Richard Norman on Richard Swinburne
A reader alerted me to this article taking issue with Swinburne.
…serious arguments are what the religious believer needs to come up with, rather than evasive appeals to ‘faith’. If belief in God is a matter of ‘faith’ in contrast to reason, there’s nothing to distinguish it from mere wishful thinking.
Just so. And yet ‘faith’ is routinely used as a valor word, a virtue word, a self-righteous word, a self-flattering word. The nimbus around it almost always indicates ‘I have “faith” therefore I am better.’ That’s bad. Wishful thinking should not have an aura of superior virtue or depth. But it does. That’s bad.
Swinburne now offers two new versions of the argument from design, which shift the argument to another level. The first, which he calls the ‘argument from temporal order’, points to the fact that everything in the universe takes place with predictable regularity, in accordance with scientific laws…”To say that such laws govern matter is just to say that every bit of matter, every neutron and proton and electron throughout endless space and time behaves in exactly the same way…How extraordinary that is!”…What exactly is supposed to be ‘extraordinary’ about this regularity?
I’ll clear that up for you. Look, I’ll shuffle this pack of cards, then I’ll deal myself five cards, then I’ll point out how extraordinary it is that I got just those five cards and no others. It’s mind-boggling. God alone can explain it. See?
Our existence seems to call for some special explanation only if we assume that we human beings have a special importance and that a universe without us would be an impoverished universe which would have gone badly wrong. We may like to think that the purpose of the universe is to produce ourselves, but there’s no reason to suppose that that’s true. It’s just a reflection of our human perspective and our inflated ideas of our own importance.
Swinburne seems to have a really bad case of that, and of a surprising inability even to notice that he has it, or at least to acknowledge it. That’s part of what makes his arguments sound so…the way they sound.
Necessarily, if what we want to explain are the facts which science starts from, then science cannot itself explain them. But it doesn’t follow that, because there is no scientific explanation, there must be a personal explanation. The alternative is that there is no explanation at all (that is, we should reject the first premise). Swinburne thinks that this is unacceptable. He says: ‘To suppose these data to be just brute inexplicable facts seems…highly irrational.’ (p. 53) But all explanations have to come to an end somewhere. If you ask theists why there exists an omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent god, there is no further explanation they can give. If God is the explanation of everything else, then the existence of God has to be just a brute inexplicable fact. It seems to me to be a great deal more rational to accept, as our brute fact, the existence of a certain kind of universe. After all, we do have the best possible evidence that this universe, unlike God, actually exists!
Yeah but on the other hand if we’re going to stop with some brute fact or other, we might as well pick the one that loves us and makes us suffer pain so that other people can have sympathy for us – right? That being so much more consoling and all.
By coincidence, just read in ‘Freedom Evolves’;
‘In the theory with which we have to deal, Absolute Ignorance is the artificer; so that we may enunciate as the fundamental principle of the whole system, that, in order to make a perfect and beautiful machine, it is not requisite to know how to make it. This proposition will be found, on careful examination, to express, in condensed form, the essential purport of the Theory, and to express in a few words all Mr. Darwin’s meaning; who, by a strange inversion of reasoning, seems to think Absolute Ignorance fully qualified to take the place of Absolute Wisdom in all the achievements of creative skill. ‘
Mackenzie understood, but not enough to celebrate the fact.
“Premise 2: The explanation cannot be a scientific explanation.”
“I agree with Swinburne’s second premise. Necessarily, if what we want to explain are the facts which science starts from, then science cannot itself explain them.”
I disagree with that assertion. Science can and does explain “the facts which science starts from.”
All that is necessary to assume is that matter/energy has always existed, and that the contrary is absurd. How hard is that? Can you imagine some form of reality devoid of matter/energy? Wouldn’t that be like the sound of one hand clapping?
True, roger. One of the many reasons for my peculiar affection for Putney (where, unlike other such winsome London suburbs as Hampstead and Highgate, I have never lived) is that Swinburne ended up there. As good a ‘reason’ as any for what is a basically irrational liking.
Doug, yes, but you still end up in the same place, surely. Science can’t explain why matter/energy has always existed. The fact that alternatives are not imaginable doesn’t amount to an explanation – it’s just admission of a brute fact.
Ophelia wrote:
Science can’t explain why matter/energy has always existed.
Haven’t scientists established that nothing can arise out of nothing, or disappear without a trace? The destruction of one thing gives rise to another, and so on ad infinitum. Matter/energy is continually transormed, but can neither be created nor destroyed.
Is my notion of this concept too simplistic?
No, it’s just that not everyone will accept that as an explanation. That’s a sort of knothole by which people let in a deity (although that dodge doesn’t work, really, because you still end up in the same place – you need to explain the deity). Establishing how things happen isn’t the same as explaining why they do. Of course, simply because one can form the question, ‘why does it happen that way?’ doesn’t mean there’s an answer – and in any case (she said repetitively) the answer isn’t satisfactory anyway, since one can just ask why all over again.
It seems to me that asking the question, “What would the universe be like if there were no matter or energy?” is like asking whether god can create a stone so big that he can’t lift it. There is such a thing as a meaningless question. I mean, how do logicians explain why A is A? It’s true by definition. There is no explanation.
A bit off track, but I caught Bill Moyers on PBS last night interviewing Colin McGinn. I had never heard of him before. A very interesting philosopher (and atheist).
Here’s a little info:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/portraits_mcginn.html
“There is such a thing as a meaningless question.”
You bet. That’s what I meant by “simply because one can form the question, ‘why does it happen that way?’ doesn’t mean there’s an answer” – that it’s a meaningless question.
Yeah, McGinn is interesting. Famous for meeting Jennifer Aniston once. (cackle)
I’ve been meaning to look into that Moyers show. Is it good?
Didn’t we deal with McGinn at some point? Rings a bell with me. Thanks for the link. The bit I like best in the clip is when he talks about the muddle people are in about what tolerance means: they think being tolerated has to mean one isn’t allowed to criticise them. By the way, if you didn’t notice or follow the link on the Moyers page to the J. Miller/McGinn interview, it’s http://cotimotb.siteburg.com/wiki/index.php?wiki=AtheismTapesOne. It’s pretty good, and covers a lot of what we did as a result of JM’s request, including Euthypro.
Hmmm. Could have. I’ve read him a bit. I can’t remember what it was though, and can’t offhand think what it could have been. Philosophy of mind, maybe…
Oh – yeah. Google found a couple from 2003. Nothing very earthshaking though – probably not what you’re remembering.
Jeez, the McGinn thing was just an aside.
I still want to know why it’s not just an accepted scientific fact that there was never a moment when there was no matter/energy. That seems an important point, because theists seize upon this crazy a priori idea that at one time there was nothing. There could never have been nothing. It’s a classic example of begging the question. There must be a god, because it takes something miraculous to go from nothing to something. Because god exists before anything, then god is what got us there.
Ophelia, I watch Moyers whenever I realize he’s going to be on, which isn’t often. My impression is that he’s a deist or some kind of progressive Christian who ignores the nasty Jesus bits. I’ve seen very little of his new series, but it seems worthwhile, especially if you do as I do, and read something if it seems to begin to drag.
Last night, before McGinn, he had a writer on who was Christian, but that didn’t deter her from an intense interest in ethics.
“I still want to know why it’s not just an accepted scientific fact that there was never a moment when there was no matter/energy.”
But the issue isn’t really whether it’s a scientific fact or not, it’s whether that settles the matter or not.
I’m still confused.
Maybe I’ll get better answers to this one: Why does the porridge bird lay its eggs in the air?
(Surely there must be a sizeable overlap between B&W readers and Firesign fans.)
Well I’m probably confused too. I usually am.
It’s just that theists like to say things along the lines of ‘It’s only an assumption that the laws of nature apply everywhere.’ And they like to ask unanswerable ‘why’ questions and then triumphantly point out that science can’t answer questions like that but (aha, aha) religion can. How? By saying ‘god’ of course.
Certainly we’re familiar with that ‘science can’t answer X-type questions’ gambit around here, because if I’ve whined about the imbecilic assumption that religion can answer them by the simple expedient of making stuff up, once, I’ve whined about it a hundred times.
Thanks, Ophelia. Your humility is very becoming. I’m trying to follow your example. (And I’m sure I need it more.)