Posted by
Rob on Tuesday, January 09, 2007 12:20:19 PM
It seems that Materialists are getting quite defensive nowadays, publishing many pieces on the virtues of a philosophy in steep decline. I must be getting a reputation for the "Dear Abby" of Materialist woes, because my friends keep sending me these sad stories and asking for advice. So I've decided that in the name of efficiency, I would name each of the standard Materialist defenses, and then I can refer such inquiries to the appropriate post.
I overlook the
ad hominem defense of a Richard Dawkins and will address only those who perhaps are still redeemable, referring the concerned reader to Ann Coulter's excellent book "
How to Talk to a Liberal, if you must", ("If you can somehow force a liberal into a point-counterpoint argument, his
retorts will bear no relation to what you've said -- unless you were in
fact talking about your looks, your age, your weight, your personal
obsessions, or whether you are a fascist.").
Scientific American carried a review of two books by scientists who claim that Christianity and science are entirely compatible. True to form, SA used the
condescension defense. "the poor blighter just needs a little opium to get him through the day". Unfortunately, the two scientists reviewed appear much better adjusted, educated, and compensated than the SA editors, demonstrating instead the streak of deep inferiority that runs through this defense. My recommendation? Alas, I think Coulter is right, a withering critique on their intellectual failings will generally bring out the worst in them (here's
an example from Nature(!)). Then magnaminously overlook their outburst, and point out that you are not valuing intellect over their friendship, but were only defending yourself from intellectual provocation. I know, I know, it sounds like you are stooping to their level. But I assure you, if you did have a serious weakness for intellectual snobbery and a deep inferiority complex, you would have become a Materialist long ago. And if someone doesn't address this childishness, they will continue in their error of thinking they have merely philosophical differences.
Then there's the
mumbo-jumbo defense. You would think that such obfuscation would be laughed to scorn. But the NYT journalist covering this silliness can't quite get himself to be that disrespectful.
Read it for all the euphemisms that mean "I'm snickering in my sleeve." If the NYT can't take these people seriously, who are we to spoil the party? More to the point, "how do these people take themselves seriously?" No really. These are ordinary people like you and me, with perhaps a bit too much book-learning at alternate-reality campuses like Harvard or Yale, but they mean well. How do they achieve this Nirvana-like state of denying their own existence?
The secret to lying to oneself, which we have all known and practiced for thousands of years, is to insert buffer layers between observations and belief. The example of tobacco companies is mentioned more than once, how they admitted that smokers get more lung cancer but denied a causal connection. Buffer layers can be even better, however, when they are self-referential. Here's a classic example: Aristotle said the law of excluded middle means there are only two positions on any statement, A and not-A, no waffling.
"So class, will you accept that one definition of God is "The Absolute", that which cannot be compared, contrasted or diminished? Yes? So then what is the opposite of a Theist, a man who believes in absolutes?"
"An Atheist."
"Very good. So which are you?" And suddenly there's a scuffling of chairs, clearing of throats, and Aristotle's logic is thrown to the winds.
"I'm an Agnostic."
"Well, what's that supposed to mean?"
"It means that it is impossible to know whether there is an absolute God or not." (Note the insertion of a self-referential buffer statement.)
"But are you certain?"
"Certain of what?"
"Certain that it is impossible to know."
"No, I told you it is impossible to know about absolutes."
"So it is possible that one can indeed know God, and that you are mistakenly clinging to an impossibility?"
"No, I'm not mistaken. That would imply I'm responsible. It really is impossible."
"And you are absolutely certain of that?"
"Absolutely."
Of course, once one has adopted the approach of adding buffer layers, there can be any number of these layers added to enable one to avoid "cognitive dissonance". As they pile on top of each other, however, they have a bad habit of contradicting and attacking each other. This leads to a philosophical version of the rusty plumbing skit where each patch produces a new leak. Science is particularly sensitive to such inconsistencies, and Procrustes has addressed such problems in cosmology
here, here and
here., as well as quantum mechanics, global warming, genetics, and astrobiology. This appears to be a never-ending source of material, which is the major thrust of this blog, but as a diversion, we'll occasionally review some non-scientific defenses.
After the SA critique of Francis Collins' book, we have a more measured, one might say, moderate critique posted at
The New Atlantis. Here Materialism is defended not with condescension, but with a sort of tired cynicism, reminiscent of Hollywood exposes. Arguments are dismissed with a yawn, "so medieval", and weaknesses are apparently so common as to require no refutation, except for a "typical example". It is what I call "The Worldly Wiseman" defense, and the subject of the remainder of this post. Like the "condescension defense", the real issue is not philosophy or history, but the deep despair that makes even argumentation an ephemeral pleasure. Once again, Procrustes suggests going for the jugular. Treat cynicism with sarcasm. Make that despair unbearable, But by all means, do not let such attitudes prevail unremarked, lest you lend them credence. Then if the opportunity arises, give reason for the hope that is in you.
Worldly Wiseman aka Thomas Merrill
Americans love to talk about reason and revelation, but we aren’t very good at it.
Speak for yourself Tom, which, judging from the rest of the article, you must be.
With our passion for vulgar controversy, we tend to see everything
in terms of extremes: religion versus science, faith versus Darwin.
I'm sorry, I don't see what is so "vulgar" about controversy, the
adjective is better applied to language, which in your case, is
undoubtedly true.
And while those tensions are a sustained theme in our national
inner life, these perennially unsettled questions have heated up again
in recent years.
Just go ahead and call it a "bimbo eruption". It is really you who have lost the heat.
Consider the battles over Intelligent Design in Dover, Pennsylvania,
or the charges that the Bush administration systematically ignores
scientific facts (as with stem cells) and the facts on the ground (as
in Iraq) out of an impervious religious certainty.
Okay, lets. The Dover judge plagiarized an ACLU travesty of a
philosophical argument, with about as much validity as Guantanamo
torture, and ID, which wasn't even the point of the Dover school board,
gets trashed. Or the Bush team says Kyoto isn't based on science, and
gets accused of ignoring facts, and then the European IPCC decides
after a year that the facts don't support many of the claims behind
Kyoto and revise all their extreme predictions back down. Or adult stem
cells, harvested from umbilical cords and bone marrow cure hundreds of
people, and embryonic stems cells cure none while killing another
handful, and the President rightly condemns embryonic stem cells and is
accused of ignoring the facts? Or in Iraq, the President gives his
generals considerable leeway in decision making, and after making the
electricity and sewage and infrastructure of Iraq vastly superior to
Saddam's, establishing a democratically elected government and bringing
the death toll down from Saddam's 100/day to something less than
10/day, he's accused of being worse than Saddam? And because he is
committed to democracy you accuse him of an impervious religious
certainty? Are you sure? I mean, are you certain of that? Can you be
convinced to change your mind? No? You mean you're impervious to facts
on the ground?
For renowned atheists like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett,
religion—all religion—is the source of great evil in the world, and the
root of that evil is the unwillingness to limit our beliefs to the
evidence. Religion, according to them, is not just belief in truths
beyond the reach of human reason but belief in things contrary to human
reason. For them, all religion is fanaticism, and the most far-reaching
political question of our day is not the conflict between the liberal
democratic West (made up of believers and nonbelievers alike) and
Islamic fundamentalism, but between reason and religion, within the
West perhaps even more than outside it.
As good a summary of your opinion that I've met yet, judging from your
loaded adjectives calling them "renowned" but Bush "impervious".
Believers might understandably feel that these shrill critiques are
animated by personal vitriol instead of honest truth-seeking, a kind of
anti-fanaticism fanaticism.
Well, actually, they don't just feel this way, it
is this way. But of course, you are about to explain why believers have mistaken feelings. I await enlightenment of your Nirvana.
In his new book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, Francis Collins provides a counter-example to the Dennett-Dawkins view
of what it means to be religious. A noted geneticist, best known for
leading the Human Genome Project, and an avowed Christian, Collins
stands at the intersection of science and religion. The very title of
his book illustrates his thesis. The language of God, in the first
instance, refers to the mapping of the human genome, one of the major
scientific accomplishments of recent years. But Collins also wants us
to hear the echoes of revelation, to think that nature might still be
seen as pointing, however indirectly, toward the Christian God.
Ahh, believers merely "feel" and "think that nature might be seen as".
What marvellous certainty! And what do you call a believer that
actually believes? A fanatic? And what do you call a man more certain
of Nature than he is of the "indirect God"? Reasonable?
Collins does not write primarily with a view to winning souls. His
more modest intent is to win greater respect for his position as a
scientist and a believer by making it more intelligible to
nonbelievers. His aim is to make us think that a believing scientist is
not an oxymoron.
Wonderful. I suppose that since his aim is only to make us think he
isn't an oxymoron, then he must still be an oxymoron? I love your way
with calm, unbiassed terminology, Mr Merrill.
To that end his efforts are largely successful. He recounts how he
came to Christianity, and he argues that modern science does not
provide conclusive evidence against God’s existence. He also has
another audience in mind, perhaps more important in the long run:
believers who worry that Darwin and evolution will undermine their
faith. To those who are tempted to embrace so-called Creation Science
or Intelligent Design, Collins gently suggests that believers too have
an obligation to the knowable truth; whatever the dangers, the response
to modern science cannot be simply shutting our eyes and ears.
Alas, Collins remained unsuccessful with the infinitely suave Mr Merrill.
But surely you aren't confusing Creation Science and ID, two groups
that would sooner be called an Evolutionist than by the other's
moniker? Or are you doing this intentionally, claiming there is no
difference between them? Is that what the "so-called" adjective is
doing, warning us not to believe what titles they use for themselves?
So good of you to care about our beliefs, lest we be led astray by name-calling.
In addition to these already lofty aims, Collins also attempts to
adjudicate some of our familiar bioethical controversies. In this task,
unlike his more prominent goals, Collins is, alas, quite a bit less
successful.
Judging by the success he has had in convincing you of your oxymoronic
jounalism, I don't know how he can be any less successful, frankly.
The scientific part of Collins’s argument is actually secondary to
his larger argument about the plausibility of religion. More important
is his account of his extra-scientific grounds for belief and his
autobiographical treatment of his conversion. He suggests that what was
most important for him was the realization that the Moral Law is true,
not arbitrary. As an empirical matter, he claims that human beings are
conscious of a standard of right and wrong that governs their behavior,
beyond any merely utilitarian calculations. To those who point to the
apparent relativism of moral judgments in different times and places,
Collins replies that the very controversies over justice and duty show
that we are dimly aware of some common thing, some moral fact of the
matter. And he suggests that many of these controversies are more
apparent than real. Following C. S. Lewis, Collins argues that the
Moral Law finds its fullest expression and its necessary grounding in
Christianity.
The positive core of Collins’s belief is based on this notion of the
Moral Law, together with what he calls the human hunger for the divine.
Within this context, Collins’s treatment of modern science plays a
necessary but largely subordinate role. If I understand him correctly,
modern science, at the very least, does not disprove the conclusions of
faith, and in some respects tends to corroborate them. So, for example,
Collins makes much of the Big Bang, which suggests that the universe
had a definite beginning in time. When medieval philosophers debated
whether God was the God of Aristotle or the God of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, the question turned on whether the universe was eternal or
whether it was created in time. Now modern science thinks that the
universe was undoubtedly created in time; Collins, like his medieval
predecessors, suggests that this is consistent with an omnipotent
Creator God.
Actually, my dear Mr Merrill, you should know all this very well, since
you are teaching at a school that emphasizes both Latin and original
manuscripts. Collins is making the most vital point that Materialist
philosophy has relativistic ethics, has an eternal un-creation, and
indestructible atoms. In other words, he is supplying not just an
attack on modern expressions of scientific materialism, but on the very
foundations of Democritus' and Epicurus' philosophy itself. So why do
you disdainfully call it "medieval", as if unaware of both its ancient pedigree and of the foundations
of your own oxymoronic philosophy? Perhaps you do not want to engage
him in topics where he is most certainly correct? How very brave and
chivalrous of you! Oh, I'm sorry, those were medieval values, you would
rather be praised for cunning and flexibility?
Collins also looks to the scientific evidence to chastise his fellow
believers who have turned to Creationism and Intelligent Design. Both
movements stem, in his view, from an understandable desire to
counteract the general coarsening of American culture. Both movements
trace that coarsening to the long-term influence of Darwinism and the
unfettered pursuit of self-preservation, as well as the reduction of
man to just another beast, no longer seen as created in the “image of
God.” But Collins suggests that Creationism is really unsustainable in
view of the fossil record; no serious person who cares about the truth
could believe it.
As for Intelligent Design (ID), Collins indicates some sympathies mixed with many serious reservations.
So they aren't the same thing after all? So good of you to clarify that point.
He does evince a real sense of awe at the improbabilities involved
in the fact of human beings being what they are—complex, intelligent,
filled with wonder. But the specific theses of ID he finds dubious. For
example, ID builds much of its case on claims of “irreducible
complexity.” The eye, it is said, is so complex and so finely tuned
that it could not possibly be the product of blind evolution. The whole
system necessarily exists in the Creator’s imagination before the
assembly of the complex parts. The problem with this claim is that it
confuses “not yet understood” with “can never be understood.”
Not having read Collins book, I doubt this is what he has said. But
even if he did, it deserves correction. ID does not confuse "not yet"
with "impossible", rather it quantifies both. For example, the
probability that it will snow in Denver can be calculated ("not yet"),
as can the probability that it will snow in Acapulco ("can never be").
While not metaphysically impossible, the probabilities clearly separate Denver from
Acapulco, and while not excluding the improbable, can certainly quantify it. This is what ID does for those "irreducibly
complex" phenomena -- calculate the probabilities. It is only
non-mathematicians who mistake probabilities for metaphysical
certainties, like the estimable Mr Merrill, though I hope not the
scientific Mr. Collins.
It also appeals to causes—the workings of an intelligent
designer—that are very difficult if not impossible to test. ID comes
very close to appealing to a “God of the gaps” or a divine cause we
bring in whenever we are stuck for an explanation.
Once again, there is a category confusion here, probably on the part of
Mr Merrill. Deism was the origin of the "god of the gaps" approach to
God's day job. Aristotle (and hence, ID) saw purpose as emanating in a
direct causal chain from the origin of purpose, which is to say, like
Paul, God is upholding the Universe by His word of power. There is
nothing mysterious about appealing to causes, Aristotle did it all the
time, it is only strange and repellent to those Materialists who have
denied Aristotle. Nor is this the Deism where God plays the role of
part-time clock mechanic, rather this is the sustaining, upholding role
of Atlas, from whom a millisecond of inattention would destroy the
world.
Collins also claims that certain prominent phenomena of nature, like
the bacterial flagellum, are not really examples of irreducible
complexity as ID proponents often claim. These phenomena are, instead,
being explained by evolutionary theory before our very eyes.
Again, I would hate to disagree with Mr Collins, but as Michael Behe
has often challenged, cite one paper that accomplishes this "explained
by evolutionary theory", just one. I can wait.
As Collins presents them, both Creation Science and ID run the risk
of discrediting the cause of faith by putting too much stress on
indefensible claims.
Why do I suspect that Collins never uses the phrase "indefensible
claims"? Could it be the nightmare of Mr Merrill instead? And just how
does Materialism (or any -ism) defend its presuppositions? What in the
realm of metaphysics would constitute "defensible" anyway, Mr. Merrill,
your logic, for example?
If the crusading atheists need to be reminded of the limits of their
knowledge, so too do these believers need to face up to the truths we
can know. But if science does not disprove the largest claims made by
religion, Collins reasons, then faith need not enter into a battle it
is doomed to lose. These religious claims are ultimately moral and
spiritual, grounded in the knowable truths of conscience and the human
longing for the divine.
A very Kantian argument, and therefor completely misguided, deceptive and wrong.
For all its elegance, however, Collins’s book leaves some important
questions unaddressed or inadequately addressed. Collins mainly uses
science to indicate the limits of our knowledge, and thus the great
leap we have to make to say that science disproves God.
A perfectly reasonable thing to say and show, which makes it all the more displeasing to Mr Merrill.
For this reason, the subtitle of his book might have been: “A
Scientist Presents Evidence Against Disbelief.” Strictly speaking,
though, Collins does not—as a scientist—present evidence for positive
belief. Surely his careful reminders of the limits and mysteries that
still exist in our scientific age are salutary. But does it go beyond
that?
Why of course, Mr. Merrill, just as your existence proves the necessity
for evil in the world. Need we mention more particulars to someone so
well versed in Medieval and Ancient philosophy?
“Is consistent with” is by no means the same thing as “entails,”
and one can easily imagine a Socrates rather than a Dawkins pressing
just this question. However absurd the crusading atheism of our
pop-neo-Darwinists might be, one must ask whether the search for the
knowable truth necessarily leads to belief in the Christian God.
Surely you are not ignorant of Aquinas' five proofs, or Anselm's
Ontological Proof? Or are you swayed by St Paul's argument in Romans
1:18, or perhaps the famous Mars Hill speech? Which of these great
philosophers do you think did not use "entails" in his argument? Or did you think Collins was too circumspect in not quoting them?
Even more problematic is Collins’s attempt to apply the Moral Law to certain modern controversies in bioethics.
Which would seem to be the perfect place for application of the Moral
law. Or do you think we should merely judge Hitler on pragmatic
concerns, that he did not kill Jews painlessly enough?
This is, by far, the least impressive part of the book. Partly this
is due to his smorgasbord approach, covering the quandaries of DNA
testing for various diseases, stem cells, cloning, the genetic basis of
homosexuality and IQ, and biomedical enhancement in a scant
thirty-seven pages. Had he wanted to try to bridge the gap between
religious voters and the scientific community, Collins should have
tackled these divisive issues more fully, with the same rigor he no
doubt brings to the laboratory.
You are entitled to your mistaken opinions too, but of course, I will
ignore them unless you also vote, since apparently religious people only matter
when they vote. And you thought all that mindless chatter from Hollywood stars about embryonic cloning actually "bridged the gap" of reason, or was in any way supposed to span some gulf of ignorance?
Instead, he gives us an unsatisfying collection of largely
conventional, often superficial, and occasionally ridiculous arguments.
Let one example suffice. Collins argues at length in support of somatic
cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), the technical procedure used to clone
Dolly the sheep, which many scientists now seek to use to produce
cloned human embryos that can be disaggregated for their stem cells.
SCNT takes the nucleus of an adult cell and inserts it into an egg cell
whose own nucleus has been extracted. Properly stimulated, that new
cell can develop just like a fertilized egg; before Dolly was a lamb,
she was a cloned embryo and fetus. Yet Collins argues that we ought to
embrace SCNT as a morally acceptable way of getting stem cells,
supposedly circumventing the ethical controversies involved in using
embryos. Collins avoids the hard question—what is the moral standing of
a human embryo?—as apparently beyond the capacity for science or even
reason to decide; it is, he seems to believe, a matter of faith. But he
is certain that the cloned embryo is not really an embryo—and even
suggests that in the age of cloning, when any human cell has the
potential via SCNT to become an embryo, that our old moral and
biological distinctions no longer make much sense.
This is all muddled in the extreme. First, the product of cloning is
indisputably a human embryo; using it for stem cell research presents
all the same moral quandaries as destroying human embryos made through
in vitro fertilization. Second, there is a difference between “active”
and “passive” potentiality, a straightforward philosophical distinction
that Collins seems not to understand: the skin cell, through our many
scientific machinations, can perhaps be turned into an embryo, but it
is not morally or biologically similar to an embryo in any way; an
embryo, unlike a skin cell, is already a complete human organism,
driven to develop by its own internal powers, a life in process the
moment a zygote (or a “clonote”) is formed, whatever moral standing one
ultimately accords it. Finally, to cede the question of the moral
status of the embryo to faith alone gets us off the hook a bit too
easily; it paralyzes our capacity for natural moral reason, inviting us
to rely entirely on dueling religious authorities to settle our most
difficult bioethical questions.
Now who is relapsing into moralizing and avoiding the hard issues of technology?
Yet it is precisely such natural moral reason that Collins’s guide,
C. S. Lewis, among others, speaks of when defending the universal Moral
Law—what Lewis called the “Tao.”
Ahh, use their authorities against them. Too bad you couldn't get that
quote just right. You'd really do well to actually read the fellow.
Perhaps the lesson in this is that the Moral Law is insufficient, by
itself, to handle the novel moral puzzles posed by modern science.
If so, then we are worse off than even Mr Collins imagined! God help us then, for only God can.
Perhaps, in many cases, we must rely on religious authority alone,
and try to live well with those irreconcilable divisions that emerge
both between faith traditions and between religious and non-religious
people. But before coming to such a conclusion, one would do well to
seek out deeper sources of wisdom—like the many fine reports of the
President’s Council on Bioethics—that advance the ethical conversation
without setting faith against reason or relying on faith alone.
I don't know whether to laugh or weep. First you make it sound as if we
have all become fundamentalists, unable to reason our way out of a
paper bag, relying on religious authority alone (which presumably can't
be rational either.) Then in the next sentence you want us to rely on
political authority alone, on "deeper sources of (human) wisdom", as if this is a better choice than religious
authority? Look, do you want to fall into the hands of God or of men?
Like King David, I'd rather take my chances with God, than to put any eggs in the same basket as you, no disrespect, Mr. Merrill.
You can have your
wise men, your President's Council, your conversations on ethics. But pray then, pray to whomever you think will listen, pray that your President isn't named
Stalin, Pol Pot or Hitler.