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ciphergothI've read all four of the recent books by the "four horsemen", and for the most part none have made me feel "yes, this is the book I want to press into the hands of believers". I would like there to be at least one book that I might be able to recommend, and having heard good things about this 1974 book, I ordered it from Amazon on a whim.
It certainly comes a *lot* closer than any of those four. It has a very dry style; there are no witty personal stories, few anecdotes, and only a smattering of historical background. But all four of the horsemen books seem somewhat scattershot in their approach, except perhaps Dennett, whose book seems like not so much an attack on religion as a hastily-repurposed discussion of religion originally intended for an atheist audience. This book is much more bulldozer than scattershot, and methodically dismantles the "sophisticated" defences of religion I actually hear from believers.
Its bulldozer-like nature may be seen in its chapter structure; first, clarify what atheism is and establish that the burden of proof lies with the theist; then tear down obfuscation as a means to confound rational discussion of the issue; demolish the idea that faith and revelation can supplement reason as guides to the truth (discussing and destroying a variety of attempts to defend the idea of faith). Only then are the traditional arguments for the existence of God, such as the cosmological argument, painstakingly taken apart; and only after that are the negative moral consequences of religion discussed.
There are a few problems. Smith is (or at least was) an Objectivist, and this leads to some sad errors; his defence of the idea of moral facts in Chapter 11 Section 2, for example, is just embarrassing. And it seems a shame to discuss the argument from design without even mentioning evolution; I can see that as a philosopher you want to show that the argument is *inherently* flawed, and of course it is, but it's evolution that robs it of its emotional impact. I still find myself thinking that I may have to write my ultimate book on the subject, but I have quite a few other books I'd have to read first to know if there was a gap in the market, and I can't afford quite that many whims :-)
No argument, no matter how good, can turn the head of someone who is prepared to say in terms that they intend to cling to an idea no matter how much they have to embrace irrationality in order to do so, as many sophisticated believers openly say. But still, when I read the four horsemen books, I felt I knew how believers were going to evade the conclusions they were pushing for, and I would love to know how a serious, philosophically knowledgable believer would go about avoiding the conclusions of this book.
Update: as usual, anonymous comments should be signed to be unscreened.
It certainly comes a *lot* closer than any of those four. It has a very dry style; there are no witty personal stories, few anecdotes, and only a smattering of historical background. But all four of the horsemen books seem somewhat scattershot in their approach, except perhaps Dennett, whose book seems like not so much an attack on religion as a hastily-repurposed discussion of religion originally intended for an atheist audience. This book is much more bulldozer than scattershot, and methodically dismantles the "sophisticated" defences of religion I actually hear from believers.
Its bulldozer-like nature may be seen in its chapter structure; first, clarify what atheism is and establish that the burden of proof lies with the theist; then tear down obfuscation as a means to confound rational discussion of the issue; demolish the idea that faith and revelation can supplement reason as guides to the truth (discussing and destroying a variety of attempts to defend the idea of faith). Only then are the traditional arguments for the existence of God, such as the cosmological argument, painstakingly taken apart; and only after that are the negative moral consequences of religion discussed.
There are a few problems. Smith is (or at least was) an Objectivist, and this leads to some sad errors; his defence of the idea of moral facts in Chapter 11 Section 2, for example, is just embarrassing. And it seems a shame to discuss the argument from design without even mentioning evolution; I can see that as a philosopher you want to show that the argument is *inherently* flawed, and of course it is, but it's evolution that robs it of its emotional impact. I still find myself thinking that I may have to write my ultimate book on the subject, but I have quite a few other books I'd have to read first to know if there was a gap in the market, and I can't afford quite that many whims :-)
No argument, no matter how good, can turn the head of someone who is prepared to say in terms that they intend to cling to an idea no matter how much they have to embrace irrationality in order to do so, as many sophisticated believers openly say. But still, when I read the four horsemen books, I felt I knew how believers were going to evade the conclusions they were pushing for, and I would love to know how a serious, philosophically knowledgable believer would go about avoiding the conclusions of this book.
Update: as usual, anonymous comments should be signed to be unscreened.
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 05:32 pm (UTC)He focusses mainly on cosmological and design arguments; he considers the question of the truth of religion settled by its incoherence, so the arguments are a sideshow.
This discussion of incoherence is applicable to what you believe. However, I thought of you when reading of course, and no, you're not one of the people whose hands I want to press it into; how could any book address any belief once taken as an axiom? I'm surprised to hear you describe your position as an "argument"; to be honest what I see is a safe place for your beliefs right out of the reach of reason.
If I was trying to convert you, I'd address this with a discussion of the merits of making the prosaic your starting point, but obviously I could only hope to convince because people are not axiomatic deduction devices in real life and so what you think of as an axiom might in practice turn out not to be if a case for different axioms could be established. After all, you didn't believe in God when you were born, so you must have got there somehow.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 05:47 pm (UTC)You're doing just fine, don't worry.
I'm surprised to hear you describe your position as an "argument"; to be honest what I see is a search for a safe place to your beliefs right out of the reach of reason.
It's not an argument for the existence of God, but it's an argument for a belief in God's existence being one rational position amongst others. If I were just searching for a safe place, I think my religious history would have been rather different - it's not as if I haven't been willing to change my religious beliefs in the past, for instance, and I did identify as an atheist for a large chunk of my teenage years. I probably also wouldn't engage with atheists on the subject as much as I do. As far as I can tell, theism really just is the only way I can make satisfactory sense of the world as it appears to me. But inner motivations aren't really something one can demonstrate to third parties, so I think we'll probably just have to agree to differ on that.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 06:08 pm (UTC)I totally fail to see how taking something on as an axiom makes it rational. What belief would fail this test?
If I were just searching for a safe place, I think my religious history would have been rather different - it's not as if I haven't been willing to change my religious beliefs in the past, for instance,
But did you do so as a result of reasonable arguments?
and I did identify as an atheist for a large chunk of my teenage years.
What changed your mind? Serious question, not snark.
I probably also wouldn't engage with atheists on the subject as much as I do.
It's hard to see it as a demonstration of a commitment to rationality when the result of that engagement is that your views are placed out of the reach of reason.
As far as I can tell, theism really just is the only way I can make satisfactory sense of the world as it appears to me.
But it isn't, because you successfully eg made cups of tea and such when you were an atheist; you didn't succumb to total inability to think due to universal skepticism. If you have the power to reason about ordinary things, then we can start to talk about less prosaic things starting from there.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 12:50 pm (UTC)A belief that is not consonant with the experience of the believer, since when we choose fundamental axioms, we have only our own experience to rely on.
But did you do so as a result of reasonable arguments?
The time I became an atheist as a teenager, yes (at least what I thought were reasonable arguments at the time; I know more epistemology now than I did then.)
What changed your mind?
The mental gymnastics I had to do to keep ignoring my perception of the divine were driving me insane.
It's hard to see it as a demonstration of a commitment to rationality when the result of that engagement is that your views are placed out of the reach of reason.
At this point, all I can say is that I don't think you understand epistemology as well as you think you do. I wish I could introduce you to my metaphysics supervisor (no longer alive, sadly).
But it isn't, because you successfully eg made cups of tea and such when you were an atheist; you didn't succumb to total inability to think due to universal skepticism. If you have the power to reason about ordinary things, then we can start to talk about less prosaic things starting from there.
I think you'll have to let me judge what are satisfactory levels of sense for me. Making a cup of tea was certainly still possible, but it required far more spoons because of the effort of ignoring things that seem to me more real than the cup and the tea in order to reach past them to manipulate the less-real things. God, to me, is not less ordinary than the tea.
Edited for typo
no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 02:48 pm (UTC)A belief that is not consonant with the experience of the believer, since when we choose fundamental axioms, we have only our own experience to rely on.
Why would you take on as an axiom something that could usefully be compared to experience? Surely we only make an axiom of something when we need it in order to build other beliefs from experience?
The time I became an atheist as a teenager, yes
That one is less surprising - I was kind of thinking of, well, all the other times :-)
The mental gymnastics I had to do to keep ignoring my perception of the divine were driving me insane.
Now that's something that I think we could usefully discuss - though I think the phrase "account for" would be fairer than "ignore". We know that not all sensation is externally generated - if we hear a ringing sound, is a bell ringing, or do I have tinitus? If we put everything on one side or the other we just destroy the meaning of the distinction, so we need some reasonable, empirical way to make the distinction.
At this point, all I can say is that I don't think you understand epistemology as well as you think you do. I wish I could introduce you to my metaphysics supervisor (no longer alive, sadly).
I don't think of myself as an expert in epistemology, and I'm happy to be shot down on this one if I learn from the experience. Any pointers you can give would be gratefully received, especially if they don't involve spending any money...
I think you'll have to let me judge what are satisfactory levels of sense for me. Making a cup of tea was certainly still possible, but it required far more spoons because of the effort of ignoring things that seem to me more real than the cup and the tea in order to reach past them to manipulate the less-real things.
This still seems to be an experiential argument for God, isn't that inconsistent with your axiomatic approach?
God, to me, is not less ordinary than the tea.
I should have stuck with "prosaic" - dark matter is more ordinary than tea in the sense that there's lots of it, but from where I'm sitting it's a lot less prosaic.
If I say "better not spill this tea, it'll stain the carpet", practically everyone will feel they understand what I mean, and be able to follow and verify my chain of reasoning trivially.
Edited for typo
Er, I edited my earlier response for meaning and didn't flag it up...
no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 03:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 03:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 07:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 11:17 pm (UTC)I think of an axiom as something like the principle of induction, that you can't begin to prove without circular reasoning, but you absolutely cannot do without if you are to think at all. Another example is the belief that thinking gets you closer to the truth or to more appropriate behaviour. Any attempt to defend that is based on thinking, and so assumes what it's trying to prove. I thought you were advancing C S Lewis's argument that these things follow from the existence of an orderly God and so you can reduce your set of axioms to one.
But if you're deriving it from evidence, you don't need to take it on a priori, you can reason your way there and discuss whether the evidence supports it and such. Is there a third possibility I'm missing?
(BTW I haven't forgotten you're away, no pressure!)
no subject
Date: 2009-01-08 03:05 pm (UTC)As for the issues about axioms and experience, you're not by chance making a Kantian argument that philosophy cannot have axioms, are you? If so, we may have been at cross-purposes and I may have to go away and re-read the Critique of Pure Reason, in which case you may be waiting some time for your answer ;-) If not, I don't think I can add anything to
On the issues that aren't directly about axioms, and skipping back several comments:
The mental gymnastics I had to do to keep ignoring my perception of the divine were driving me insane.
Now that's something that I think we could usefully discuss - though I think the phrase "account for" would be fairer than "ignore". We know that not all sensation is externally generated - if we hear a ringing sound, is a bell ringing, or do I have tinitus?
No, I really do mean "ignore". I'm aware that there are alternative explanations for what I experience, but that awareness isn't enough to keep me functional. The darn things keep demanding a response.
I don't think of myself as an expert in epistemology, and I'm happy to be shot down on this one if I learn from the experience. Any pointers you can give would be gratefully received, especially if they don't involve spending any money...
Tricky. My supervisor was Renford Bambrough, whose books are now quite difficult to get hold of, and IIRC the only one I own doesn't address this issue. He was one of those supervisors who largely recommend reading they disagree with and leave you to try and figure out the "right" position for yourself, so there isn't any other obvious reading that immediately comes to mind. Without necessarily agreeing with them, he did think quite highly of Elizabeth Anscombe, G.E.Smith and of course Wittgenstein (his specialist subject), so looking for some of their books on Google Books might be an option, but I don't recall enough detail to direct you to something immediately relevant to this conversation.
I should have stuck with "prosaic"
I'm not sure that would have helped. My attitude to God is quite similar to Granny Weatherwax's - "it would be like believing in the postman" - except I don't quite hold with her further thoughts on not giving them ideas above their station.
If I say "better not spill this tea, it'll stain the carpet", practically everyone will feel they understand what I mean, and be able to follow and verify my chain of reasoning trivially.
Well, yes, but that apparent understanding can often disguises serious disconnects that the participants either are not aware of, or do not find necessary to resolve for the purposes of the conversation. If you want to talk about metaphysical questions like whether or not God exists, or even whether the tea exists (on which I suspect we also would not entirely agree), that approach doesn't work.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-08 03:24 pm (UTC)No, I really do mean "ignore". I'm aware that there are alternative explanations for what I experience, but that awareness isn't enough to keep me functional. The darn things keep demanding a response.
So you basically said "this is driving me so crazy that I'd rather start believe it even if it isn't so than deny it and be driven crazy by it?"
that apparent understanding can often disguises serious disconnects that the participants either are not aware of, or do not find necessary to resolve for the purposes of the conversation
Sure, that's fine; the participants don't need to resolve those things in order to reason about whether the tea will stain the carpet, and that's why it's where I think we should start. Someone who replies to "pass the spoon, will you?" with "there is no spoon" isn't a deep philosopher, just a pain!
no subject
Date: 2009-01-08 04:40 pm (UTC)Probably - a lot of definitions of "basic beliefs" do refer to them as axioms of a philosophical belief system - but I hesitate to be more definite about it than that because Plantinga is such an obscurantist that it can be difficult to tell what he's on about. His attempt to rescue the ontological proof (so-called) by restating it in terms of probability theory is a classic case in point. I certainly wouldn't want you to assume that his epistemology is the same as mine.
So you basically said "this is driving me so crazy that I'd rather start believe it even if it isn't so than deny it and be driven crazy by it?"
No. I believe, and if I understood Renford Bambrough correctly he believed, that if we are unable to deny a belief and still function in the world, then we know that belief to be true as well as it is possible to know anything to be true (because all other beliefs are ultimately derived from beliefs that we know to be true on that basis). So what I said to myself would have been more along the lines of "Denying this is driving me so crazy that I am justified in treating it as something I know to be true."
Sure, that's fine; the participants don't need to resolve those things in order to reason about whether the tea will stain the carpet, and that's why it's where I think we should start.
I can't quite imagine how that would work, but I'm willing to try, provided we agree not to let it end in mutual recriminations when we inevitably discover that we never meant the same thing by "tea", "carpet" and "stain" in the first place (or, even more likely, by "will").
no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 05:01 pm (UTC)I have no idea how
That said, I don't translate my experiences blindly into axioms, but try to consider what axioms are sensible given the experiences. That still, to my mind, makes them experiential in nature. If I obtained them by reason, they wouldn't be axiomatic, but would be derived from other axioms.
Which axioms do you have that aren't experiential? I suspect that either you're using the words in a different way from me, or have a very different standard of axiom - either of those is completely fine, but I think I need to understand the disconnect before I discuss this with you further.
(I have, obviously, very different axioms from
no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 05:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 06:28 pm (UTC)By the way, did you mean 'by reference to experience'? Because if not, not only do I not understand why that's obvious, but I also don't understand why it's relevant to what I wrote.
I may cite my experiences as evidence to back up my axioms, but whether or not you accept them as evidence will probably depend on whether or not you've had similar experiences, or are at least prepared to accept my different ones as valid. So, to me, experience and evidence are two different concepts which interact in a non-straightforward way.
That said, I would cite my experience that the principle of induction provides results that are consistent as evidence that it's correct. But, to my way of thinking, that means that it's justified by both experience and by evidence. I'm therefore assuming you mean something altogether different.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 07:17 pm (UTC)The principle of induction is that which enables (probabilistic, not absolutely certain) inference of a general principle from observation of specific cases. It's what you use to infer that the sun is extremely likely to rise tomorrow, on the basis that it always has so far. More generally, it's the principle you use in any case where you're justifying some universal or general claim on the basis of a finite amount of specific evidence. This being the case, you cannot justify it with any finite amount of specific evidence, because you have a bootstrapping problem – you'd have to use it to justify itself.
If I already believed in the principle of induction, then I could start from the observation that in my experience it would have given the right answer far more often than not in cases where I already know what the answer turned out to be, and infer that I can therefore use it to build confidence in things I don't already know the answer to. But that inference is an exercise of the principle of induction, so I cannot make it until I've already been convinced that induction works – or simply accepted it as an axiom.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 08:37 pm (UTC)I still can't see the point
no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 11:00 pm (UTC)But here you're assuming what you're trying to prove - that experience is a useful guide to how the future will be.
you've probably read this already :-)
no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 11:22 pm (UTC)No, I'm not, because I'm not trying to prove anything. I'm attempting to justify using the principle of induction, but I'm not trying to prove it. Experience tells me it usually works, and that it's a good basis for predicting, say, which way gravity will operate in the next few seconds.
The principle of induction certainly cannot be proved with reference to evidence [1]. Are you using 'justified' synonymously with 'proved'? If so, then your response really doesn't seem like a reply to my comment, since I wasn't talking about proof at all. I was talking about axioms (which, by definition, we accept as given rather than prove), and about the evidence of my experiences (which isn't the same thing as proof, or anything like it in my lexicon).
[1] Nor, as far as I'm aware, can it be proved in any other way; that's the point, surely?
no subject
Date: 2009-01-08 03:17 pm (UTC)Your justification of induction seems to be "it has worked in the past" and I don't see how you're avoiding the fact that in order to use that as a justification, you need to start by assuming the principle of induction, so all you end up with is "In my experience, experience is a useful guide", which gets you nowhere.
I had been under the impression that the unfoundedness of the principle of induction was pretty uncontroversial in modern philosophy - am I mistaken?
no subject
Date: 2009-01-08 03:34 pm (UTC)It gets me everywhere. I can think of no part of my reasoning process that doesn't start from that basis. That's why it matters to me to use the word 'proof' only when I mean 'proof', and not when I mean 'justification', and why the distinction between the two matters.
OK, accepting that you don't use that as a basis for your reasoning (because, for you, it 'gets you nowhere') ... what do you use? How do you justify any deductions at all, if you can't use the principle of induction? (I know these questions sound rheetorical, but they're not, I'm genuinely interested on what you base your reasoning, because it's increasingly clear that it's a very different process from mine.)
no subject
Date: 2009-01-08 03:53 pm (UTC)I'm slightly at a loss - I can't now see how you can't see that your justification of the principle is circular.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-08 04:03 pm (UTC)I'm equally at a loss as to why you think I believe it isn't. I know it's circular. I just don't see how that negates me treating it as an experiential axiom.
I say it's based on experience. It doesn't seem to me that that says anything either way about whether or not the justification for it's circular.
And I still can't see what you base your use of it on, if not your experience that it works.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-08 04:12 pm (UTC)I don't base my use of it on anything, I just use it, which is why I call it an axiom, and that was the sense of "axiomatic" that I thought you and
no subject
Date: 2009-01-08 03:52 pm (UTC)Sorry, this deserved an explicit answer.
I treat it as an axiom, and I consider the circular justification 'good enough' for me to use the principle to try to make sense of the world around me an act accordingly. I accept that it is a circular justification, and acknowledge it as a weakness, but for me it's not a fatal one.
That is, honestly, good enough for me.
Assuming that it's not good enough for you (if it were, then I trust that you would see how I'm avoiding the fact you mention), then may I ask whether you avoid that fact in a different way? Do you use the principle of induction at all in reasoning about the world? If you do, how do you avoid the problem that you see me having with it? If not, what do you use? (See other reply for apologies about asking rhetorical-sounding questions seriously.)