“Omphalos is wrong, but not because of science, and that’s not a defense.”
How can you know that something about the natural world is wrong without using science?
Omphalos is only one of an infinite number of speculations that have equal probability. The scientific consensus, in contrast, seems to be narrowing down to one single narrative (big bang, chemical evolution, biological evolution etc). We discount Omphalos for reason of scientific probability not for reasons of theology since there is no such thing as consensus theology.
I suppose I ought to say not “Omphalos is wrong,” but “I reject Omphalos as implausible, unparsimonious, and useless for any scientific, philosophical, or theological purpose,” but I sort of hoped the former covered the latter. To say that Omphalos is discounted “for reasons of scientific probability” is silly: how would you assign any probability to the claim? There are too many aspects of it that are not only unknown, but unknowable by assumption.
For examples of people knowing something about the natural world is wrong without using science, see Ophelia’s discussions of Sam Harris’s failed attempts at a scientific account of morality. We can know that murder is wrong without having to provide a scientific account of morality, and the same goes for certain other theological and philosophical claims.
I still hold out hope that gillt will withdraw the false claim that anything I said was – in any sense – a defense of Omphalos. It’s unsupported by anything he said, and the partial retraction in #66 doesn’t quite capture the initial inaccuracy, which claim Ophelia and Paul W. seem to have been willing to accept at face value.
Josh, the word “murder” means ‘wrongful killing’.
To say we can know that murder is wrong is therefore a tautology. I suppose we could take a worst case scenario – say killing an innocent child – where everyone would agree that there can be no justification. One might argue in that case that scientific reasoning (understanding the effects on autonomous conscious beings, the effects of such killings on the mental health of relatives and friends of the child, the effects on society at large of allowing such acts to go unpunished etc) can give a decent guideline as to what sorts of killing are deemed ‘wrong’.
Religion, on the other hand, if they reject scientific reasoning, is left with the sort of moral command theory that William Lane Craig promotes. You NEED scientific reasoning to ensure proper ethical behavior because proper ethical behavior is dependent on knowing all the facts in the situation. As an illustration of this point I will just say that the
Golden Rule “treat others as you would have them treat you” can be flawed without the use of scientific knowledge – it took scientific progress to show that “others”, a term referring to individuals on the same level of consciousness as you (i.e. Not plants or non human animals), included all humans. Without that knowledge one could live according to the golden rule while simultaneously keeping other humans as slaves.
Whether or not Rosenau buys into the Biblical motivation behind Omphalism or remains agnostic that there are rings in the Tree of Knowledge would be fun to know but not as pertinent to the discussion as to whether he defends the Omphalism rationale of Divinely revealed realities, by definition alone, unchallengeable by science. If so, his is a semantic argument that devalues observation and objective truth. From his writing I think it’s uncontroversial to say he defends this position.
Omphalism is a dishonesty. If it were true, in the dishonest and deceitful ways of God. As it actually is, a dishonest assessment of the well-established veracity of observation fundamental to science.
I’m of the opinion that if there is an objective reality, one that science can access, then science and Omphalism cannot coexist. Simply wishing up separate domains for them doesn’t work. If you’re a supporter of science you should be challenged on your use of Omphalism as an example of the limits of science as applied to more topical miracles (resurrection, parting of the red sea, transubstantiation, virgin birth, etc.)
Gillt: All I’m saying is that Omphalos is, by its nature, unfalsifiable, and therefore not a scientific claim. Your insinuations and goalpost shifting do noting to address that straightforward point. This is not a devaluation of observation and objective truth, it is simply standard philosophy of science applied to a particular case. This is not “defend[ing] Divinely revealed realities.” I reject Omphalos, as I said above, and (as you know) I have never endorsed or defended the notion that anything is Divinely anything (though my commitment to observation and the existence of objective truth means I can’t reject the possibility that it might be).
I agree that the god of Omphalos is a liar and a cheat, but that’s a theological reason to reject it, not a scientific one. I agree with you that there’s an objective reality and that science can access it, but so would an Omphalist. Your opinion that Omphalism cannot coexist with those beliefs is empirically and logically invalid, and would, in any event, be a philosophical, not scientific, rejection of Omphalism. As it must be, since a scientific refutation of Omphalism is impossible by assumption. The same is true of Marxism, Freudianism, atheism, and theism, not to mention my opinion about Charles Dickens and the merits of TV’s Firefly.
If we know nothing about gods because they are either unknown or unknowable, then how can we even have theology – let alone good or bad theology. To conclude that something is bad theology entails that we have been able to study gods. I have been led to believe that gods speak through revelation and I would really like to know how one verifies a voice in his or her head or a written or oral account of a revelatory event as coming from a god.
Then you disagree with what Paul W. said, Science is not neutral toward unfalsifiable hypotheses.
Omphalos is not art or popculture. And what do you mean by Freudianism? Psychoanalysis is controversially bad science. YEC is a theism. Is it also beyond scientific refutation? I think you’re confusing ideologies and opinions that make scientific claims and ideologies and opinions that hew to science and then jumbling them all together.
You cannot say science can access an objective reality and that Omphalist is part of that objective reality and then say science has no access to Omphalos. It’s inconsistent. That’s why I said you have to devalue or reject either objective reality or science’s ability to access and assess that reality. That’s inconsistent or intellectually dishonest part of your argument.
Gillt: Paul W. also then withdrew a bit after he noticed that you had mischaracterized that thread and my views (as well as those of the other thread participants). Which is unambiguously intellectually dishonest. As is your constant attempt to shift the goalposts (e.g., the twisted and failed attempt at a syllogism in your last paragraph).
In any event, what could science be but neutral to unscientific (i.e. unfalsifiable) claims? Scientists need not be neutral towards such things, of course, and there are excellent nonscientific reasons to reject Omphalos, but an unfalsifiable claim is only a scientific problem if it is presented as science, and saying it’s not science is not a neutral claim in that context, but it’s a philosophical claim.
“Omphalos is not art or popculture.” Sure, but neither is it science, so what’s your point? If you’re allowed to lump it in with science, why can’t I lump it with art and pop culture and political philosophy?
FWIW, randomized trials have found talking therapy to be an effective adjunct to antidepressants for treatment of depression. The pseudoscience of Freudianism involves the attribution of all mental illness to repressed or sublimated sexual urges. Cf. http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/popper_falsification.html (“as for Freud’s epic of the Ego, the Super-ego, and the Id, no substantially stronger claim to scientific status can be made for it than for Homer’s collected stories from Olympus. These theories describe some facts, but in the manner of myths. They contain most interesting psychological suggestions, but not in a testable form.”)
Of course there is nothing twisted or failed in my syllogism. It stands.
Paul W. didn’t withdraw his statement. He thought I claimed that you believe in Omphalos, as did you. There’s a difference between backtracking and clarifying. I clarified my position by explicating the context. Apologies for my former ambiguity, but not for saying you defend the Omphalos position with regards to science. It’s the same defense you seem to allow for other miraculous events. Am I wrong?
This is not that hard to understand. Omphalos is “lumped” with science because it makes truth statements about objective reality. Your views on Firefly don’t do that. I still think you’re confusing ideologies and opinions that make scientific claims and ideologies and opinions that hew to science.
On Omphalos hypothesis being or not being a scientific claim, I think it is in a way. There would have to be something (whether an intelligent being or a supremely advanced piece of technology) capable of doing what the Omphalos hypothesis claims has happened, and in that respect we open it up to investigation against the vast body of science that shows, to the best of our current knowledge, that a thing capable of accomplishing such a feat is nigh impossible. So not only is the Omphalos agent equivalent to nothing even if it did or does exist since it leaves not a single trace of its alleged existence, but it is also allegedly does something that probably couldn’t be done as we can determine through science.
The beauty of Bill O’Reilly’s “You can’t explain that!” phrase is that it shows us or reminds us how shallow the thinking of theists is. If they can’t explain it, then any half-baked thing they do think of will work just fine for them in place of a scientific explanation. The Omphalos hypothesis may sound plausible like a neat trick, but once you ask how the Omphalos agent does what it is said to do (create a false history), what it requires, or what such an agent would look like, the whole idea becomes breathtakingly absurd.
Gillt: I don’t defend Omphalos, I never defended Omphalos, and every time you claim otherwise, you simply emphasize your own dishonesty.
Omphalos is the equivalent to “what if we’re living in ‘The Matrix’, dude!”, or “what if we’re part of a computer game!” – some external force that creates our current reality but is unreachable by scientific examination. It is one of an infinite variety of conjectures that could not be tested (a magic chicken named brian created the world last Wednesday).
The important point here is that many theistic religions share some of the characteristics of these sorts of pseudoscientific conjectures. For instance Christianity says Jesus came back from the grave and then flew up to heaven. So again we have an external force acting on our world and being untestable. Once you introduce untestable Godly miracles into your religion you have the same problem that Omphalos has for science – it becomes unfalsifiable pseudoscience.
I never intended to say you believe Omphalos is true, and I’ve said as much. And I apologized for the unintended vagueness. What’s left is you habitually missing the point I’m making.
Nothing I’ve ever written can plausibly be construed as “defend[ing] the Omphalos position with respect to science.” I say it’s not science! That’s not a defense with respect to science. It’s not a defense in any sense. Yet you persist in misrepresenting my views.
In your opinion, is Sigmund’s comment (#80) a defense of Omphalos, too?
HAhahahahaha – note who the first commenter on that thread is.
I bet you can guess without even looking.
In your opinion is theoretical physics, with its unfalsifiable aspects and assumptions, not science?
Omphalism and theoretical physics are encompassed by a generally conceived science that includes all the theories about the material world that are as yet, or currently, unfalsifiable. Merely invoking “Unfalsifiable!” adds nothing here.
What “unfalsifiable aspects and assumptions” of theoretical physics are you referring to?
It’s true that some aspects of string theory are not testable given extant technology, but there are conceivable experiments that would falsify aspects of them. They are thus falsifiable. Omphalos is not, under any circumstances, falsifiable.
I’d also say that treating Omphalos and theoretical physics as components of “a generally conceived science” does far more honor to Omphalos than I, or any scientist or philosopher of science I know, would ever grant it.
Of course by encompassed, I don’t mean part of science but under the purview of science.
And on the basis of that absurd distinction you continue to level the absurd charge that I “defend” Omphalos?
If you think I’m misrepresenting your position, explain why science can address YEC arguments for an alternative age of the Grand Canyon and not the Omphalos hypothesis for an alternative origin of the Universe.
jonjermey said (post #3): “The giveaway for ‘agnosticism’ is that self-proclaimed agnostics never for one moment advocate applying the same standards of proof to other types of propositions that they advocate applying to propositions about God. A consistent ‘agnostic’ would never get out of bed, for fear that the floor might … not be there …”
Jon: Even though I’m not exactly a card-carrying agnostic nor even greatly versed in the nuances I still don’t think that argument holds a lot of water. For one thing I think that there are a great many differences in the probabilities of the two cases you describe.
In the case of gods there has been something like, according to Dawkins I think, some 100,000 different ones which mankind has worshipped and sacrificed to – frequently other humans – over the millennia with nary a glimmer of a sighting to suggest that any of them are real. In which case an argument that a current “instantiation”, a current claim for the existence of another one, seems highly improbable and can be dismissed the same way we have dismissed – or outgrown – all of the others.
However, in the case of the probabilities that the floor will exist as we get out of bed, or that the sun will rise tomorrow, or that the food will turn out to be not poisoned are substantially better as the floor has existed in the past as has sunrise and as the fact that we’ve made it to lunch after eating breakfast innumerable times.
I think it is appropriate that the degree of certainty, of belief, we ascribe to certain events or beings has to be based, in large part anyway, on the frequency of similar events or sightings of various entities.
RJW said (post #5): “Atheism doesn’t make any claims; it’s the usual misrepresentation of atheism as a dogma …”
RJW: I could be mistaken of course, but it seems to me that that is not quite correct. It seems that atheism essentially asserts that there is no god, and most typically that there is no Jehovah, no Allah. I will quite readily admit that there is no evidence for those entities and which can largely be rejected as being highly improbable as there is no evidence for any other similar entities that mankind has believed over the millennia, but which have been rejected in the past. However, I would say that there might be other conceptions of god – a panentheist or panpsychist view, for examples – that might not be so easily dismissed and which are more metaphorical or natural than the supernatural Abrahamic versions.
For instance, Dawkins in his The God Delusion somewhat testily complains of the concept of god used by many scientists and goes on to “wish that physicists would refrain from using the word God in their special metaphorical sense. The metaphorical or panentheistic God of the physicists is light years away from the interventionist, miracle-wreaking, thought-reading, sin-punishing, prayer-answering God of the Bible, of priests, mullahs and rabbis, and of ordinary language.” [pg 41]
It is that latter version which is the most problematic and which should be the target of our reason, if not our sarcasm; the former, I would argue, may still have a great amount of utility.
#90 Steersman,
“atheism essentially asserts that there is no god”. Well, not by my definition,there’s been a rather confusing argument on this site as to the definition of atheism- there appears to be, incredibly, many varieties of atheists. Essentially, I’m only defending my preferred definition of atheism. I agree with your point that some definitions of ‘God’ might be much more difficult to dismiss than the traditional Semitic deities most of us are familar with. In my my opinion people who believe in the personal God of the Bible are positively demented, given the problems of theodicy. A deist position is probably commensurate with the evidence, but then, I always remember Occam’s razor,why bother with the middle man. The burden of positive proof is still on the Deist, Theist or the believer,and they’re welcome to try.
Ophelia Benson said (post #9): “I have that kind of certainty myself. I’m very sure I don’t believe god exists (or fairies either).”
Ophelia: A bit of a syntactical and philosophical minefield there I think. For one thing, it seems a theist might also suggest that she/he is equally sure that they believe god exists: both cases are sort of like the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party where the guests keep moving to the next chair without washing the dishes at the last.
The problem, at least one large part of it, is that not only do many of the theists accept as true or real – the definition of “believe” – the existence of some supposed supernatural entities, but that many of them are quite adamant that they exist – and will burn your house down or kill you if you suggest otherwise – and that they claim various rights which, IMHO, would only have some credibility or force if those entities actually did exist. Reminds me of a saying of Cromwell’s which he was directing at some doctrinaire and dogmatic Christians (a tautology?): I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.
However, I think your statement – “I don’t believe god exists” – can be logically reformatted without changing the meaning as “I believe god doesn’t exist”. Still an assertion, an acceptance as true or real, about something – that it doesn’t exist – when there is no solid evidence to justify that. While I will quite readily concede, as mentioned in a previous post, that it is highly improbable that there is any real, tangible, existence to any of the Abrahamic gods – except as constructs in the minds of their believers – I’m not sure that it is justified to say that no gods exist when we haven’t defined them all, much less set out to disprove their existence.
As you may know, it is possible, though frequently quite difficult, to prove that there are no solutions to various mathematical problems – Fermat’s last theorem is sort of a classic. Not quite so easy, I think, to do the same for all concepts of god.
#91 RJW:
You won’t get much of an argument from me on your “people who believe in the personal God of the Bible are positively demented” – actually quite a bit of agreement. I’m reminded of reading an argument by a forensic psychologist who said that those who talk to God are devout, but those who think God talks to them are psychotic. Unfortunately, I think there’s more of a tendency for the former to turn into the latter than vice versa.
However, the definition of “atheism” seems to be a little trickier and I can well believe there’s been some “confusing argument” – in part, as you suggest, because of a spectrum in the varieties. But Wikipedia argues that:
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities.
Seems that even they are a little ambiguous there as the first sentence would seem more consistent with the definition of agnosticism – no position at all taken, though it seems a little closer to Lane’s quote of Dawkins about “pallid weak-tea fence sitters”. And the second sentence would seem closer to the positive definition that I’ve been using.
The burden of positive proof is still on the Deist, Theist or the believer, and they’re welcome to try …
Absolutely. Reminds me of a saying of Sagan’s – or at least one that he popularized – that being, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof”. The ball is in their court and until they show the evidence I think any and all claims they make on the commonwealth based the supposed existence of those deities should be entirely and categorically rejected.
And then Christopher Lane cites the disdain of some religious boffin, right? No. No, his only example of disdain for doubt (and agnosticism) is Richard Dawkins.
Funny. The essay I read goes on in the next sentence to do exactly what you said it doesn’t:
“Quentin de la Bédoyère, science editor of the Catholic Herald, who in 2006 wrote that the Catholic historian Hugh Ross Williamson respected firm religious belief and certain unbelief, but “reserved his contempt for the wishy-washy boneless mediocrities who flapped around in the middle.”
This couldn’t possibly be a one-sided post, could it? I mean, with your calling the author stupid and everything . . .
You’ve misunderstood the passage. The part you quote is contained within Lane’s overall point about Dawkins, who is indeed his sole illustration of reprehensible disdain for doubt and agnosticism. Dawkins quotes someone else’s disdain, but Lane is using that fact to illustrate his claim about Dawkins.
This is certainly a polemical post. Did you think I thought it wasn’t? But I didn’t call the author stupid. I don’t know if he’s stupid or not (and I doubt that he is). I called the post stupid.