Waiting For Andromeda

Christopher Hitchens, having demonstrated to everyone's satisfaction that blind salamanders disprove the existence of God

Silly really.

He could have just used you. and this blog.

Posted by Douthat the Hack | July 22, 2008 7:59 AM

"Hitchens and Tim LaHaye both shouting in perfect unison: See, I told you so!"

We wouldn't be able to hear them

for all the evangelists loudly blaming homosexuals for it.

Posted by James | July 22, 2008 8:02 AM

Hahaha. Hitchens just solved the fundamental question of metaphysics!!! Thanks, Hitch!

What an overrated imbecile.

Posted by Philip Marlowe | July 22, 2008 8:54 AM

And me shouting "Why did I contribute so much to my 401k."

Posted by MH | July 22, 2008 9:10 AM

For those with a serious interest in this stuff:

I heartily recommend Terry Eagleton's recent lectures at Yale on Christianity and philosophy. He flays Dawkins and Hitchens. Hysterical. Eagleton actually knows something about philosophy and theology, which helps when talking about this subject.

The lectures can be found on ITunes.

Posted by Rich | July 22, 2008 9:17 AM

The real question is whether either will be the ultimate contrarian and be the first person to say "I should have spent more time at the office"?

Posted by LK | July 22, 2008 9:20 AM

I'm no fan of Hitchen's writing on faith, but in this article I think he's got a point, the beginnings of one anyway. He's right that humans, both religious and secular, tend to think of processes like evolution as having some sort of teleology, but really, they're just the sum of many local events.

Hitchens even falls into this trap a bit by framing his discussion about salamanders who've lost their eyes as a reversing down the evolutionary path. Nope, they're still improving their fitness relative to their environment, one salamander at a time.

Ross is right though that the most ardent of unbelievers, like Hitchens and Dawkins sound an awful lot like their religious counterparts.

Posted by TW Andrews | July 22, 2008 9:51 AM

I am an astrophysicist (actually, at the same university as Lawrence Krauss). At least from this brief excerpt, it doesn't quite seem like he knows what he's talking about. Especially when he gets into "the not-so-far-off collision of our own galaxy with Andromeda". He is correct that this is going to occur, but he is quite confused if he thinks that it implies that our own galaxy will be "replaced with nothing". While it will drastically alter the structure of our galaxy (and I daresay it will make for some absolutely gorgeous stargazing), fundamentally the event will involve change, not destruction.

Posted by Craig | July 22, 2008 10:12 AM

What we're really waiting for is your Iraq post.

Quite a lot has happened recently. You've been really quiet about it.

The Surge! Run on the surge!

and gee, people seem to be spotting that if you go on about being right about the surge, it highlights you were wrong about the war.

thread derail, and it's not about race and IQ, so probably deleted in short measure.

Posted by James | July 22, 2008 11:00 AM

Ah,

it's been posted on the current.

good to see you have maintained your 'double down' strategy of maintaining idiotic advice.

and to finish off with looking to hillary clinton for domestic inspiration is fantastic - the moment at which you recognize and accept you have no principles at all, save winning.

Posted by James | July 22, 2008 11:14 AM

Why should the possibility that life on earth be extinguished mean that the question, "why is there something rather than nothing?" can and must be replaced by the question, "Why will our brief 'something' so soon be replaced with nothing?"

I just don't get it. It's not as though, "why is there something rather than nothing" has only the theistic answer as an option. There's also, for instance, necessitarianism (the idea that there is something rather than nothing, as well as this particular 'something' rather than nothing, or some other something, because there must be), the multi-verse hypothesis (there is something rather than nothing because the fine-tuning of our universe is best explained by the hypothesis that all logical possibilities are actually exemplified, and there is this something rather than some other something because this is the something we observers happen to be in), the brute fact hypothesis (it's just a brute fact that there's something rather than nothing, and there's no explanation for it), as well as other hypotheses (John Leslie's, Derek Parfit's, Peter van Inwagen's, etc.). I cannot see why any of these is falsified by the possibility that a meteor will hit the earth.

I hate to say this, but I think Hitchens made a bad point.

Posted by Questioner | July 22, 2008 11:29 AM

I'm confused. Are you saying there is any shred of evidence for a Sky Fairy? 'Cause I haven't noticed any just yet. Is this an Emperor's New Clothes Situation?

Posted by ed | July 22, 2008 11:29 AM

OK, I am also an astrophysicist, and I actually wrote the paper with Lawrence Krauss which is being discussed here:
http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.0221
It does not have the philosophical implications that are being ascribed to it.

Posted by Bob | July 22, 2008 11:44 AM

I'm no fan of Hitchens' belligerent atheism, and the last paragraph is pretty silly. But your flippant dismissal of the rest of the article as "having demonstrated to everyone's satisfaction that blind salamanders disprove the existence of God (or something like that)" is as boneheaded toward evolutionary biology as Hitchens is toward theology.

The insight in this article, which is new to Hitchens but hardly original, is not one that claims to "disprove the existence of God." But it does cut sharply against philosophical arguments in favor of a "purpose" to life, whether coming from a Christian or from a social Darwinist with a teleological, progressive view of evolution. There was neither an instantaneous creation by a brilliant designer, nor a glorious progression from lower life forms to staggeringly complex higher life forms. There are only adaptations driven by local conditions. Simplicity often prevails.

As for any skeptics who wonder where "light-sensitive cells" came from in the first place... all cells are light-sensitive to some extent. Light is energy. All chemicals absorb light at specific wavelengths, based upon their molecular structure, and colored pigments are chemicals that absorb light in the visible range. Photoreceptor cells are simply cells that contain pigments--chlorophyll in plants, rhodopsin and iodopsin in the vertebrate eye--and do something productive with the energy they absorb. The eye works because these pigments initiate a signal cascade that travels through the optic nerve to the brain. The processes involved in the mere awareness of light are far less complicated than many others in the body.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | July 22, 2008 11:46 AM

Quote: "...we can grasp the gross stupidity of those who repose their faith in divine providence and godly design."

Yes, gross stupidity is astounding, Mr. Hitchens' certainly is!

I never fail to be astonished at those who cite 'evolution' as evidence that God does not exist - simply by virtue of contradicting a few short paragraphs in the Bible.

The God in which I believe, is bigger than the Bible, and far beyond any theorem that can be proved, or disproved, by humankind.

Unlike Hitchens' light-bulb moment with lowly, blind salamanders, I found myself drilling further down, contemplating implications of life as we know it, sprung from boiling-hot primordial soup - from bacteria and single-cell creatures incapable of thought.

What gave, and continues to give, every living form on this earth that very thing... the will to live? To me, the very essence of life is the desire to to stay alive. From that stems each creatures attempts to flourish, procreate, and yes, evolve, in an attempt to continue their perpetuation.

Plants compete for light, space, water, etc., germs, bacteria and viruses battle for existence.

But why? How does science explain this? Certainly words like 'will-to-live', desire or choice, can not be ascribed to brainless, non-thinking entities. They have no will or choice in favor of living, instead it seems a "live force" is embedded, hard-wired into everything. To my thinking, that is the miracle at our foundation, besides the one that caused minerals & chemicals to 'spring to life".

We are wise to only look to science to unlock the 'Hows', not to explain the 'Whys'. For if the universal truth were indeed God-less, the only answer Mr. Hitchens and others of his ilk can ever provide to the question of 'Why'... is 'because'.

Posted by M.Marshall | July 22, 2008 11:52 AM

"I heartily recommend Terry Eagleton's recent lectures at Yale on Christianity and philosophy."

Eagleton? Heh. That poseur douchebag thinks the Emperor's new clothes are just dreamy.

To Mister Bits above, we're all glad your invisible friend gives you the meaning you yearn for. Don't mean squat to anyone else, unfortunately.

Posted by Soma | July 22, 2008 12:07 PM

To observe the finest and highest expression of Christian metaphysics simply go here:

http://www.divine-interventions.com/baby.php

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | July 22, 2008 12:22 PM

I have always enjoyed Hitchens. I remember watching him on book tv when his biography of Jefferson came out and he said "A lot of people like to write about Jefferson as if he didn't have a penis which he most certainly did." I respect his ability to analyze and disect the human element behind different personalities and provide insight into how people think the way they do.

However, I completely agree with Ross on this one. Hitchens does have a tendency to slip into the same sort of self-rightousness that he so obviously detests in other people. I think this comes from a willfull refusal on his part to see the evolution of human knowledge and to understand how people pass from a-b. In short Hitchens begins his diatribe about evolution and the existence of god with enlightenment rationalistic principles and fails to see how the theological scholastic arguments of an earlier era laid the intellectual groundwork to allow us to advance to a place where we find fault with their arguments and their analogies.

To use an analogy from the ancient world Anaxagoras postulated that not only was the sun not the earth the center of the solar system but also that the sun wasn't a god but "Merely a large ball of fire many times bigger than the Peloponesus." However the geo-centric view won out until Copernicus and even then Martin Luther Called Copernicus "That fool who would reverse the entire order of the universe, for Joshua bade the earth stand still and not the sun." Martin Luther's refusal to adopt an idea that to us makes sense should not invalidate the achievements that this rather remarkable man had upon the course of human history. (Arguably --For most history is comprised of arguments-- Luther was more influential than Copernicus and possibly even Charles Darwin.)
The point is that the creation myth isn't a true story per-se it's a truth story. People don't necessarily seek explanations of the world around them in order to understand it so much as they look for explanations in order to rationalize their lives and their existance in an uncertain world. Most people who believe in creation and divine providence aren't stupid. Far from it, rather they derive no comfort from an explanation of the world that is mechanistic and impersonal. So much like the early animists they see the guiding hand of god --whom they unknowingly create in their own image-- at work in a cold impersonal world because they feel the need to find comfort in the thought that there is not only an order to the universe but also a personal creative maker behind it that they can identify with.
In this regard the deist resembles the rationalistic atheist or agnostic, because belief in divine providence supplies the same sort of grounding that belief in natural law does.

Natural law and the belief in natural processes allows those of us who believe in it (I place myself in this category) to make sense of a world in which we live without resorting to belief in a diety. Both beliefs ultimately serve the same purpose, and are equally valid --if only in the emotional and subjective sense-- because they serve different emotional purposes. Evolution does no more deny the existance of god than an apple denies the existence of an orange.

Ultimately the existence of god must be taken on faith even the apostle Paul tells us in Romans that "For it is by grace you have been saved through faith." Faith is seperate from observed reality, in the same way that a man's character may be known through his actions but his inner lived experience may never be known by an outside observer. Hitchen's concludes his essay with the following thought:
"It's only once we shake our own innate belief in linear progression and consider the many recessions we have undergone and will undergo that we can grasp the gross stupidity of those who repose their faith in divine providence and godly design."

Here Hitchen's is on the right track, and I would urge him to apply the same standard to understanding human knowledge and understanding. People as a group are no more linear in their thought patterns than the evolutionary chain he describes above. Certainly the story about Anaxagoras points to the fact that there have been many advancements and recessions in human knowledge and that human history is no mere linear progression from ignorance to knowledge or barbarism to civilization. Perhaps the gross stupidity is not on the part of those who continue to believe in god, but on the part of those who practice and believe in the principle's of enlightenment rationality and yet fail to understand those who cling to a much less knowledgable yet in many respects far more enduring picture of the universe.

For myself a person's disbelief in evolution doesn't affect my personal opinions and I have no need to convince them of the rightness of my belief. After All as Galieo once said about the earth so also about Evolution and human thought in general Eppur si Muove.

Posted by Sorn | July 22, 2008 12:25 PM

"But your flippant dismissal of the rest of the article as "having demonstrated to everyone's satisfaction that blind salamanders disprove the existence of God (or something like that)" is as boneheaded toward evolutionary biology as Hitchens is toward theology."

When Douthat writes an entire book attacking evolutionary biology, despite an embarrassing lack of familiarity with the topic, then he will be as boneheaded as Hitchens is towards theology.

Posted by rab | July 22, 2008 12:29 PM

People don't necessarily seek explanations of the world around them in order to understand it so much as they look for explanations in order to rationalize their lives and their existance in an uncertain world.

Right. Like blowing up Brown People, for example. As the Right Republican Jerry Falwell said of the Iraq War, "Kill 'em all in the name of the Lord." What a great guy.

Most people who believe in creation and divine providence aren't stupid.

That's a pretty sweeping and ultimately meaningless statement. But I'm willing to wager that people who elect to believe in Natural Selection etc. and deny divine providence (on basic scientific grounds) are, on balance, way smarter than those who don't. I like my chances there.

Posted by ed | July 22, 2008 12:36 PM

Ed wrote "Right. Like blowing up Brown People, for example. As the Right Republican Jerry Falwell said of the Iraq War, "Kill 'em all in the name of the Lord." What a great guy. "

I never said that intolerance wasn't a force to be reckoned with in human affairs. However there are many forms of self justification and intolerance stemming from a failure to understand.

Through most of history people have been blown up in the name of something. God, Money, Politics, Race. I don't necessarily think religion always euals intolerance. Your argument sir is a non-sequitter.

Posted by Sorn | July 22, 2008 1:01 PM

ed quotes and writes: "Most people who believe in creation and divine providence aren't stupid.

That's a pretty sweeping and ultimately meaningless statement. But I'm willing to wager that people who elect to believe in Natural Selection etc. and deny divine providence (on basic scientific grounds) are, on balance, way smarter than those who don't. I like my chances there. "

Just imagine the average IQ of the fundamentalist nitwits who go to the Creation Museum in Kentucky.

I like your chances, too.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | July 22, 2008 1:03 PM

So much for Ferret and his calls for civility.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | July 22, 2008 1:32 PM

I never said that intolerance wasn't a force to be reckoned with in human affairs.

And I never said you did. Never meant to imply that you did. Only expanded on what you said. That's it. That's all. Oh, and Jerry Falwell was a horrible person. Just so we cleared that up.

Posted by ed | July 22, 2008 1:32 PM

ed, you are really, really dumb, whether God or Nature intended it, it is so.

No, you're dumb! (Who's the doody-head now, notsmart guy?)

(Also, there's not one shred of legitimate evidence for God. The emperor has no clothes. Don't take it out on me, I'm just the messenger.)

Posted by ed | July 22, 2008 1:41 PM

Seeing these sorts of discussions make me so glad I am an agnostic. I have more important things to worry about than either a collision with another galaxy that is millions or billions of years out, or the process that produced the big bang over ten billion years ago. Astronomy and cosmology are wonderful scientific disciplines and I wish them the best in figuring this stuff out, but there's no reason for either religious folks or secular types to throw temper tantrums about it.

What I do know, and can say with certainty, is that the stories told by the monotheistic religious traditions for many centuries about cosomology have proven to be filled with errors, which is consistent with the thesis that humans came up with that stuff, not a God. If there is a God, She has surely not revealed Herself to any human civilization yet.

Posted by Dilan Esper | July 22, 2008 1:52 PM

Maybe all that Hitchens is getting at is this:
Those who worship God presumably believe him to be a caring person or superperson who looks out for our interests.

But, the problem of everyday evil aside, we know from the history of the earth--past massive extinctions--and from astrophysics--the possibility of catastrophic life-on-earth-destroying events--that the universe contains no guarantees of the continuance of human life. The species has only been around for a couple of hundred thousands years, and the way things work it may be over in another couple of thousand or less.

How could a caring God worthy of our worship allow such an arrangement, have so little regard for our importance as to put the continuance of the human race at risk?

Posted by CharlesHubble | July 22, 2008 1:56 PM

LaFollette Progressive,

I fail to see how "adaptations driven by local conditions" is a problem for teleology.

Now someone may say that there is no evidence for a god, and that's fine with me.

But to say that there was no instantaneous creation by a brilliant designer seems to go beyond what you're warranted in saying.

As for progression, it seems true that we can't say that there are any scientific facts which confirm the idea that evolution by natural selection in inherently progressive, but humans are quite an impressive result, don't you think?

Posted by Jay J | July 22, 2008 2:18 PM

CharlesHubble,

Some believers deny God's omnipotence.

Do you think you're question near the end of your post applies to them?

Posted by Jay J | July 22, 2008 2:20 PM

But to say that there was no instantaneous creation by a brilliant designer seems to go beyond what you're warranted in saying.

Who is suggesting this? I will go out on a limb and say that there is zero scientific evidence for instantaneous creation by a brilliant designer. You do understand the difference, right? Don't make me go all Spaghetti Monster on you.

Posted by ed | July 22, 2008 2:24 PM

ed,

I acknowledged quite clearly that there were no facts confirming the belief in an instantaneous creation by a brilliant designer (I wonder why you didn't quote that part).

This is different than saying that there is no instantaneous creation by a brilliant designer.

I understand very clearly the different between disproof and a lack of evidence for, and this too should have been obvious by my post, since I said that I have no problem with people who say that is no evidence for the existence of a god.

Just don't act as if it's an irrefutable fact.

It's sufficient to tell the believer that they have no evidence to offer.

And you can get Spaghetti Monster all you like...

Posted by Jay J | July 22, 2008 2:32 PM

ed - my comment was a lifetime achievement award for your past contributions. I stay out of this particular argument because I care about your view about as much as you care about mine. I just find it odd that you and other atheists need to mock people who disagree with you.

Posted by Ferrell | July 22, 2008 2:41 PM

Just don't act as if it's an irrefutable fact.

Who is acting as if it's an irrefutable fact?

Posted by ed | July 22, 2008 2:42 PM

Ed,

The person who wrote as if it were an irrefutable fact was the person my post was responding to.

If it's still not clear go back and read it.

The post you quoted me from started by addressing another poster. Go check it out, then maybe you can hunt down the post I was responding to.

Posted by Jay J | July 22, 2008 2:44 PM

Ferret says: "I just find it odd that you and other atheists need to mock people who disagree with you."

Thank the sky fairy that there's no history of theists mocking anyone!

Sheesh. Go ride that triceratops in Kentucky, Ferret.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v108/weirdpixie/ollapodrida/bb_tricertp.jpg

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | July 22, 2008 2:51 PM

I just find it odd that you and other atheists need to mock people who disagree with you.

Hey, whoa, I'm not mocking people who disagree with me, just trying to help them see the light. And please do not call me an atheist. When did I ever declare that I was one? I'm a non-practicing agnostic and proud of it.

I do, however, feel the need to mock the following:

--Blog commenters who write things like, "you are really, really dumb" without a single bit of supporting evidence

--Anyone who still thinks the Iraq Invasion was a good idea.

--Anyone who doesn't think George W. Bush is a horrible president and all-around bad, spoiled, coddled, rich asshole, narcissistic frat-boy.

--Southern Strategy Republicans.

Posted by ed | July 22, 2008 2:53 PM

Whenever someone says there's no evidence for the existence of God, I always want to know what he means by "evidence." My guess is that by "evidence" he means something that is, at least in theory, empirically observable. Unfortunately I now have to ask what "empirically observable" (and perhaps also what "at least in theory") means. Does "empirically observable" mean "observable by a normal human using just his or her senses"? Or does it mean "observable using scientific instruments"? If the latter, then which scientific instruments--our current ones or ones further on down the line, say, the ones we develop when we have finished science (or as is sometimes said, when we have an "ideal physics")? If by "evidence" you mean "empirically observable given the scientific instruments of an ideal physic," then I haven't the foggiest idea how you know that there is no evidence for God's existence. There could be lots of evidence and we just don't have the instruments to measure it yet. On the other hand, if by "evidence" you mean "in principle observable by a normal human using his or her unaided senses," then there may very well be evidence for the existence of God. For instance, the physical resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth or any number of religious experiences people have claimed to have.

Of course, even if you mean "evidence" in either of the above ways, why think that a proposition about a concrete entity should be believed only if we have evidence? Why not think that its being a good explanation for a wide variety of phenomena is a reason to believe in its existence?

Posted by Questioner | July 22, 2008 2:59 PM

Ed wrote that he felt the need to mock "--Anyone who still thinks the Iraq Invasion was a good idea."

I'm supprised you get along so well with Hitchens.

Posted by Sorn | July 22, 2008 3:01 PM

ed, kindly explain WHY your fellow germs, viruses, etc. are compelled to select, naturally or otherwise?

I'm going to go with

only the organisms best adapted to their environment tend to survive and transmit their genetic characteristics in increasing numbers to succeeding generations while those less adapted tend to be eliminated.

But that doesn't mean I haven't entirely ruled out a Sky Fairy. Not entirely. Next question.

Posted by ed | July 22, 2008 3:10 PM

Questioner,

If someone has a revelation that God exists, or an experience which seems to go beyond what science can explain, then I guess it would be rational for that person to believe in God or whatever it is that goes beyond science.

But we also have public means of finding out what's true, and this I think is the meaning of the word "fact" that can be given any sense.

The word "fact" to me, in other words, is an epistemic word, rather than an ontological one.

If someone hasn't shared a revelatory experience, then I think it's intellectually responsible to stick to out collective, public efforts at establishing facts. If someone has seen the Risen Christ, good for them, they can believe that's true.

But since the vast majority of people on Earth haven't had this experience, it seems sensible enough for them to lack belief.

Posted by Jay J | July 22, 2008 3:11 PM

Hi Jay J,

You write, "If someone has a revelation that God exists, or an experience which seems to go beyond what science can explain, then I guess it would be rational for that person to believe in God or whatever it is that goes beyond science."

I'm guessing it's the fact that a religious experience is not publicly confirmable that makes it "[go] beyond science"? If so, then some putative religious experiences don't go beyond science--e.g., the event described by Paul in 1 Corinthians where 500 people think they saw the risen Jesus. So I'd like to know what you mean when you talk about "go[ing] beyond science." I'm guessing you mean something like "not obviously compatible or even inductively ruled out by the best contemporary science we have."

You also write: "But we also have public means of finding out what's true, and this I think is the meaning of the word 'fact' that can be given any sense.
"The word 'fact' to me, in other words, is an epistemic word, rather than an ontological one."

That's interesting, but I think "fact" has an ontological sense, even for you...all you're saying, it seems to me, is that we use an epistemic category (public means of finding out what's true) to determine which things have the ontological status of facts.

Alternatively, you may mean something stronger: namely, that if something isn't publicly accessible to us, then it isn't a fact. On this view, there may be no fact of the matter about, say, whether there is any thing outside the concatenation of events in space-time we call the universe, or whether string theory is true. But if this is what you mean, then I'd say this is a use of "fact" to which I'm rather unsympathetic (it seems Rortyian, no?).

You further write:

"If someone hasn't shared a revelatory experience, then I think it's intellectually responsible to stick to out collective, public efforts at establishing facts. If someone has seen the Risen Christ, good for them, they can believe that's true."

I was actually talking about the historical means people have used to try to argue for the claim that Jesus rose from the dead. For a good online presentation of this argument, see Tim and Lydia McGrew's "A Cumulative Case for the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth", available through this site:

http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2007/11/a_cumulative_case_for_the_resu.html

Posted by Questioner | July 22, 2008 3:28 PM

Whenever someone says there's no evidence for the existence of God, I always want to know what he means by "evidence."

Ooh. I love this game. OK, you give me the evidence, and I'll tell you whether or not it's bulljive, capice? And don't just quote a Bible. That's Jim Bakker lever argumentation.

Ready? Begin.

Posted by ed | July 22, 2008 3:42 PM

Hi Questioner,

Let me lay out my view with a little more precision.

I've been drawn to Hilary Putnam's "warranted assertability" for a while now. I think our beliefs aim for the capital "T" Truth, but all we can ever really say to the skeptic is that we're warranted in believing what we do given the evidence (whether that evidence is 1st or 3rd person). The future will always have a claim on whether our views are actually true in some robust, Cartesian sense.

So I think we're making claims about the way things actually are (ontology) but all we can ever say with certainty is that we're warranted in what we believe (epistemology).

I agree that the 500 people who claimed to have seen the Risen Christ is a public event which may have been amenable to scientific discovery. In principle, if we could have tested the dead body for Jesus, and then seen that the person with the exact same DNA was then alive days later, then we would have good scientific reason to believe in the resurrection (provided Jesus didn't have a twin).

But it happened so long ago, that I don't think people should be expected to have allot of confidence in 500 people's eye-witness. It seems like all kinds of alternative explanations may serve just as well as explanations as believe that Jesus was actually resurrected.

I think in order for us to believe in the resurrection now, we would have to be able to have repeatable, experimentally controlled observation of other resurrections. But hey, if one of my loved ones who has passed away appears to me, I won't just assume I'm crazy, so in this way I'm open to using primary experience (the experience of the individual) as a source of evidence.

But if someone hasn't had any such primary experience, then I don't think the primary experience of others qualifies as persuasive. In these situations (which is the one we find ourselves in most often) we appeal to our public efforts which have collective control and checks and balances. So far, science seems like the best collective project for discovering truth, more precisely, warrant.

I don't want to say that something can't be true if it isn't accessible to us, I just want to say that we aren't publicly warranted in asserting something unless it has been through the steps of scientific experimentation, or if we're asserting it to others who shared our experience (the 500 could have talked about seeing Jesus to one another, for example, but that experience is not evidential to me).

I hope I responded to what you were getting at, feel free to call me attention to anything I've missed.

And I'll take a look at that link later on...

Jay

Posted by Jay J | July 22, 2008 3:51 PM

Jay J writes: "I agree that the 500 people who claimed to have seen the Risen Christ is a public event which may have been amenable to scientific discovery. In principle, if we could have tested the dead body for Jesus, and then seen that the person with the exact same DNA was then alive days later, then we would have good scientific reason to believe in the resurrection (provided Jesus didn't have a twin).

But it happened so long ago, that I don't think people should be expected to have allot of confidence in 500 people's eye-witness. "

Especially when we don't know who these 500 were and we don't have their testimony. We have a book making an unsubstantiated claim about there having been 500 and that's it. A book, I might add, that is riddled with internal contradictions.

Posted by Might oeLarryAndJesus | July 22, 2008 4:02 PM

Hi ed,

I gave a link to a paper by Tim and Lydia McGrew above. Do you think the sort of considerations they forward in that article count as evidence, or would count as evidence if you accepted, for the sake of the conversation, their background claims?

As for other considerations that might count as evidence, here's what Alexander Pruss and Richard Gale call the "New Cosmological Argument." Here's a link to their paper:

http://bearspace.baylor.edu/Alexander_Pruss/www/papers/NewCosmo.html

Here's my summary (it's been ages since I read their paper, so I can't vouch for the accuracy of my summary of it):

A contingent fact is a fact that may or may not be or have been the case. For example, it is a contingent fact that I exist; it's perfectly possible that my parents never met, and if they hadn't, then I wouldn't have come into being. "2+2=4," by contrast, is not a contingent fact, but a necessary fact--this means that there is no state of affairs in which 2+2 equals something besides 4. Take the set of all the contingent facts there are. Call this set of facts "S."

Let's further assume that, in this world (where "world" refers to a maximally large set of causally connected events), which we'll call "W1," S has no explanation.

Now, here's a question: do you think it's possible that S could have had an explanation? That is, do you think it's possible that there is some world, W2, where S is explained by some other fact, "P"?

If you don't think it's possible, then why not? If you do think it's possible, then let's continue.

In W2, P explains S; in W1, S is not explained by P. Consequently, since P explains S in W2, and since it cannot be the case that P both explains S in W2 and doesn't explain S in W1, it follows that P doesn't exist in W1. Thus, in W1 "not-P" (i.e., "~P") holds.

But now here's the rub: if ~P holds in W1, but P holds in W2, then both P and ~P must be contingent facts. But if both P and ~P are contingent facts, and S is the set of all the contingent facts there are, then ~P must be part of S. If ~P is part of S, though, then S couldn't have been explained by P. After all, P can't explain something that includes ~P. But now we're in the situation where either S couldn't have had any explanation, or where, if S possibly has an explanation (P), then it necessarily has an explanation; so S necessarily has an explanation.

This reasoning requires some unpacking. First, let's assume that ~P is part of S in the actual world. If ~P is part of S, then, as I said above, S couldn't have been explained by P. But "P" is just a placeholder for something that explains S. If ~P is part of S, then nothing could explain S. But if nothing could explain S, then it is necessarily true that S has no explanation. But if it is necessarily true that S has no explanation, then ~P is a necessary fact, and not a contingent fact that is part of, or could be part of, S. So, ~P can't be part of S.

If ~P can't be part of S, though, then it necessarily can't be part of us. So ~P is necessarily false. But if ~P is necessarily false, then P is necessarily true. But this just means that the set of all the contingent facts there are necessarily has an explanation. So, if something contingent exists, it follows that something necessary exists.

All the above follows if you grant the assumption that, possibly, there is an explanation for all the contingent facts there are. The thing is, this seems like a very plausible thing to believe. And what's further interesting is that if there is a possible explanation for why all the things that might not have been in fact are, then it follows that something necessarily exists, i.e., a concrete being or beings must exist in all possible worlds.

Now, we're not yet at God, but we're at a necessarily existing being. That's step 1. But before getting to step 2--showing that this necessary being is all-good, all-powerful, singular, etc., I want to know: what do you think of the considerations above? If true, do they amount to evidence?

Posted by Questioner | July 22, 2008 4:18 PM

Hi Jay,

Thanks for your response. I don't mean to say that the claims of the 500 are indeed good evidence for believing that Jesus rose from the dead. I just wanted to see if their claim was the kind of claim that you think has warrant. I don't quite know why we need to bring DNA, etc., into it; after all, I see people all the time and confidently pronounce on their identity without ever knowing their DNA.

That said, I imagine what you're getting at is what I'll call "The Proposition": a resurrection (or any other "supernatural event") goes against the weight of our observations, so we would have to have special evidence for believing it.

Here we get to lots of stuff about Bayesian decision theory and Hume's argument that's beyond me. I know that the atheist philosopher of physics and probability theory, John Earman, wrote a scathing attack on Hume's argument from miracles entitled Hume's Abject Failure where he goes into the problems that arise when we try to sort out precisely just what The Proposition means.

Here's where we get to your sentence: "I think in order for us to believe in the resurrection now, we would have to be able to have repeatable, experimentally controlled observation of other resurrections." I imagine that that claim could be challenged, and I'll say I find it implausible, though I don't know the literature well enough to explain what my problem is with it. Here are some worries, though:

Imagine that the largest examplefish ever found weighed 40 lbs. Now, you hear about someone, an extremely trustworthy friend of yours, who caught a 60 lb. examplefish. You, however, have not caught such a fish yourself. Are you epistemically within your rights if you believe that he caught the examplefish? Moreover, don't you have to admit, ceteris paribus, that your friend's testimony provides some evidence for the claim that examplefish can get bigger than 40 lbs.? I think so.

Obviously, resurrections bring in other complications, like people's penchant for believing self-flattering or fantastical things, as well as our lack of experience with people coming back from back from the dead in risen bodies. I don't want to downplay those. But like I said, we'll have to give more precise reasons to see why I can't believe in such things on the basis of a very trustworthy friend's testimony.

Posted by Questioner | July 22, 2008 4:29 PM

Questioner,

I'm not ed, but may I interject?

I think there is a difference between empirical evidence and a philosophical argument. Arguments may be very persuasive, but I'm not sure if they qualify as "evidence," per se.

As to whether it is an interesting question whether the universe is contingent, or if there must be something behind it motivating it, I'm sympathetic to your view that it is an interesting question.

In other words, it's not obvious that philosophical naturalism provides intellectually satisfying answers, and it's not obvious that to me that it's irrational to wonder.

On the other hand, if a naturalist says they don't care, or that we can never know the answer (since the value empirical evidence over philosophical argument) then we seem to be having nothing more than a subjective disagreement. The naturalist isn't as obviously right as he imagines himself to be, but I'm not sure if there is any adjudicating between the views at this level.

As for me, I'll bite:

Why must this fundamental thing be *a* being, rather than impersonal being?

Posted by Jay J | July 22, 2008 4:32 PM

ed mocks --Blog commenters who write things like, "you are really, really dumb" without a single bit of supporting evidence

As evidence, ed, I present your usual posts to the blog. I rest my case. And I didn't even have to pull out my Bible.

Posted by Ferrell | July 22, 2008 4:39 PM

Questioner,

I'm now participating in a couple of different threads with you, I'll try to keep them straight.

My assertion about DNA wouldn't apply if in fact I was there when Jesus was resurrected. In other words, "Doubting Thomas" probably had about enough evidence anyone could ask for. But I wasn't there, (neither was anyone I know), and it was a very long time ago, in which case I think getting into DNA would be necessary for subsequent generations to believe in the extraordinary event.

And if I had a trustworthy friend (who did not have a tendency to exaggerate) then I suppose I would have *some* evidence in 60Ib examplefish. I not sure what that commits me to, but if it commits me to anything, then I suppose you'll tell me?

Posted by Jay J | July 22, 2008 4:42 PM

Hi Jay J,

I welcome any and all interjections from you! I briefly skimmed your exchanges with Bloggin' Noggin', so I know you're an informed fellow. (On Bloggingheads I post under the name "Bobby G.")

That said, I can certainly see a view according to which arguments might not constitute evidence. But if that's true, then one wonders: why I care only about evidence? If someone wants to, that's fine, but then they're probably appealing to some non-evidential epistemic principle, like "when it comes to existence-claims about concrete beings, accept only those supported by empirical evidence." Which is perhaps fine, but I worry whether it runs into a practical contradiction.

As for the argument I gave above, I should say that I don't myself think it's all that great an argument. I presented it mainly because I wanted to see whether ed thought it provided evidence for the existence of God or not, and if not, why not, and also if not, why we should care only about evidence. I'm actually persuaded by Kant's moral argument for belief in the existence of God.

Nonetheless, my response to your "bite" above is simple enough: if we want to avoid necessitarianism, then the necessary being will either have to be an agent with a will, who brings this contingent universe into existence through a libertarianly free act, or it will have to be some sort of universe-generating principle that randomly generates universes but itself exists necessarily.

Note, though, that there is some reason to think that whatever it is, being or impersonal being, it will have to exist outside of space-time. After all, if it exists in any sort of space-time, it seems like its existence is just as contingent as the space-time it's in. But if it's existence is contingent, then it's not necessary. On the other hand, if it's outside of space-time, then it will exist timelessly. If it exists timelessly, then it seems that it can only undertake one creative act (as the Thomists say, it would itself be "pure act"). If it can only undertake one creative act, though, then this principle that randomly generates universes would generate all of reality in one creative act.

But now we have to ask, "why did it generate this reality rather than another?" If you give a full explanation in response to this, then you end up with necessitarianism (i.e., this principle generated this universe because it had to; this principle has to exist, and it has to generate just this universe, so therefore, only this universe, in all its particularities, could exist, so there is no such thing as contingency).

On the other hand, some philosophers (Randolph Clarke and Alex Pruss) have interestingly, and perhaps even plausibly, argued that an event's coming to be as a result of a libertarian choice is one that has a full explanation (along the lines of, "event E happened because agent A wanted it to, and that's all there is to it"), but also one that could be used to explain some other event F. (I confess, I don't really follow their arguments, but I can give you bibliographic information about, and perhaps even links to, the articles in which they make these attempts.) If all this is right, then the only explanation of why there is something rather than nothing that avoids necessitarianism is the theistic one.

Posted by Questioner | July 22, 2008 5:01 PM

Jay J asks, "And if I had a trustworthy friend (who did not have a tendency to exaggerate) then I suppose I would have *some* evidence in 60Ib examplefish. I not sure what that commits me to, but if it commits me to anything, then I suppose you'll tell me?"

This doesn't commit you to much, other than that we could potentially have some evidence for believing in the resurrection of Jesus, namely the testimony of the people who claimed to witness the risen Christ. Of course, to have the evidence you would have to be convinced that the witnesses were reliable, which is the point of the McGrew and McGrew article.

Posted by Questioner | July 22, 2008 5:08 PM

Speaking of evidence, there's pretty strong evidence that whenever there's a high comment count on one of Douthat's posts, I can be pretty much guaranteed some of you bickering clowns are here, duking it out with aplomb.

Ignore me if you've been making fair-minded comments.

Posted by Geoff | July 22, 2008 5:38 PM

Hi Questioner (aka Bobby G)!

Yea Bloggin will run you ragged if you don't watch out. I'm not complaining, I enjoy the discussion, and it's been edifying, I'm only saying that I'm finding out the value of precision more and more all the time.

As for the necessary being existing outside space-time, I'm hope I don't sound like too big of a philistine, but I just can't wrap my head around that. I mean, when I get to trying to understand Einstein's STR or GTR, my head spins. The thing is, I think that's a natural reaction... I think allot of what Einstein had to say was obviously revolutionary, but somewhat unintelligible, or at least so counterintuitive to be inert philosophically, except of course as a knife through the heart of the Newtonian world-view. Dito for QM or String Theory. Going back to Putnam, he said that QM was valuable scientifically in predicting physical behavior, so there's probably something fundamentally right about it, but we don't want to give up our standards of intelligibility completely.

I'm not accusing you of invoking QM, STR, etc, I'm only saying that the more I think about space-time the more I think that I wouldn't know what it would mean for something to exist outside of it. I mean, I can't understand a will, or any kind of decision, unless I posit time. That's only one example of the puzzles which plague me.

True enough if this universe isn't the most fundamental thing, then whatever caused it exists outside space/time, but in that case I'm willing to sort of just scratch my head.

Also, when I think about the difficulty of understanding how the "hard problem" of consciousness could be reduced to the material constituents of this world, I'm not so sure something more fundamental than space/time couldn't exist quite happily alongside it, interacting with it, in which case there would be some sense in which this thing was *in* space and time.

As for the theistic option, I hope this isn't too much of a fudge, but when I said impersonal, perhaps I should have said something like "not-discursively aware" or "not based on subject-object metaphysics" etc. Your point about a will of some sort being fundamentally involved seems sensible enough, but I don't know that this must mean that this will is somehow like ours. I mean, it seems to me that when we get down to ants, or worms, or even bacteria, it seems these things have some sort of will. In other words, positing that intentionality could be a fundamental building clock of the universe does not necessarily mean to me that theism is the only way to understand this...

Anyway, what do you think? I don't want to say that the fundamental thing is a person, but I suppose I accidentally rob it of something when I call it "impersonal." I guess you can see my semantic dilemma?

Posted by Questioner | July 22, 2008 5:41 PM

Hi Questioner (aka Bobby G)!

Yea Bloggin will run you ragged if you don't watch out. I'm not complaining, I enjoy the discussion, and it's been edifying, I'm only saying that I'm finding out the value of precision more and more all the time.

As for the necessary being existing outside space-time, I'm hope I don't sound like too big of a philistine, but I just can't wrap my head around that. I mean, when I get to trying to understand Einstein's STR or GTR, my head spins. The thing is, I think that's a natural reaction... I think allot of what Einstein had to say was obviously revolutionary, but somewhat unintelligible, or at least so counterintuitive to be inert philosophically, except of course as a knife through the heart of the Newtonian world-view. Dito for QM or String Theory. Going back to Putnam, he said that QM was valuable scientifically in predicting physical behavior, so there's probably something fundamentally right about it, but we don't want to give up our standards of intelligibility completely.

I'm not accusing you of invoking QM, STR, etc, I'm only saying that the more I think about space-time the more I think that I wouldn't know what it would mean for something to exist outside of it. I mean, I can't understand a will, or any kind of decision, unless I posit time. That's only one example of the puzzles which plague me.

True enough if this universe isn't the most fundamental thing, then whatever caused it exists outside space/time, but in that case I'm willing to sort of just scratch my head.

Also, when I think about the difficulty of understanding how the "hard problem" of consciousness could be reduced to the material constituents of this world, I'm not so sure something more fundamental than space/time couldn't exist quite happily alongside it, interacting with it, in which case there would be some sense in which this thing was *in* space and time.

As for the theistic option, I hope this isn't too much of a fudge, but when I said impersonal, perhaps I should have said something like "not-discursively aware" or "not based on subject-object metaphysics" etc. Your point about a will of some sort being fundamentally involved seems sensible enough, but I don't know that this must mean that this will is somehow like ours. I mean, it seems to me that when we get down to ants, or worms, or even bacteria, it seems these things have some sort of will. In other words, positing that intentionality could be a fundamental building clock of the universe does not necessarily mean to me that theism is the only way to understand this...

Anyway, what do you think? I don't want to say that the fundamental thing is a person, but I suppose I accidentally rob it of something when I call it "impersonal." I guess you can see my semantic dilemma?

Posted by Jay J | July 22, 2008 5:42 PM

Forgive my double posts.

I had addressed my comment to "Questioner" but had also unconsciously named myself that!

I thought I caught it time, and reposted, but instead I double posted.

Feel free to delete one, monitor...

Posted by Jay J | July 22, 2008 5:45 PM

Questioner writes: "Imagine that the largest examplefish ever found weighed 40 lbs. Now, you hear about someone, an extremely trustworthy friend of yours, who caught a 60 lb. examplefish. You, however, have not caught such a fish yourself. Are you epistemically within your rights if you believe that he caught the examplefish? Moreover, don't you have to admit, ceteris paribus, that your friend's testimony provides some evidence for the claim that examplefish can get bigger than 40 lbs.? I think so.

Obviously, resurrections bring in other complications, like people's penchant for believing self-flattering or fantastical things, as well as our lack of experience with people coming back from back from the dead in risen bodies. I don't want to downplay those. But like I said, we'll have to give more precise reasons to see why I can't believe in such things on the basis of a very trustworthy friend's testimony. "

The usual response to this sort of thing is that extraordinary claims (such as a sky fairy incarnating in the womb of a virgin and performing miracles such as raising the dead before dying and resurrecting himself) require extraordinary proof.

I suspect that even if a very good friend told you he'd been abducted by aliens and probed anally by dozens of pseudopods you'd be a wee bit skeptical. At least I hope you would be. I've known plenty of people who claim to "have a personal relationship with Jesus." I consider this to be a sign of wackiness, not a form of evidence for the existence of this Jesus.

I'd respond the same way to someone claiming they'd seen a ghost.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | July 22, 2008 6:11 PM

For "the fool said in his heart, 'there is no God'" (Ps. 13:1, 52:1)? But certainly that same fool, having heard what I just said, "something greater than which cannot be thought," understands what he heard, and what he understands is in his thought, even if he does not think it exists. For it is one thing for something to exist in a person's thought and quite another for the person to think that thing exists. For when a painter thinks ahead to what he will paint, he has that picture in his thought, but he does not yet think it exists, because he has not done it yet. Once he has painted it he has it in his thought and thinks it exists because he has done it. Thus even the fool is compelled to grant that something greater than which cannot be thought exists in thought, because he understands what he hears, and whatever is understood exists in thought. And certainly that greater than which cannot be understood cannot exist only in thought, for if it exists only in thought it could also be thought of as existing in reality as well, which is greater. If, therefore, that than which greater cannot be thought exists in thought alone, then that than which greater cannot be thought turns out to be that than which something greater actually can be thought, but that is obviously impossible. Therefore something than which greater cannot be thought undoubtedly exists both in thought and in reality.....And you, Lord God, are this being.

Indeed.

-St. Anselm of Canterbury

Posted by Hector | July 22, 2008 6:40 PM

For "the fool said in his heart, 'there is no God'"

Indeed. Did someone here write this?

Posted by ed | July 22, 2008 7:07 PM

Here's what I had in mind:

Scientific method refers to the body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. It is based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.[1] A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.[2]
Although procedures vary from one field of inquiry to another, identifiable features distinguish scientific inquiry from other methodologies of knowledge. Scientific researchers propose hypotheses as explanations of phenomena, and design experimental studies to test these hypotheses. These steps must be repeatable in order to dependably predict any future results. Theories that encompass wider domains of inquiry may bind many hypotheses together in a coherent structure. This in turn may help form new hypotheses or place groups of hypotheses into context.
Among other facets shared by the various fields of inquiry is the conviction that the process be objective to reduce a biased interpretation of the results. Another basic expectation is to document, archive and share all data and methodology so they are available for careful scrutiny by other scientists, thereby allowing other researchers the opportunity to verify results by attempting to reproduce them. This practice, called full disclosure, also allows statistical measures of the reliability of these data to be established.

Posted by ed | July 22, 2008 8:59 PM

I've got to say, Douthat has a way of connecting brilliantly with the common man. The consensus I've gathered from the workaday crowd I run with is that atheists in the media are getting every bit as annoying as evangelicals when it comes to forcing their beliefs on people who, frankly, could give a d%^& about the religious beliefs of stangers.

I will add, though, that I've picked up some great atheist league jargon in reading the comments section. I'll no doubt be fully prepared for the whole "emporer's new clothes" allusion when I next host those of my friends who have been unable to escape the academic life. Forgive me for interrupting the flow of the debate on the page, its just that I'm confident enough in my faith to care more about the blog's main point than the endless bickering over the existence of God.

Posted by MistahCahhteah | July 22, 2008 9:40 PM

MistahCahhteah writes: "I've got to say, Douthat has a way of connecting brilliantly with the common man. The consensus I've gathered from the workaday crowd I run with is that atheists in the media are getting every bit as annoying as evangelicals when it comes to forcing their beliefs on people who, frankly, could give a d%^& about the religious beliefs of stangers."

What "atheists in the media" are "forcing their beliefs" on your poor stupid friends? Hitchens is a columnist and writer with no established television or radio outlet. Dawkins and Harris aren't especially omnipresent, either. If your friends can't handle the free exchange of ideas then they're idiots.

Perhaps these nasty, pushy atheists are sick and tired of the Christian right and Islamic nutjobs - both of whom actually DO force their beliefs on people. I wonder if your stupid friends got sick of them first.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | July 22, 2008 10:41 PM

St. Anselm of Canterbury's little mental exercise also works well for Xenu, Sol Invictus, and Mithra too.

Posted by EndOfTheWorld | July 22, 2008 10:54 PM

Trust the Right to say the apocalypse will come for religious reasons and the Left for economic reasons.

Posted by Luis A. del Valle | July 22, 2008 11:23 PM

Fair points, Moe, but settle down and find peace. I can prove God to you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ET8zhjeYMs&feature=related

Now, "Mr. Kotter" is right, let's chill out a bit.

Posted by Norman | July 23, 2008 12:04 AM

If the some religious folk are to claim that something in place of nothing is proof of the existence of God, then it should follow that nothing in place of something is not. The specific example of our impending galatic collision with our neighbor may be sloppy, but the eventual heat death of the universe is not. If nothing else, it should put to bed the notion that the universe was made with our existence in mind.

Be you believer or non-believer, if it is your stance that something in place of nothing is not proof of anything, then bloviating from one Christopher Hitchens ought not matter one way are the other. However, I do not think that Hitchens, in this single flitation, remotely compares to an author who makes his living on the endtimes. Rather, it seems to me a strech on Ross' part to propogate what I fear is becoming a sort of dogma among religious liberals, religious moderates and even atheists who "believe in belief": that staunch atheism and staunch theism are equally destructive. From where I am sitting, one is most certainly a greater threat than the other.

Posted by Rossiss Exy | July 23, 2008 12:43 AM

Google Video broadcast of a debate between Hitchens and Rabbi Boteach. Relevance to topic starts at 0:11:50 and ends a minute after.

Posted by Rossiss Exy | July 23, 2008 5:25 AM

Re: . The specific example of our impending galatic collision with our neighbor may be sloppy, but the eventual heat death of the universe is not.

Until and unless the eventual heat death of the universe actually happens we should not be using it as metaphysical proof of anything. It's speculation based on limited information about current conditions. We have no proof that these conditions will remain as they are, or that we have all the cards on the table as to what may happen eighty billion years from now.

Posted by JonF | July 23, 2008 6:34 AM

End of the World,

Re: St. Anselm of Canterbury's little mental exercise also works well for Xenu, Sol Invictus, and Mithra too.

Er, no it doesn't. Sol Invictus wasn't a "perfect being", nor did the Romans ever claim he was. None of the gods of a pantheon is, by definition, perfect. St. Anselm's exercise only works for people who believe in one God (or arguably, one good and one evil God since only one of those beings would be perfect in the moral sense).

As for the Mithraists, I don't know much about them but weren't they a heresy of Zoroastrianism? Zoroastrianism is dualistic, not polytheist, and there have been quite a few people who believed that the Zoroastrians- like Muslims, Jews, and Platonist- had a partial and/or imperfect knowledge of the true God rather than worshipping some being who wasn't a God at all. See "Cyrus was a servant of the Lord" and so forth.

I confess to having no idea who your Xenu is.

Posted by Hector | July 23, 2008 8:35 AM

Yes, it would seem (according to Tertullian) that Mithra was believed (around 200 BC) to be the earthly incarnation of the Zoroastrian God, Ahura-Mazda, who would be born of a virgin, and apparently would be resurrected as well. Tertullian believed that this was the work of the Devil, but I disagree. It would seem to me that this is evidence for Christianity, more than anything else: that the mythology surrounding Mithra was a vague and garbled memory of actual visions and revelations, given by God or his messengers to the Persians, and concerning the real Man who would die and be resurrected, Jesus Christ. Mithra was the vague and dimly grasped prophecy: Jesus Christ was the myth become fact.
The relationship between Jesus and Mithra is the relationship between the light of the moon and the moon's reflection in a lake.

You see, what the agnostics don't grasp is that you have to explain not just why people believed in the resurrection of Jesus, but also why people in so many other cultures had visions and prophecies of Someone who bears such marked and uncanny resemblances to Jesus. If you accept that the testimony of the four evangelists was correct regarding the miraculous resurrection, then you have an explanation at once not just for why the early Christians believed in resurrection but also why the Persians did.

Posted by Hector | July 23, 2008 8:52 AM

MoeLarryandJesus writes "Perhaps these nasty, pushy atheists are sick and tired of the Christian right and Islamic nutjobs - both of whom actually DO force their beliefs on people. I wonder if your stupid friends got sick of them first."

I think we're in agreement here, there is an obvious sense of give and take between the two poles of this discussion, with one side's forceful nature almost certainly contributing to the others.

As to your insults aimed at my close friends, these men are police, lawyers, salemen, laborers et cetera but not academics. While they do not have any interest in discussing the philosophical debate over the atheism issue they still read commentary and have expressed to me at times a sense of personal disdain felt towards the, to quote the Atlantic Monthly, "mass market atheism" movement which has no evident beneficent goal, and is instead comprised of a group of people who would seek only to have a proper audience when they let out their triumphant "I told you so." The difference between the Left Behind crowd and the God Delusion crowd seems to be little more than "believe me or be left behind when we float off to paradise" versus "believe me or look stupid when you find out we're right."

So, yes, evangelicals can be grating, but so too can be atheists. I'll add that though I know that the vast majority of the people I know are christians, they've never come out and tried to convert me to their sect. The few atheists I know have tried on several occasions. Though that is certainly nothing more than anecdotal evidence, I'm sure not all atheists view themselves as missionaries for the cause, but their methods have soured the common man as well, as christian missionaries generally don't call their prospective convertees stupid in hopes of convincing them to see the light.

Posted by MistahhCahteahh | July 23, 2008 9:24 AM

Is there a world with shorter explanations of the evidence of God?

Ed, making fun of arguments which one is too inattentive, obstinate, ill-informed, or stupid to understand does not invalidate them. I don't remotely understand quantum mechanics, but I'm not about to dismiss it because it doesn't make sense to me, when physicists who do have the time, inclination, educational background, and mental capacity to grasp it widely endorse it.

If you take the time to read Questioner's post, and understand it, it presents a perfectly coherent argument. I'm afraid the fact that for whatever reason you failed to recognize it does not change the fact that this is so.

Look, I'm just looking for any scientific evidence that Noah's flood went down, that the earth is 6,000 years old, that Jerry Falwell wasn't a big fat douche-bag.

Every single word of the Bible could be false, and it would not remotely disprove the existence of a deity - just a deity with certain arbitrarily set defining characteristics. Since humans have come up with many characterizations of what God is, many of which emphasize that it cannot be described in words or even comprehended by the human mind, I see no reason to embrace atheism based on the dubious historical claims of a particular holy text (claims acknowledged to be ahistorical by pretty much every sophisticated religious thinker writing today - hell, claims that St. Augustine said should be interpreted metaphorically rather than literally 1,600 YEARS AGO).

Posted by Xeynon | July 23, 2008 9:46 AM

ed wrote,

"Jibber-jabber saying something to the effect of, 'If P, then there's only one God and it's the one in the Bible and Jerry Falwell wasn't that much of a douche-bag' doesn't really fly with us Reality-Based Life Forms."

I don't believe I wrote that. Where did I argue for the God of the Bible in my post? Or that Jerry Falwell wasn't that much of a douche-bag? And why do you think, because I give an argument from metaphysics, that I'm not "reality-based"? I've lost track of what reality is if there's no metaphysical component.

You also made fun of the length of my comment. Fine, but here's what I expected to happen. I expected to refer you to an article for a reasonable argument for the existence of a necessarily existing concrete being. I figured you would say something like "Courtier's Reply!" And so I'd have to show to you what the argument is. Was I wrong in thinking that you would have thought I was invoking a version of the Courtier's Reply if I had just linked to the original article?

(And if you don't know about P.Z. Myers's "Courtier's Reply," check it out here:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/12/the_courtiers_reply.php
.)

Your one non-mocking reply to my post is:

"We got to 'seems like a very plausible thing to believe'? Are you kidding me?"

No, I'm not kidding you. Find me an argument that doesn't at some point rely on an intuition. Insofar as an argument relies on an intuition that is shared by many, it's a stronger argument.

Here's another argument I could give:

(1) God, if it exists, is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect.
(2) An omniscient being would know about any evil (i.e., pain, suffering, and immorality) that existed.
(3) An omnipotent being would be able to eliminate any evil that existed.
(4) A morally perfect being would want to eliminate any evil that existed.
(5) But evil exists.
(6) Therefore, there is no God.

I assume you accept the above argument or something like it. If I asked you why you accepted (4) you may something like "it seems to me to be true" or "it's true by definition." At which point I would unleash on you:

We got to "seems like a very plausible thing to believe"? Are you kidding me?

As for your understanding of what you would count as evidence, you invoke a summary of the scientific method. Well, I've already linked to an article by Tim and Lydia McGrew that applies a historical approach to proving the truth of (i.e., confirming) the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Do you take historical researches to possibly conform to the scientific method?

Posted by Questioner | July 23, 2008 9:52 AM

LarryMoeandJesus notes the extremely plausible-sounding "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." I agree with that, but unfortunately it's normative from top to bottom. What counts as an extraordinary claim or extraordinary evidence depends to at least some significant degree on the worldview you have, no? I grant that even I, who is a theist, finds that claim that Jesus rose from the dead extraordinary, but I suspect that I find it significantly less extraordinary than you, so the amount of evidence I'll need to believe in it is less than the amount you'll need.

Moreover, I've also had the experience of having an extremely intelligent, extremely skeptical/naturalistic philosopher friend become a convinced supernaturalist after having a religious experience with predictive significance, and I can indeed say that it carried heavy evidential weight for me.

Posted by Questioner | July 23, 2008 10:12 AM

Hi Jay,

When I read your first post, and saw that it was signed by me, I got nervous. I thought, "oh great, someone's going to make mischief under my handle." Needless to say, I was pleased to see it was just an error caused by my temporarily being your mindworm.

You wrote: "As for the necessary being existing outside space-time, I'm hope I don't sound like too big of a philistine, but I just can't wrap my head around that."

That's fine you can't get your head around that. I'm not sure I have my head around it either, but there are lots of concepts that I'm not sure I have my head around that I don't want to therefore abandon as nonsense (not to say you're saying anything like that). For instance, freewill, persons, abstract objects, modal facts, moral facts, causation, substances, and just about anything else that's received in-depth philosophical analysis.

You also write, "Also, when I think about the difficulty of understanding how the "hard problem" of consciousness could be reduced to the material constituents of this world, I'm not so sure something more fundamental than space/time couldn't exist quite happily alongside it, interacting with it, in which case there would be some sense in which this thing was *in* space and time."

This is a nice move, and I should say that the majority of theists don't think God is atemporal, i.e., "eternal," but instead think that God is "everlasting," i.e., existing at each moment of time (including the kinds of time that cosmologist Alan Guth speculates about, the ones in which our space-time continuum exists).

At any rate, later on your speculations indicate that perhaps the creative force that brought the universe into being takes part in whatever fundamental mental force Chalmers posits. I'm skeptical of that, but regardless, I would describe such a being as "personal," even if not fully a person.

Posted by Questioner | July 23, 2008 10:21 AM

Finally, ed's response brings to the fore the fact that I was stupid to write a long blog post involving a complex philosophical argument. That's obviously not what the commenting forum on this site is for. It's for pithy remarks that are, ideally, supposed to provoke thinking in the people who disagree with them and are moreover supposed to be fun to read as well. People don't come here for illumination, they come here to have non-challenging fun attacking others' ideas. I get that, and I won't be posting long posts anymore. (This is not a "I'm taking my ball and going home" post; it's a "why the hell did I waste so much time writing that post when I should be doing my own work?" post.)

Posted by Questioner | July 23, 2008 10:25 AM

hitchens might be vehemently antitheist, but his argument is not that blind salamanders disprove god. rather, they further provide further evidence for common descent of life and evolution.

he is right. evolution has no direction. viewing it as having some sort of arc or goal is incorrect. evolution is but a mechanism, heading out in all directions at once. this isn't hard, except for scientifically illterate right wing fools who have adopted creationism as a talking point.

man, the GOP is in a tailspin.

Posted by laughable | July 23, 2008 11:09 AM

One thing I've always thought curious is that evangelical atheists seem to believe that the burden of demonstrating the existence of God should reside with believers.

It seems to me, given that atheism rather that some sort of theism is the novel belief, the burden of proof should lie with those who believe in the absence of a God.

Obviously this would be a challenge, given that there is no more hard evidence for the absence of a creator than there is for one. It seems to me that the proper empirical position is "we don't know if there's a creator, and given that if there was one, the empirical tools we have to detect it are all part of its creation and so may not be reliable, it's a question effectively outside the bounds of scientific inquiry."

That leaves it a matter of faith. Hitchens has his faith in the absence of God, and Ross his faith in the trinity as celebrated by the Roman Catholic Church. I don't see any a priori reason to privilege one of those beliefs over the other.

Posted by TW Andrews | July 23, 2008 11:27 AM

The obvious atheist rejoinder to TW Andrews's remark is that theists are asserting the existence of a concrete entity, and the burden of proof should be on the person who asserts the existence of a concrete entity.

Some theists accept this principle (e.g., Richard Swinburne, Tim McGrew), whereas most others reject it, arguing that it presumes some neutral position, like "well, we all agree about the existence of objects A to Y; we just disagree about whether Z exists." However, theists and atheists don't agree about the existence of objects A to Y because they often conceive of those objects differently.

Posted by Questioner | July 23, 2008 11:42 AM

TW Andrews, I am afraid that to go down your path is to define faith out of existence. Hitchens operates under the assumption that there are no Gods the same way Ross operates under the assumption that most gods (Zues, Thor, Zenu) do not exist. It don't take faith to not believe in fairies, dragons or Micheal Moore.

Posted by Rossiss Exy | July 23, 2008 11:47 AM

Good points Questioner,

On a 'personal' God, I'm still tripping over the difference between Judeo-Christian theism I perceive you to hold and the Eastern-ish view I entertained.

I agree that even non-theistic Eastern religions posit some key feature of persons as being fundamental, though some more than others, since Buddhism can sometimes sound like downright atheism.

In any case though, these key features of persons end up being... transpersonal, in which case they don't end up being branded "theistic."

What do you think on this?

Posted by Jay J | July 23, 2008 12:17 PM

MistahCahteahh replies: "I'm sure not all atheists view themselves as missionaries for the cause, but their methods have soured the common man as well, as christian missionaries generally don't call their prospective convertees stupid in hopes of convincing them to see the light."

Atheism is not generally a conversion-seeking movement. If you've had friends trying to convince you to become an atheist it's probably because they don't think you're an idiot.

The "common man" is an idiot, all too often. That's how Dumbya Bush ended up in the White House. He got 80% of the "Left Behind" vote, after all.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | July 23, 2008 12:20 PM

Questioner replies: "LarryMoeandJesus notes the extremely plausible-sounding "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." I agree with that, but unfortunately it's normative from top to bottom. What counts as an extraordinary claim or extraordinary evidence depends to at least some significant degree on the worldview you have, no? I grant that even I, who is a theist, finds that claim that Jesus rose from the dead extraordinary, but I suspect that I find it significantly less extraordinary than you, so the amount of evidence I'll need to believe in it is less than the amount you'll need.

Moreover, I've also had the experience of having an extremely intelligent, extremely skeptical/naturalistic philosopher friend become a convinced supernaturalist after having a religious experience with predictive significance, and I can indeed say that it carried heavy evidential weight for me. "

I guess your friend didn't become a Scientologist or you'd be having lunch with Tom Cruise.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | July 23, 2008 12:24 PM

Here's something to look forward to - a clip from Bill Maher's forthcoming movie "Religulous." Hard as it may be to believe, he has no problem getting footage of theists acting like complete wackaloons:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/22/bill-maher-takes-on-relig_n_114325.html

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | July 23, 2008 12:42 PM

A very late response to Jay J --

"But to say that there was no instantaneous creation by a brilliant designer seems to go beyond what you're warranted in saying."

It's about as close as you can get to a rock solid factual statement to say that there was no instantaneous creation by a brilliant designer of anything remotely close to the contemporary ecosystem. Young-earth creationism is easily demonstrable nonsense. But yes, of course, it is impossible to ultimately prove or disprove the existence of a designer.

"As for progression, it seems true that we can't say that there are any scientific facts which confirm the idea that evolution by natural selection in inherently progressive, but humans are quite an impressive result, don't you think?"

I certainly do... but so were tyrannosaurs, which have been outlived by sea slugs and blind cave salmanders. Complexity, in and of itself, is not favored by evolution. It's certainly possible to chart "progress", but progress is clearly not the driving force of evolution.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | July 23, 2008 12:54 PM

It's certainly possible to chart "progress", but progress is clearly not the driving force of evolution.

It's true that progress, in the sense of greater complexity, is not the driving force of evolution, but that doesn't preclude teleology or mean that progress is not the ultimate goal (assuming there is an ultimate goal, which is unknowable). Certainly on a small temporal scale evolution is directionless, but I think given a long enough period of time, in fits and starts it is likely to produce ever more complex organisms, with an intelligent species eventually emerging (a hypothesis which the only point of hard data we have would seem to corroborate). This is certainly compatible with philosophical naturalism, but it is no less compatible with theistic evolution models such as that adhered to by the Catholic church. Stephen Jay Gould's musing that intelligent life may have been no more than a chance outcome is no more or less scientifically verifiable than the Pope's position.

Posted by Xeynon | July 23, 2008 1:24 PM

MoeLarryandJesus writes, "I guess your friend didn't become a Scientologist or you'd be having lunch with Tom Cruise."

No, I find certain religious belief systems to be much more plausible than others. This fellow was a Buddhist, and I find Buddhism more plausible than Scientology.

Posted by Questioner | July 23, 2008 1:40 PM

Jay J wrote, "I agree that even non-theistic Eastern religions posit some key feature of persons as being fundamental, though some more than others, since Buddhism can sometimes sound like downright atheism.
"In any case though, these key features of persons end up being... transpersonal, in which case they don't end up being branded 'theistic.'"

First, I think Buddhism is atheistic--it denies the existence of persons, and God is a person, so it has to deny the existence of God. Moreover, Buddhist philosophers in the past gave arguments specifically against the existence of God. From what I recollect of what my Buddhist friend told me, these arguments either attempted to show contradictions among the divine attributes or to be versions of the argument from evil. (That all being said, I think 90% of lay Buddhists believe in persons and deities of one sort of another, at least according to what Rodney Stark has written.)

Second, I wouldn't call the key features of persons, according to Buddhism at least, transpersonal. The doctrine of no-self is just as fundamental to every version of Buddhism as the doctrine of the Incarnation is to every version of Christianity. Consequently, I think they're going to want to get away from persons altogether--it's the illusion that generates the most suffering. If you want to call that "transpersonal," though, I'm not sure that there's anything wrong with that.

Posted by Questioner | July 23, 2008 1:52 PM

(This may be a double post. Apologies.)

Jay J wrote, "I agree that even non-theistic Eastern religions posit some key feature of persons as being fundamental, though some more than others, since Buddhism can sometimes sound like downright atheism.
"In any case though, these key features of persons end up being... transpersonal, in which case they don't end up being branded 'theistic.'"

First, I think Buddhism is atheistic--it denies the existence of persons, and God is a person, so it has to deny the existence of God. Moreover, Buddhist philosophers in the past gave arguments specifically against the existence of God. From what I recollect of what my Buddhist friend told me, these arguments either attempted to show contradictions among the divine attributes or to be versions of the argument from evil. (That all being said, I think 90% of lay Buddhists believe in persons and deities of one sort of another, at least according to what Rodney Stark has written.)

Second, I wouldn't call the key features of persons, according to Buddhism at least, transpersonal. The doctrine of no-self is just as fundamental to every version of Buddhism as the doctrine of the Incarnation is to every version of Christianity. Consequently, I think they're going to want to get away from persons altogether--it's the illusion that generates the most suffering. If you want to call that "transpersonal," though, I'm not sure that there's anything wrong with that.

Posted by Questioner | July 23, 2008 1:54 PM

LaFollette Progressive,

I have known theists all my life, I even grew up in the Methodist Church, and I personally know very few theists whose believe the creator is remotely close to the contemporary ecosystem in terms of initial creative activity.

So other than the Young Earth people, what's the problem?

On progression, it's not uncontroversial even among biologists whether highly intelligent life was likely. Stephen Jay Gould says no, but others say it was. Of course who knew it was going to be us, since the likelyhood of any one species seems to be low.

Posted by Jay J | July 23, 2008 2:05 PM

Questioner quotes and replies: "MoeLarryandJesus writes, "I guess your friend didn't become a Scientologist or you'd be having lunch with Tom Cruise."

No, I find certain religious belief systems to be much more plausible than others. This fellow was a Buddhist, and I find Buddhism more plausible than Scientology."

As an atheist, so do I.

I don't find Christianity to be any more plausible than Scientology, though.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | July 23, 2008 2:10 PM

"...but that doesn't preclude teleology..."

Well, sure. Nothing precludes teleology. If you want to see the hand of fate in everything that ever happens on earth, there's no possible way to prove that you're wrong.

But evolutionary processes, as actually observed and witnessed, show no evidence of a guiding hand or a master plan. And absence of evidence, while hardly dispositive, is certainly suggestive.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | July 23, 2008 2:14 PM

Questioner,

A Buddhist might tell me that I'm pushing the boundaries of language here, but some of the key features of persons seem to be awareness, which I don't think Buddhism denies (at least not explicitly).

I personally am more attracted to the Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism since it doesn't deny the self so aggressively. The Advaita school believes in Atman-Brahman, while Buddhism espouses anatman.

There are times though when Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism seem to overlap, and sometimes completely so, depending on how aggressive the form of Buddhism in question denies the self.

A times it seems like Buddhists want to aggressively deny the self, and there are other times when they just want to get us to stop thinking of the self as "separate" or "independent," in which case Advaita Vedanta would agree.

There is a story of the Buddha also where one of his followers was asking about the existence of God and the Buddha told him something like, 'You're like a man who has been shot with an arrow, but before he can be treated, he wants to know everything about the man who shot him.'

Another time I believe he's thought to have said, "Even if there is a God, you're still here with all your problems."

So the Buddha at least seems to have been neutral on the subject. And while Buddhism denies persons, they don't necessarily believe that we aren't real and separate people in any sense at all. Rather they believe that in a more fundamental sense, we are interconnected and arise co-dependently. In which case I'm not sure this doctrine rules out divine personages, it's just that even these figures would be empty of inherent and independent existence.

How does this strike you?

Posted by Jay J | July 23, 2008 2:29 PM

Jay J,

You may be right about all the above. It sometimes seems to me, though, that there's a greater range of debate regarding certain core issues in Buddhism than in Christianity, though if you include people like Bishop John Spong and Thomas Sheehan as Christians, then there's probably an equally large range of views.

At any rate, I get all my knowledge on Buddhism from one philosopher, and he aggressively denies the self and God. And yes, he denies that anything at all exists, including awareness (at least, at the level of "ultimate truth"), but even he's not entirely sure what this means. I think any philosophically respectable Buddhism is going to have to admit at least awareness while also arguing that we should try to go beyond mere awareness to "attention," where "attention" is similar to a permanent state of "flow."

I'm guessing you know about this stuff than I do.

Posted by Questioner | July 23, 2008 3:07 PM

I am afraid that to go down your path is to define faith out of existence.

No, it's just to admit that questions of faith are quite properly outside the bounds of meaningful scientific inquiry. With tools that are inherently of this universe, there are certain questions about the universe, (i.e. it's creation, what if anything is beyond it) which just can't be answered empirically. Arguing about who's proving what may be philosophically interesting, and a good debater's exercise, but there are no testable propositions which Christianity, Islam, atheism or any other faith posit which makes them meaningful in a scientific sense. If you can design an experiment the execution of which would falsify any of these beliefs, I'm all ears.

Hitchens operates under the assumption that there are no Gods the same way Ross operates under the assumption that most gods (Zues, Thor, Zenu) do not exist. It don't take faith to not believe in fairies, dragons or Micheal Moore.

Sure it does. It may be a faith that comes naturally and without much thought to people raised in the modern world, but belief in fairies and Zeus was just as natural at particular times an places. I think it's actually much easier for people to believe in things like fairies or angels than it is to believe in certain laws of physics and mathematics. (Michael Moore, I'm willing to give you though. There's no believing in him.)

Mainly, I think it's silly for people to try to approach faith in an empirical manner. I'm part statistician, so I love me some numbers, evidence and facts, but it's just a misunderstanding of how science and empiricism work to think that every question can be addressed with their tools. Goedel demonstrated that pure logic and mathematics are similarly limited.

Posted by TW Andrews | July 23, 2008 5:24 PM

The obvious atheist rejoinder to TW Andrews's remark is that theists are asserting the existence of a concrete entity, and the burden of proof should be on the person who asserts the existence of a concrete entity.

That's a reasonable position too, but I don't think there's a logically compelling reason that it has to be the default one.

And more properly what the religious are (or should be) asserting is *their belief* in one or more concrete entities. Given the prevalence (and obvious utility) of empiricism, I think that religious folk often make the mistake of offering evidence for the validity of their beliefs, rather than challenging the idea that they should need empirical evidence for their faith.

Posted by TW Andrews | July 23, 2008 5:52 PM

TW Andrews,

Are you familiar with the work of Alvin Plantinga, George Mavrodes, Nicholas Wolterstorff, or any members of the so-called Reformed Epistemology movement? Your position sounds like theirs.

Posted by Questioner | July 23, 2008 6:17 PM

TW Andrews,

I'm sorry I'm gonna have to go with the secular crowd on this one.

It seems that we all experience reality in a somewhat... "naive" way, or at least that's how it seems to me. I'm not a big believer that we wouldn't have an idea about the world without a cultural story telling us what to think (not that I'm accusing you of holding this position).

In other words, it seems to me that there is a natural default, at least in commonly shared experience. I mean, if people use something other than empirical evidence, then why should any of us believe them? Also, it seems that we can mount a rational critique of a belief system which doesn't value evidence. Whether people *should* be rational is another question, but it certainly seems like rationality has certain limits.

Where we may agree is that it may be rational to explain the universe in more complete terms, answering the "why" questions and getting into deeper speculation on the "how" questions. This is where I think the impasse happens.

If atheists believe that it's not an interesting question about the origin of the universe, that's fine, but they can't really mount a critique of the believer here on rational grounds, in my opinion.

But I do think there is a sense in which natural defaults flow from everyday experience, and that empirical evidence is important to rationality.

Does any of that raise any issues with you?

Posted by Jay J | July 23, 2008 7:02 PM

ed wrote,
"Jibber-jabber saying something to the effect of, 'If P, then there's only one God and it's the one in the Bible and Jerry Falwell wasn't that much of a douche-bag' doesn't really fly with us Reality-Based Life Forms."

You sure about that? There seems to have been some scrubbing in these parts. Wonder why.

Keep on keepin' on!

Posted by ed | July 23, 2008 7:50 PM

Every time I read something by Hitchens that I agree with, I feel the need to take a shower to clean off the slime. He just adds a layer of assholeness for no reason to everything he writes.

Posted by Reality Man | July 23, 2008 8:57 PM

I am stunned by the bilge washing around in many of the comments above that think that it is thoughtful, intelligent or clever in anyway shape or form that an imaginary fantastical being of some kind is watching over us.

Why are so many of you desperately enthusiastic to throw away your faculties of reason? Its depressing to think that there are still so many otherwise seemingly intelligent people are misguided and arrogant to such an incredible, deeply distasteful degree that it is all one can do than to throw our hands up and simply hope for the best. Bloody hell - we are doomed!

Posted by Pugilistwine | July 23, 2008 9:29 PM

I have known theists all my life, I even grew up in the Methodist Church, and I personally know very few theists whose believe the creator is remotely close to the contemporary ecosystem in terms of initial creative activity. So other than the Young Earth people, what's the problem?

Well, my problem is that on the level of intellectually honesty, religious conservatives completely esclipse religious liberals with respect to Darwin's theory. Evolution is violent, indifferent, and inefficient yet to acknowledge those facts and still claim that there is a benevolent intelligenece would seem to me to invoke a strong level of congintive dissossance.

The fact that most of DNA is so-called "junk DNA" does not speak to any level of godly intelligence it all and the fact that nearly every species that every appeared on Earth is now extinct hardly speaks benevolence, however divine. Unless you adopt a some brand of deism, it should be more difficult than some would have us believe for monotheistic liberals and monotheistic moderates to square that circle.

Posted by Rossiss Exy | July 23, 2008 9:39 PM

Rossiss Exy,

As far as religious conservatives, if Hitchens, Dawkins, etc, wished to confine their critiques to fundamentalists, they could very easily do that, but they've chosen not to. And the great mass of people who follow behind the trail blazed by the New Atheists wish to extend their critiques beyond fundamentalists, or at least would rather cast the net too wide and catch some "pernicious" beliefs rather than casting it too narrowly and missing some.

As for deism, that's one way to go, but another way is one already mentioned, which is to get rid of the idea of God's omnipotence. The believer only has to believe that it was "worth it" in terms of creation. This may not be obvious true, but it doesn't strike me as something which must involve cognitive dissonance.

And again as already mentioned, not all biologists, (not even all atheist biologists), agree that highly intelligent life was unlikely, only that any *one* species was unlikely to be that one.

As for "junk" DNA, I've never had allot of confidence in that idea, and I may not be completely out to lunch there:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_DNA#Functions_for_Some_Subsets_of_Junk_DNA

Posted by Jay J | July 23, 2008 10:00 PM

Rossiss Exy,

It's only difficult to 'square the circle' if you want to believe that the world is an entirely benevolent place and that God's benevolence should be evident in each aspect of creation.

Most of us don't believe that, however. St. Paul and the four evangelists were very clear that the devil is the prince of this world, and that from very early on, a malign power has exercised sovereignty over it. As Jesus said, "the devil sinneth from the beginning." That's why Christians refer to this world as _fallen_. In a world from which God has largely withdrawn* himself and which has become corrupted and deformed, the messy and brutal process of evolution is exactly what you would expect to observe.

*"Withdrawn himself" meaning that God is not _evident_ to us on a daily basis....it's not like we speak with angels every morning. This isn't to deny that on specific occasions God makes himself present to us through visions, prayers, revelation, the occasional miracle and of course most importantly through the Incarnation.)

I should add though that I don't particularly like trying to discern God on the basis of evidence about the physical world. It can eb done, of course, there's evidence there, but I prefer to think of God as a Being whose existence is compelled by pure logic. "Ontological" proofs in other words.

Posted by Hector | July 23, 2008 10:16 PM

Jay J, I see no reason to doubt that there exists junk DNA, especially given hundreds of millions of years, but do not let my argument stand and fall on that example. I could just have easily invoked the fact that men have men have nipples. This point is close to me because, if not for modern medicine, I could have easily died from a ruptured appendix--an organ which, if I never been born with, would have improved my life considerably. Some design.

As to the point of omnipotence, I do not follow. I've only ever specifically possited a "benevolent intelligence." And even then, it does not have to be all-knowing, just competent enough to devise a system that slightly less aimless and messy. From where I stand, getting rid God's omnipotence might solve any number of contradictions (the problem of evil, for one), but with respect to evolution by natural selection, it relieves no burden whatsoever.

Hector, if some are going to assert that god is not just good, but a model of moral perfection to which we should all aspire, in one breath, then, with the next, assert that God had anything it all to do with Evolution, I should--at the very least--expect to see the slightest hint of benevolence in a process that is so evidently not. I am not asking God to reveal himself on a daily basis, I am asking for a single fingerprint of a divine hand in a process that spanned thousands of millions of years.

Posted by Rossiss Exy | July 24, 2008 1:07 AM

"The obvious atheist rejoinder to TW Andrews's remark is that theists are asserting the existence of a concrete entity, and the burden of proof should be on the person who asserts the existence of a concrete entity." Q

TR: This is a position, but it's not one that has to be accepted by anyone.

The atheist position, unless he believes in a supernatural without God, has to be that most humans are and have always been deluded. Because pretty much all humans, including most Buddhists, believe in a supernatural. At the same time they have to insist that science, which relies totally on human observation and reasoning, gets to the truth. So humans have to be both the sole arbiter of truth and generally untrustworthy beings proned to delusion.

Hence atheists who used to get so excited about SETI, at least it offered the hope of something inhuman to add to the mix. However it seems clear now that extraterrestrials, even if they exist, will probably never have meaningful communication with us. So with that option off the table an alternative is elitism as ML&J indicates.

That being humans are prone to delusion and untrustworthiness, but scientists are better than mere humans. Or more generally atheists are better than mere humans. They've found a way of perceiving truth beyond all human delusions. Although I don't see how we could determine such a thing. Besides which even if it were true it'd something of a "sad truth" as these "superior people" tend to reproduce less so it's a genetically maladaptive quality from a natural selection standpoint. (Exempting France the most atheist nations are among those with greatest population declines. Dawkins has been married three times, but I only find one offspring. Asimov I believe had more than one kid, but in general atheists have high rates of childlessness)

Basically a naturalist atheism goes against pretty much all human culture and seems to be maladaptive. Yes many atheists are rich and avoid crime, right up to the point they suicide or die childless. It doesn't change the maladaptiveness. So if it is true than it'd be accurate to say "we can't handle the truth." (For a supernaturalist atheist, and such do exist, the arguments would be slightly different. Also harder to argue against on some level)

From the theist perspective we can take the account of history and perception of most humans as valuable. We also allow for something that contains "The Truth" rather than relying solely on human methodology. If it's not the truth we will merely die believing in something that gave us Darwinian advantage and, in many cases, greater emotional well-being. If it is the truth than we already have a connection to Truth and will have it all someday. The atheist can never have truth because science is simply a human methodology of trial-and-error with no ending point of "Truth."

Posted by Thomas R | July 24, 2008 4:09 AM

Thomas R, in missing a subtle point your entire post assumes a false premise. Science, as practiced by humans, necessitates human observation (duh), but any truths ascertained by that process would be true whether humans ever existed or not. In other words, the universe was universing long before we hit the scene and it will continue to universe after we are gone.

There is no intrinsic defect within scientific observation that cannot come by any single objective fact about the observable universe that I am aware of (perhaps you could enlighten me). This is not to say that there are no impediments from without. There may be very practical reasons why there may never be a scientific consensus on what, if anything, exists outside of our universe or practical reasons why we might not record every species that ever lived on Earth, but since when did injecting God into any unknown ever help matters?

And yes, when it comes to facts about the universe, scientists tend to be less deluded than the general public. When did expertise become such a bad thing?

Posted by Rossiss Exy | July 24, 2008 6:22 AM

Re: Asimov I believe had more than one kid, but in general atheists have high rates of childlessness

I'm not sure that this is anything more than a random (or at least contentless) correlation. I have a hard time imagining how one's religious belief can affect one's fertility.
Also, some of the most profoundly (or professional) religious people are also childless, or supposed to be. If propositions are to be judged by how many kids their proponents have, then Christianity (and definitely Catholicism) is in trouble. Ditto Buddhism which also features a childless order of dedicated religious.

Posted by JonF | July 24, 2008 6:41 AM

Rossiss Exy,

There are any number of ways of reconciling the mechanicsm of evolution with the existence of God (and I mean specifically a God who is the perfection of Good). Many of them are not, of course, available to Christians, but your point appears to be about God more generally, not just the Christian religion. One could hold, as the Manichaeans did, that the physical world is the creation of the devil. One could hold, as the Zoroastrians do today, that the good aspects of the world were created by God, and the evil aspects by the devil. A Christian might hold, in contrast, that this was a good world in its origin but throughout evolutionary time it has been under the domination of the devil. You probably don't believe in the devil either, but there's no reason why I have to shape my beliefs to fit your agnostic tastes.

One doesn't need to believe that God has directed evolution as a whole. My faith is satisfied by believing that God has guided specific moments in the evolutionary history: most importantly the origin of life, and the creation of the human soul. (I'm agnostic as to whether some of the higher animals may have souls).

There is certainly no _proof_ that the origin of life was in any way a guided process, and I can't necessarily convince you otherwise. It is a fact though that we don't have a good explanation of how life could have originated. (I assume you're not going to bring up the Miller experiment here, as it constituted only a tiny and minuscule baby step). You can put your faith, if you choose, in the idea that science will explain it someday, but personally I doubt it ever will.

As for the human mind, no less than Wallace himself believed strongly that it could never have been produced by evolution unguided, since its capacities are so vastly in excess of the demands that were placed upon it early in human evolutionary history.

Posted by Hector | July 24, 2008 7:40 AM

TR writes: "The atheist position, unless he believes in a supernatural without God, has to be that most humans are and have always been deluded. Because pretty much all humans, including most Buddhists, believe in a supernatural. At the same time they have to insist that science, which relies totally on human observation and reasoning, gets to the truth. So humans have to be both the sole arbiter of truth and generally untrustworthy beings proned to delusion.

Hence atheists who used to get so excited about SETI, at least it offered the hope of something inhuman to add to the mix. However it seems clear now that extraterrestrials, even if they exist, will probably never have meaningful communication with us. So with that option off the table an alternative is elitism as ML&J indicates. "

This is an almost cartoonish passage. It's nitwitted on so many levels I scarcely know where to start, so I won't bother.

Congrats on finding THE TRUTH, Tommy. How convenient for you that your parents gave it to you wrapped in a neat package! Man oh man, you're a lucky dude!

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | July 24, 2008 8:06 AM

Um, Moe, I don't know about Thomas but I was raised atheist. I converted in college.

The point about religiosity being correlated with fertility is a tricky one. It certainly exists, but equally certainly isn't that tight of a correlation. No one could accuse the Christians of places like Chile, Armenia, Lebanon, or South India of being weak in their faith. Indeed, the Christians in these places tend to belong to highly traditional and demanding branches of the faith and to be fairly devout, yet they all have below replacement birth rates. If birth rates are to determine the value of a religion then the fundamentalist Muslims, Mormons and Hasidic Jews have the Christians beat hand down. I suppose we should all become Muslims then?

There are good evolutionary reasons why polygamy, patriarchy and the subjugation of women might lead to higher birth rates. That wouldn't make them good things. Muslim countries have higher birth rates than Christians in large part because Christianity preaches that "in Him there is no male nor female" and in general has a _more_ egalitarian view of men and women. (I'm not denying the history of patriarchy in Christian societies, but simply making a comparative statement). The proof of this is that in the Muslim countries where women are fairly educated (e.g. Turkey, Lebanon, arguably Iran) birth rates are also below replacement.

Posted by Hector | July 24, 2008 8:58 AM

Rossiss Exy,

Well if you grant me the subtraction of God's omnipotence, I no longer see the problem with men's nipples.

As for your medical condition, and implying that that's shoddy design, that's not an argument, it's an expression of taste.

Posted by Jay J | July 24, 2008 9:09 AM

Are you familiar with the work of Alvin Plantinga, George Mavrodes, Nicholas Wolterstorff, or any members of the so-called Reformed Epistemology movement? Your position sounds like theirs.

I wasn't, but a quick trip to wikipedia indicates that yes, my position is pretty close to that. A difference is that where Reformed Epistemology "seeks to defend faith as rational by demonstrating that epistemic propositions of theistic belief are properly basic and hence justified," I take the position faith doesn't need to be justified rationally.

Because belief is personal, an answer to the question "Why do you believe in [insert deity here]" is fully answered with everything from a complex justification to "because I do."

It seems that we all experience reality in a somewhat... "naive" way, or at least that's how it seems to me. I'm not a big believer that we wouldn't have an idea about the world without a cultural story telling us what to think (not that I'm accusing you of holding this position).

In other words, it seems to me that there is a natural default, at least in commonly shared experience. I mean, if people use something other than empirical evidence, then why should any of us believe them? Also, it seems that we can mount a rational critique of a belief system which doesn't value evidence. Whether people *should* be rational is another question, but it certainly seems like rationality has certain limits.

We can definitely mount a rational critique of a belief system which doesn't value evidence, but I think it's a bit misguided. The critique ends up showing that a belief system which doesn't value rationality is itself irrational--but said belief system admitted that from the start. What's the point? My belief in God (or lack thereof) isn't rational, and I acknowledge that. But that doesn't make the belief go away.

Trying to find physical evidence for metaphysical concepts just seems like an exercise in futility to me. Sometimes interesting, but basically pointless.

Posted by TW Andrews | July 24, 2008 3:35 PM

Hector, by injecting God into the origin of life you are employing a "God of the gaps" argument cautioned against in my previous post. But no matter. The origin of life has little, if anything, to do with Darwin's theory of the evolution of species by natural selection.

Posted by Rossiss Exy | July 24, 2008 3:39 PM

Reading through Wikipedia a bit further, I find that my beliefs are basically in accord with fidiesm and that I identify with Hamann and Kierkegaard's thoughts in particular.

This quotation sums up my thoughts pretty well:

Without faith (for it can never be proven) in the existence of an external world, human affairs could not continue; therefore...all reasoning comes from this faith: it is fundamental to the human condition. Thus all attempts to base belief in God using Reason are in vain.

Posted by TW Andrews | July 24, 2008 3:51 PM

"but any truths ascertained by that process would be true whether humans ever existed or not." RE

TR: Our understanding of science is going to be limited by our perceptions and consciousness. Yes it gives facts, but it's always going to be incomplete. If you take the perspective that most humans are, and always were, delusional than the limitations in perceptions and consciousness are potentially greater. Even atheists could be tainted making their interpretation of data suspect.

Granted I came too close to just saying science is merely another ideology, which is not what I think. However you have to see science as vastly superior to other human methods of knowing or learning, to the point of discounting others, to maintain much of the materialist atheist viewpoint. You might find that okey-dokey, but it's not surprising many don't.

"Congrats on finding THE TRUTH, Tommy. How convenient for you that your parents gave it to you wrapped in a neat package! Man oh man, you're a lucky dude!" ML&J

TR: If you were raised to believe in science this doesn't make science any less true.

And besides this I did not claim I personally have the TRUTH. I'm saying for TRUTH to be knowable it seems it would have to exist and be known by something. This wouldn't have to be a conventional form of God. It wouldn't even have to be a being in the classical sense. There could be a vast Godless library containing all TRUTH that you enter on death or by evolving into a higher being or something. Or you could theorize a God that's omniscient, but not omnipotent or purely benevolent.

In science you never get the TRUTH and you never can. You get a trial-and-error process that creates increasingly accurate models of the Universe. For someone to claim science has the TRUTH and that TRUTH is atheism is, by definition, a lie. For someone to claim they have the TRUTH and that TRUTH is found in God is unprovable, but it's not contradicting itself.

The specifics of which religion is right is not what I was getting into. I was not even getting into the specifics of what God means. I'm just saying a materialist/naturalist atheism requires a fairly dismissive view of humanity in favor of small subset of humanity that, in the way of TRUTH, gives nothing much in particular. And in other ways seems to have maladaptive traits.

On the maladaptation others mention priests have no kids, and neither do I, that is not all that relevant. Catholics as a whole do have higher fertility rates than atheists. Besides that Catholics do not need to see life in evolutionary terms if they do not wish to. Atheists kind of do. Atheism is expanding through "conversion", but mostly people are leaving religion for an irreligious theism or supernaturalism rather than material atheism. And in the nations where it is common native populations are often declining and being replaced by more theistic immigrants. In 1910 atheism seemed like the future, but after the World Wars, Godel, etc the whole rationalist atheist hope kind of collapsed around itself. People like Dawkins are, more or less, refugees from the Edwardian. So far the future seems likely to Pentecostals, Charismatics, Muslims, Neo-Pagans, and the death of Reason altogether. Which is not to my liking either.

Posted by Thomas R | July 24, 2008 4:02 PM

Jay J, again, whether God is omnipotent or not not has nothing to do with male nipples or the human appendix. God neither has to be omnipotent nor omniscient, only a competent enough draftsman to devise a process that did not lead such inefficiencies. Again, if you want to say that God is not a competent draftsman or that he had nothing to do with Evolution, then you're off the hook.

Trying to find physical evidence for metaphysical concepts just seems like an exercise in futility to me. Sometimes interesting, but basically pointless.

Does the fact that we are here or that the universe exists qualify as physical evidence? I wouldn't ask except those facts are used, quite often, to suggest the metaphysical. So what so you?; is the physical evidence of the metaphysical?

Posted by Rossiss Exy | July 24, 2008 4:02 PM

Does the fact that we are here or that the universe exists qualify as physical evidence? I wouldn't ask except those facts are used, quite often, to suggest the metaphysical. So what so you?; is the physical evidence of the metaphysical?

It might be evidence of something, but I don't see that it's evidence for any particular metaphysical position. There are some metaphysical systems which would deny that "we are here" and "the universe exists" are true statements.

Basically, those are both assumptions necessary to empiricism. Most of us act as if they're true (people who don't are pretty much crazy by definition), but they're not provable statements without first taking them for granted.

Posted by TW Andrews | July 24, 2008 4:19 PM

That was supposed to be "what say you" not "what so you." Moving on...

However you have to see science as vastly superior to other human methods of knowing or learning, to the point of discounting others, to maintain much of the materialist atheist viewpoint. You might find that okey-dokey, but it's not surprising many don't.

Not to open a can of worms but actress Jenny McCarthy is against some childhood vaccines because she believes that it caused her child's autism. How does she know this? "Mommy instinct." Her words. Whatever your opinion on the subject, explain to me how this "human method of knowing" trumps the science that says that vaccines have nothing it all to do with the rising diagnosis of autism.

Perhaps you could state another if you do not like that example.

Posted by Rossiss Exy | July 24, 2008 4:22 PM

Rossiss Exy,

The reason God's omnipotence is he only thing we could argue over is that I doubt either of us knows what it would take in order to call someone a "competent enough draftsman" from a cosmic point of view.

If God were omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent, then we would have a problem.

Short this problem, forgive me if I don't find your personal appraisal of the efficiency or lack thereof of this universe very persuasive.

To bemoan certain qualities of this universe is one thing, but in order to critique the hypothetical creator on this point, you would have to know something about what a non-omnipotent being would have and its disposal... or whether any type of cosmic creation could avoid such inefficiencies.

Posted by Jay J | July 24, 2008 4:36 PM

I doubt either of us knows what it would take in order to call someone a "competent enough draftsman" from a cosmic point of view.

Speak for yourself. I, a supposed lower form than God, can easily imagine a more efficient, less violent process of gaining intelligent life than Evolution (Creationism, for one). I do not think that labeling my critique of the inefficiency of Evolution as being "personal" is helpful in the least. We should all, hopefully, understand the word efficient to imply orders of magnitude less redundancy than life currently has.

You quoted my saying, "competent enough draftsman" but failed to state the next few words, "to devise a process that did not lead such inefficiencies." This is important because you are making it seem as though I am not qualified enough to make a wholesale criticism of what a competent draftsman is when, in fact, I am stating a very specific example.

Think of it this way: I do not know what it takes to be a qualified architect, but I know that if your structure falls apart with on a brisk wind, I am more than allowed to point that out. This is not a perfect analogy because life has survived the elements exceedingly well, but the fact that life has survived ought not to prevent me from saying that it could have been better. For one, why do we have to be stuck in the middle of a cosmic shooting gallery on an active planet? Location, location, location.

Posted by Rossiss Exy | July 24, 2008 5:22 PM

It might be evidence of something, but I don't see that it's evidence for any particular metaphysical position.

If that is the case then it seems as though theism is far more guilty of this fallacy than atheism. After all, it is the theist which assert that something that occurs within the natural universe (the physical), like love or our existence or the origin of life, is evidence of the divine (the metaphysical). Do you agree?

Posted by Rossiss Exy | July 24, 2008 5:38 PM

"Whatever your opinion on the subject, explain to me how this "human method of knowing" trumps the science that says that vaccines have nothing it all to do with the rising diagnosis of autism." RE

TR: The erroneous opinions of one individual relate not at all to the consensus of human history and wisdom. This seems relatively obvious to me.

Likewise the opinion of science on a purely scientific matter, like vaccines, is irrelevant to whether non-scientific forms of knowledge have value. Prove to me that Dawkins or Weinberg would be a better historian than most Christians in the field and perhaps you're saying something. Telling me Jenny McCarthy is an idiot says very little.

Posted by Thomas R | July 24, 2008 6:22 PM

After all, it is the theist which assert that something that occurs within the natural universe (the physical), like love or our existence or the origin of life, is evidence of the divine (the metaphysical). Do you agree?

Sort of. I think that things which happen in the physical universe have physical explanations and adding metaphysical explanations is pointless in the same way seeking physical proof of metaphysical concepts is.

My assertion is that there's no physical evidence for any particular metaphysical system (one of which is atheism), and so you can pretty much take your pick. One might argue over the value of one over the other, but those valuations are all subjective.

Posted by TW Andrews | July 24, 2008 6:49 PM

Likewise the opinion of science on a purely scientific matter, like vaccines, is irrelevant to whether non-scientific forms of knowledge have value. Prove to me that Dawkins or Weinberg would be a better historian than most Christians in the field and perhaps you're saying something.

I do not think I need to go that far. The fact that history has mountains more in common do with science than it does with Christianity makes my point for me. All history is is the study of facts about our universe on a very small scale. The 12th of February is a particular point where our Earth is relative to the sun. You may interpret the fact that Charles Darwin or Abraham Lincoln where born on that day as a historical fact, but you cannot say that any one of those events occurred outside of nature.

So, if in place of Dawkins or Weinberg you were to say someone who applies a scientific way of knowing and understanding (which, of course, is not limited to atheists or even scientists) then the answer to your example is, most obviously, yes. Whether Dawkins and Weinberg in particular might have made good historians is what is, of course, unknowable.

Posted by Rossiss Exy | July 24, 2008 6:56 PM

TW Andrews, you have me confused.

You previously said that the onus was on the atheist to prove the absence of God. Now you are telling me that things that occur within the physical require physical explanations while at the same time downplaying the idea of physical evidence altogether. Help me out.

Posted by Rossiss Exy | July 24, 2008 7:13 PM

Rossiss Exy,

I'm not doubting your ability to imagine what would be sufficient to critique the competency of a structure designed by an architect, if for example everything they designed failed.

My post didn't actually deny you the right to do that, I specifically, after writing "competent enough draftsman" wrote "from a cosmic point of view." There's no reason to read this as me boxing you in. I know your critique is specific, that's why I said "from a cosmic point of view," since the cosmic point of view is the one we're discussing.

My point is that while you may make critiques on something you know something about, I doubt either one of us knows what it takes to create a universe. If we subtract omnipotence from the hypothetical creator, then we should admit that we have no idea if creation can take place *without* the inefficiencies you cite. The fact that you can imagine something different does not make it a metaphysical possibility.

And on architecture, if we know that an architect is licensed, has a firm behind her with allot of money, and she's given sufficient time and support, she ought to be able to design a sound structure (or let's say she's an engineer).

If the structure falls, we might make a criticism. But if we later find out that the structure was a massively complex design, and she only had her own wits to count on, and it was like pulling teeth getting her co-workers to cooperate, and she didn't have as many resources as we thought, we might withdraw our critique.

You're either consciously thinking that a non-omnipotent being could do whatever you can imagine, in which case you aren't warranted in thinking this, or you're making a category error: taking your critiques of craftsmanship where you can at least imagine the parameters of the project, and applying that to cosmic creation.

Posted by Jay J | July 24, 2008 8:00 PM

Re: And in the nations where it is common native populations are often declining and being replaced by more theistic immigrants.

Falling birth rates are a global phenomenon, and the corelation is probaly best made with economic circumstances: nations with high GDP and fairly modest rates of inequality have seen birth rates fall most-- so far. But even much of the old Third World, inclduing large areas of Islamic civilization are on that bus too, they are just a generation or two behind Europe and Japan. The mechanism I would posit is that A) one need no longer have six children to insure that two survive to adulthood (it took about 50 years for this fact to work its way through) and B) Children, in richer countries at least, have become a serious economic minus to their families while providing little in the way of economic benefit. Of course children still provide non-economic benefits, but one or two children are abudndantly adequete for those, and in fact may be ideal for their realization. The modern strategy seems to be to have few children, but lavish resources in them to insure their success. That not a maladaptation at all: it's a viable evolutionary strategy, and in fact the human species as a whole (in comparison to many other species who are profligate in their procreating) practices it.

Re: So far the future seems likely to Pentecostals, Charismatics, Muslims, Neo-Pagans, and the death of Reason altogether.

I doubt Reason is going away any time soon: it's far too useful. But our two hundred year adventure with settng up Reason in place of God is doomed to extinction. It really perished in Auschwitz and Hiroshima and the gulags of "scientific socialism", but its rotting corpse is still paraded around like the relics of an ancient and poorly remembered saint by Dawkins and his ilk. As with many human inventions, Reason makes a very good servant, but it too is a poor master.

Posted by JonF | July 24, 2008 10:00 PM

"Falling birth rates are a global phenomenon, and the correlation is probaly best made with economic circumstances: nations with high GDP and fairly modest rates of inequality have seen birth rates fall most" JF

TR: Maybe. I'll admit that looking it up the religious thing doesn't work that well. Several of the more religious nations in Europe have low fertility rates. Still from what I remember reading the atheists in those countries usually have even lower rates. Excepting Vietnam, Israel, and maybe Uruguay the most atheistic nations pretty much always have below replacement fertility rates. The most theistic nations sometimes have higher fertility and sometimes don't.

"The modern strategy seems to be to have few children, but lavish resources in them to insure their success" JF

TR: Selection-wise this makes sense up to a point. If you have a fertility rate well-below 2.0 I think this would put one at a genetic competition disadvantage regardless.

Anyway it's been interesting, but I should probably bail.

Posted by Thomas R | July 25, 2008 12:09 AM

Jay J: You're either consciously thinking that a non-omnipotent being could do whatever you can imagine, in which case you aren't warranted in thinking this, or you're making a category error: taking your critiques of craftsmanship where you can at least imagine the parameters of the project, and applying that to cosmic creation.

You make it sound as though one needs god-like abilities to apply rather common sense critiques. Creating a universe that will decay into a state of nothingness is remarkably unimpressive for a what you insist on referring to as an omnipotent being.

This seems to me to be a reasonable position to take and you're basically saying that I am not entertaining the idea that what I consider bad design is, in actuality, good design. After all, if God is all-powerful, two completely contradictory concepts can be true at the same time! Well, I am afraid that I am just too practical to venture down that avenue.

If we were speaking in the abstract, I doubt I would have any trouble finding agreement on what constitutes bad design. If your computer shipped with a component that had no purpose other than to occasionally explode you would say that that was a bad design choice. This is functionally no different from an appendix in modern humans, but because it is something that God might have had a hand in, you can't say that. You know have to allow for the possibility that it may be a good design.

Posted by Rossiss Exy | July 25, 2008 4:11 AM

Re: Atheism and children

I've seen it suggested that the connection here goes the other direction. That having children is an inducement to religious faith and observance, rather than the other way around.

Posted by JonF | July 25, 2008 6:53 AM

Thomas R.,

While I don't really support your main contention you actually undersell your main point here. Vietnam does has a below replacement fertility rate, as does Uruguay. Israel has a relatively high fertility rate but that's due to the high birth rates among Orthodox (especially Sephardic) Jews. The birth rate among Israeli Christians and I would suspect secular or liberal Jews is at or below replacement if I recall correctly.

I don't think there are any largely atheist countries with high birth rates- if anywhere it would be in some of the Central Asian republics which could be considered 'culturally' Muslim even though most people are no longer religiously Muslim.

JonF,

I really do think that women's education is the key variable here not prosperity per se. Quite a few poor countries have low fertility rates. Vietnam is not a rich country for example.

Rossis Exy,

Why does an eventual end to the universe imply incompetence on the part of God? Maybe (as the Judeo-Christian worldview says) He created this universe for a finite time, and the universe is meant to come to an end someday, in order that We can more truly know Him.

Posted by Hector | July 25, 2008 7:38 AM

Rossiss Exy,

"...what you insist on referring to as an omnipotent being."

"After all, if God is all-powerful..."

Rossiss, are you sure you're following my argument closely enough? Even the piece you quote from me (at the top of your last post addressed to me) is in heavy tension with the way you've interpreted me above.

Posted by Jay J | July 25, 2008 8:47 AM

Maybe (as the Judeo-Christian worldview says) He created this universe for a finite time, and the universe is meant to come to an end someday, in order that We can more truly know Him.

I fail to see how "finite time" provides any route toward God, let alone the best route. And, if finite time is the best path toward God, does that not compromise the integrity of enternal life?

Posted by Rossiss Exy | July 25, 2008 12:14 PM

Rossiss?

What say you?

Posted by Jay J | July 29, 2008 5:33 PM

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