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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 01:38 pm (UTC)I personally recommend Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, as while it only tangentially tackles the problem of gods and afterlives, it shows how to use the scientific method to see through hokum, dogma, logical fallacies and outright lies. More a case of leading a horse to water than forcing it to drink.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 02:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 02:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 02:56 pm (UTC)Obfustication is the key problem to be tackled, of course - getting to the root of what a particular believer means when they say 'God' is crucial to being able to engage with them.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 03:05 pm (UTC)At the moment it starts with a discussion of how easily people fool themselves, going into the empirical evidence; then it goes on to discuss what means we might employ to avoid fooling ourselves. That would leave 'till last specific discussion of the Emperors New Clothes effect, and the importance of not advancing an argument you don't yourself fully understand - eg don't say "We are finite, but God is infinite" unless you can say what you mean. Here I would want to talk about the idea of "getting there from here" - ie that you can start with observations about things on our own planet and our own scale in space and time, and get to eg quasars and electrons through a chain of reasoning that builds up more sophisticated and abstract phenomena.
At some point in that there would need to be a discussion of why you should care - about why it's better not to fool yourself, about how beliefs that seem harmless today can become harmful tomorrow, and that it's not a good idea to get practiced in pulling the wool over your own eyes. I'm not sure exactly how to write this part and I'm giving it quite a bit of thought - there's a connection with whether you really believe what you believe, and whether you allow it to affect your actions, but there's a chicken-and-egg problem in that I don't think I can convince that religion is hooey unless I can convince that it matters, but I don't see how to do the latter without doing the former either.
Anyway, then a discussion of the absolutely central role that obfuscation and confusion play in all defences of religion. After that I'd take a leaf out of the above book and discuss what atheism is and isn't, talk about agnosticism, and set out the complete incoherence of all attempts to discuss a god or gods, basically hammering home over and over again (with quotes) that religion says things that sound like they mean something, that make you feel as if you have been communicated with, without actually getting you anywhere.
There the intellectual case ends (perhaps modulo a short section on example arguments people make for religion and how the preceding section arms you to answer them) , but I'd want to go on to talk about eg the messed-up teachings of Jesus, and conclude that religion is what happens when a school of thought starts to become optimised entirely for memetic success through suppression of criticism - eg since the rewards and punishments happen off stage and no demonstration is needed, there is no reason not to turn the dials up to not eleven but infinity.
There also needs to be something answering the charge that the new atheists are too mean - I'm not sure where that goes.
It's unlikely to ever get beyond the stage of commenting about it on LJ, mind!
no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 03:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 04:32 pm (UTC)Also I think the target audience for Dawkins' latest is estranged atheists in backwards places like the USA. It's not intended to convince believers, it's intended as a rallying call for unbelievers.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 04:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 04:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 05:20 pm (UTC)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 05:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 05:46 pm (UTC)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 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 07:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 08:37 pm (UTC)I still can't see the point