Being, Consciousness, Bliss [Review]

Astonishingly, given the somewhat deceptive (or perhaps inept) marketing of the book, this was David Bentley Hart's best book to date, which is saying something monumental. What neither the title, nor the jacket cover, nor even the blurb reviews reveal is that the book is primarily a relentless, blistering attack on the superstitions and credulous fideisms of materialism. Over and against this decrepit and impoverished philosophy of reality, and in response to its inept attempts to demystify the world, Hart turns to the common deposit of theistic metaphysical tradition for the arresting and compelling antidote. 

In the mystery of being, in the mystery of consciousness, and in the manner that they blissfully coinhere as a surfeit of physical reality, the Supernatural, the Absolute, the Good, Beauty -- in a word -- God is immediately present to us in every moment. Yet we dull and numb ourselves to this reality in innumerable ways, but especially through the barbarisms of the 'mechanical philosophy' that we have inherited from 'the Enlightenment'. 

As for the attempts of naturalism to sweep away such an obvious reality, Hart is insistent all such attempts are pitifully incoherent and suffer massive -- almost certainly insuperable -- explanatory deficiencies. While the traditional metaphysical arguments for God -- arguing from contingency to a necessary and absolute ground of being, for example -- are comparatively sublime with scarcely any of the objections lodged against them being worth serious consideration.

According to Hart, most materialistic attempts to deal with the question of being either try to dismiss the central question -- namely "why is there something rather than nothing?" -- as a fallacy of grammar or as ultimately unintelligible (it clearly is not), or to posit that the sum total of contingent, physical reality might somehow (magically and irrationally) add up to the source of its own being, and not itself be contingent. And that's when they're not being really sloppy, confusing cosmology for metaphysics and making simplistic category errors such as mistaking a quantum vaccuum for 'nothing.'

Similarly impotent are the physicalist accounts of consciousness, which Hart sees as an undeniably immaterial datum, and the most primordial one of them all, present to each of us in every moment and upon which all other realities that we perceive are dependent. Hart claims there is an infinite qualitative abyss between the neurochemical events which consciousness is dependent upon and consciousness as experienced, such that no number of purely quantitative mechanical steps could ever give rise to this peculiar and fortuitous subjective interiority, which each of us owes all our knowledge, experience, and awareness to. Hart writes:

Most attempts to provide an answer [to the question of consciousness] without straying beyond the boundaries of materialist orthodoxy are ultimately little more than vague appeals to the power of cumulative complexity: somehow, the argument goes, a sufficient number of neurological systems and subsystems operating in connection with one another will at some point naturally produce unified, self-reflective, and intentional consciousness, or at least (as strange as this may sound) the illusion of such consciousness. This is probably just another version of the pleonastic fallacy, another hopeless attempt to overcome a qualitative difference by way of an indeterminably large number of gradual quantitative steps. Even if it is not, it remains a supposition almost cruelly resistant to scientific investigation or demonstration, simply because consciousness as an actual phenomenon is entirely confined to the experience of a particular mind, a particular subject.

With this being the case, materialist accounts of consciousness reek of magical thinking. Even if we grant that one day neurobiology will exhaustively map every aspect of the brain, science will have not come a step closer to puncturing through the veil and entering into the content and interiority of the purely subjective conscious mind. One can only deny that such an immaterial, or supernatural, reality exists -- if one can at all -- by sacrificing reason itself on the alter of materialism in a self-immolating act. A high price to pay, indeed, if one is to prize 'reason' and 'empiricism' above all else, as so many scientistic materialists putatively do. 

Just as impossible to account for on materialistic terms is the innate human longing for the Good and the concomitant abhorrence of evil, which materialists must deny as being in any sense 'real' in favor of them being illusions in a deterministic universe (though few of them seem willing to fully come to terms with this logical inevitability). If you can't but do what you are bound by the laws of physics to do -- as you are no more than matter in motion -- no materialistic morality can ever amount to anything more than nonsense. As Hart puts it:

A naturalist morality is a manifest absurdity, something rather on the order of a square circle, and it requires almost heroic contortions of logic to make the notion seem credible. Fortunately, the human will to believe is indefatigable.

Attempts to ground morality in evolutionary incentives (once materialism has cleared the hurdle of being and consciousness, which it necessarily can not do) are ultimately tragically resistant to empirical verification, and must always remain just-so fables. This doesn't mean that it's completely false that certain evolutionarily advantageous 'moral' traits are preserved and passed along via natural selection acting on genetic material, but this hardly is an account of the actual nature of human morality as it exists. From a materialist perspective what would be called 'moral' can't be other than that which is evolutionarily advantageous, and our genetic so-called 'self-interest' (wherever it comes from, and whatever it is exactly), is tied to the interest of, for example, our tribe. Hence a degree of selflessness and cooperation (at least within the tribe, though usually not between tribes) is more likely to ensure the passing on of our genetic material. This hardly explains the origin of the moral impulse, however, rather only its transmission within the species. And even then, only to an incomplete degree, when we consider the many ways that the moral impulse far exceeds, and often contradicts, the dictates of evolutionary incentives. The evolutionary explanations of this phenomenon are quite clearly ludicrous attempts to force the data into a conceptual scheme which has no room for it. 

Central to Hart's argument is the claim that most of the contemporary debates surrounding God do not have as their subject the God of traditional theistic metaphysics, but rather some particularly potent cosmic demiurge, or watchmaker god, or an especially large and benevolent gentleman who is perhaps the first of a long series of causes, but not Being as such which gratuitously donates being to beings. Not the God who is utterly transcendent and fully imminent, filling all things, yet beyond all things. Not the fullness of actuality, in whom we live, and move, and have our being. etc. Once such a confusion is eliminated, and the content of the concept of God is understood as it has widely and traditionally understood by the venerable contemplative theistic traditions, most of the contemporary debates melt away into utter irrelevance.

Hart covers a great deal more than I've hinted at here: teleology and intentionality in consciousness as necessary elements of reality, and without which we can't begin to reason; the self-defeating and demonstrably false assertion of scientific empiricism having an exclusive claim to genuine knowledge; qualia as a datum inexplicable by naturalism; the materialist failure to dispel with free will; the manner in which being, consciousness, and bliss interrelate and are not only metaphysical explanations of God, but also phenomenological explanations of the human encounter with God; the absolute poverty of materialistic aesthetic accounts; mystical experience visa vis contemplative prayer and asceticism as the only 'empirical' means for investigating 'the God claim'. Just to name a few. 

Rising above the nature of the current debate on such issues -- both sides of which usually share covertly atheistic presuppositions -- Hart's lucid argumentation, acerbic wit, and stellar prose masterfully combine to produce one of the most stunning, potent, holistic, and engaging arguments for belief in God and against materialism that I've ever read.

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P.S. In one of the blurb reviews advertising the book, Hart was said to have been advocating an 'ecumenical theism'. Happily, that's not exactly accurate. To an Orthodox -- or any religious particularist, really, but especially to Orthodox -- such language can sound like syncrenistic sloppiness, if not heresy. Hart makes clear in the introduction that in attempting to define 'God' as precisely as possible, and in accordance with the overlapping metaphysical wisdom of all the venerable theistic traditions, he isn't advocating a milquetoast relativism or against particularism, and certainly not denying the truth of the full revelation of God in Christ. Rather, he is only attempting to provide clarity to an essentially philosophical debate that is desperately in need of it. He is quick to note that, such philosophical knowledge about God, is not the same as union with God or knowledge of God, in accordance with Orthodox teaching.

Žižek, Tony Jones, and 'Christian Atheism'

A little over a week ago, Tony Jones hosted a piece that was meant to service as an introduction to Slavoj Žižek, particularly his 'Christian' or 'theological' thought. I took issue with the piece, primarily with the notion that it's acceptable for Christians to get their theology from atheists, or for atheists to do Christian theology in any legitimate sense. Such an idea is, of course, absurd. And this seemed to me like a fairly elementary and obvious point to make, eminently supported by scripture and orthodox Christian tradition. But I also know that one of the dogmas of this particular brand of progressive, postmodern, heretical Christianity is a kind of infinite openness to ideas and 'dialogue', regardless of the provenance of said ideas (blatantly ignoring scriptural warnings against such absolute openness i.e. Romans 12:2, 2 Cor. 6:14-18, Gal 5:1, 1 Tim. 4, 2 Tim. 2:16-17, 2 Tim 4:3-4, etc.). Wanting to disabuse anyone who might listen of such a dangerous openness in theology -- especially with regard to atheists, worldly speculators and conjecturalists -- I happily obliged when Tony offered to host a response by me.

To Tony's immense credit, and contrary to the actions of one of his brother's in arms, he published my response which he disagreed with, and in which I even take a pot-shot at him. This demonstrates a true openness to dialogue and opinions from all quarters, even the traditionalist-conservative quarter, and so consistency with his principles (although it also reveals a bit of a masochistic streak).

There was a fairly large dust-up in response to my piece (on Twitter, primarily), as many of Tony's readers -- quite understandably, given their vantage point -- took issue with the piece and with Tony's decision to run it. Tony replied here in defense of running the piece, and I agree with his defense.

However, while defending his running of the piece he also briefly noted why he disagrees with it. He writes:

The bottom line is that Nathan thinks that, while interesting, Christians should never look to Žižek for theological insight. In fact, he thinks that Christians should never take any theological insight from an atheist.

Well, I think that’s hogwash. (Nathan defends this as a teaching of the Orthodox Church, but I have not been able to substantiate that.) Theological insight comes from all sorts of places, atheists included. Indeed, if we’re reliant solely upon the church for theological truth, then two things are true: 1) God is bound exclusively to one human institution (a laughable idea), and 2) we’re pretty much screwed (because the church is so clearly fallible).

Before defending the idea that Christians ought not turn to atheists for theological insight, (it feels a bit odd typing that) let me first clarify a few things that I'm not saying. I'm not saying that God doesn't reveal himself in a general way through creation. I'm also not saying that God doesn't act in the lives of unbelievers at all. I'm also not saying that non-Christian philosophy is completely useless. None of this, however, means that atheists are capable of anything (truly) good apart from regeneration in the waters of baptism and a subsequent life in Christ, much less are they able to add or somehow contribute to the full revelation of God in Christ through their blasphemous speculations which deny Christ.

To the extent that worldly philosophy has value, it's that, in its venerable formulations, one can see what St. Justin Martyr -- writing in the 2nd century as a convert from Greek paganism -- referred to as the spermatikos logos. This is the seed of divinity in each human person which can be dimly apprehended through Greek philosophy, for example, which in turn acts as a preparation for the full revelation of God in Christ and his Church.

But this is only the case where Greek philosophy dimly apprehended the truth of divinity, not where it raged directly against it in utter folly (Psalm 14:1), or where it continued to do so even when confronted with Christ and his Church. And this is the crucial distinction. In the latter case, the Church (and the Bible) unequivocally rejects the notion that there can be any parity or fellowship between the Church which confesses Christ come in the flesh and risen from the dead, and those who deny it. Hear 1 John 4:3 :

And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist.

Žižek confesseth not. Game over.

Of course, one could multiply at will references to the New Testament's stark and undeniable dichotomy between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of the 'god' of this world (2 Cor. 4:4) i.e. Satan. See: James 4:4, John 16:33, 1 John 2:17, Rev. 3:15-17, etc. And if 'the world' (in this sense) does not include the spirit of antichrist which denies Christ is God in the flesh, then there is no such thing as 'the world' in this sense, and the Bible is speaking nonsense. This seems a high price to pay in order to defend an illicit and wicked desire to marry truth with error, darkness with light. Speaking of which, we could also turn to the most clear and unequivocal scriptural rebuke of Jones and co.'s modus operandi in 2 Cor. 6:14-18.

As for whether my position is that of the Orthodox Church, I would want to tread carefully in claiming to speak for the Church. Though I would say that, in the Church's vindication of the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas in the 14th century over the heresy of Barlaam, the purity of heart obtained through the healing graces of the Church was defended as essential for genuine theology. The impotence of philosophy to lead to true illumination was also confirmed by the Church, in the course of this controversy. Which would all be relevant here, both as a rebuke of Žižek and his 'Christian' defenders.

One could go on to note that the actual content of Žižek's 'theological' speculations (if he truly held to them), and not just the method used to arrive at them, are formally rejected heresies. One of the earliest and most significant heresies in Church history, propagated in the 4th century by the bishop Arius, was that Christ was divine, yes, but a created and subsidiary divinity, and not consubstantial with the Father. At Nicaea, his view was anathematized by the Church as incompatible with the apostolic deposit of faith, at which point it became impossible for Arian speculation to count as true Christian theology. If Arius confessed Christ's divinity (albeit as a created demigod), and was and is anathema, as are any who follow him, how much more of those who deny that God even exists?

Granted, with this last move I've made an argument that appeals to a particular biblical, apostolic, orthodox ecclesiology. And therefore I might be talking past those who hold to the anti-ecclesiology of protestantism, especially in its progressive-postmodern-evangelical variant. C'est la vie. One can only hope they turn from this error as swiftly as they ought to turn and flee from the error of mixing God's truth with a lie.

The Elusive Outsider Vantage

How can we know which religion (if any) is true? Are there any objective tests we can devise to help answer the question? Do we need anything other than the standard tools and methods of inquiry that we use to assess any other sort of truth claim? John Loftus thinks such a test is possible and necessary, and he proposes that the Outsider Test for Faith (OTF) is the best test available.

His central argument in the book goes something like this:

(1) the fact of vast global religious diversity.

(2) the fact of cultural, historical, and geographical dependence of religious belief.

(3) the mutually exclusive nature of many, or most, faiths.

Therefore

(4) there's a low probability that whatever your largely culturally determined faith happens to be is the correct one and

(5) a disposition of informed skepticism toward one's faith – the same sort of skepticism members of faiths typically have toward other faiths – should be adopted in order to best determine which, if any, faith is the true faith.

The actual test itself is not terribly controversial, it seems to me. Most believers who were raised in a particular religious tradition, as they grow older and are exposed to a wide world of conflicting opinions and claims, begin to question what they were taught, and go on to apply skeptical scrutiny to those beliefs and teachings to the best of their ability. Most are forced to face, to some degree, these facts and apply this test at some point, whether they realize they're doing so or not. And for those who don't, they should.

However, even this brand of natural skepticism is not enough for Loftus as he demands the skepticism be of a narrowly circumscribed, scientific bent. He does so, he claims, because science has proven a tool of unparalleled success and fecundity at establishing truths about the physical operations of the universe. But why ought we assume science is the appropriate tool for assessing a question that fundamentally is not a scientific one, namely which religion is the true religion? The tools of science can conceivably aid us in assessing specific claims of supernatural activity in the present-day, and so can, in some manner, contribute to the discussion. But it's a tool that's hardly all-sufficient for the task.

Further, he introduces a false dichotomy when he appeals to the problem of mutual-exclusivity. Namely: either you are a sectarian exclusivist (for whom the problem applies in full), or a syncrenistic liberal who alleviates the difficulty but only by defining God down to some milquetoast non-entity. But he neglects the fact that religions have ways to solve this problem without succumbing to this dichotomy. As an Orthodox Christian, for example, I believe my faith exclusively represents the fullness of the apostolic faith as bequeathed to us by Jesus Christ, but also believe that all other genuine religions possess various degrees of that truth. Roman Catholics possess a greater degree of it than Buddhists, and Buddhists more than atheists, but there is a continuum of truth. This schema – and I'm sure other religions address the problem in a similar way – obviates the problem of mutual-exclusivity and so reduces the need to adopt a stance of severe skepticism. He would no doubt object that these alternative schemes do nothing, in and of themselves, to help answer the question of which is the true faith given his preferred set of data. To which the answer, of course, is: so what? 

Another question that arises is why the facts of religious diversity, dependence, and mutual-exclusivity should be the starting point for inquiry as to which religion is true? If we accept that they ought to be, then Loftus' recommendation to adopt a mode of severe skepticism mostly (with some qualifications) follows. But in order for this to be one's starting point of inquiry, one must attempt to strip away everything else that he knows to be true in the arena of religion. If, for example, you have solid evidence that that none of the antique polytheistic gods or god-schemes are true, and you further have strong metaphysical arguments both for the existence of God and that God must be One (to take just a couple of things you could conceivably know), then you can rationally narrow the range of contenders for the one true religion considerably. This is an alternative beginning point of inquiry, in which case the probability that one of that remaining small pool of potential gods is the true God is substantially larger than it would otherwise be, and severe skepticism would not be warranted. Loftus demands we bracket out this sort of knowledge and begin with only the facts of religious diversity, dependence, and mutual-exclusivity, but why? Loftus insists that we attempt a Descartes-esque feat of discarding all our beliefs and knowledge in favor of a couple of his pet data points. But why? He doesn't make a case for this preference – for these particular facts over and against the vast array of other facts available to us – other than that they happen to better serve his agenda.

The answer to the question of "why the OTF?" he gives later in the book, and it's that "what we've been doing isn't working." By which he means people aren't becoming atheists, or aren't consolidating their view of God, or aren't all converting to the one true religion (whatever it may be) at a fast enough pace for his taste. Which, of course,  begs the question. Why would we expect to see any of these things happen if a particular faith was true? Why does their failing to happen constitute "not working"? According to what standard?

And even if we wanted to begin with Loftus' preferred set of data, is it even possible for an insider to apply the test? Late in the book Loftus reveals his hand: "Faith is not something Christians can have while seeking to examine the religion that was given to them, since that is not how they approach any of the other religions they reject." In other words, you must first become an atheist (since a Christian without faith is an oxymoron) before you can truly examine the truth of your own or other religions. You must actually become an outsider first, not merely do your best to examine the evidence as if you were one. But this is clearly absurd, for whatever epistemological ground one currently occupies, one is an insider to it. There's no escaping except to some other insider position.

Loftus has an unfortunate penchant for repetition and one of his most oft-repeated assertions is that "Possibility doesn't matter, probabilities do." After the 30th time (literally) he had declared this, or some close variation, I gave up counting. In any case, his point is that absolute certainty does not exist, and the scientific mindset only deals with probabilities. Things that are highly likely to be true and things that are highly likely to be untrue are where the most certain knowledge we can attain (about the physical world) is. Again, not terribly controversial, so I'm not sure why the incessant repetition. The cynic in me suspects some sort of insecurity, but I digress.

Loftus' blind spot, with regard to his probability point, is that, while low probability that a particular faith is true logically follows from his premises – given his arbitrarily selected set of data – this low probability applies to all opinions about the religious question, including the stance that all religions are likely to be false -- his stance. Given the diversity of opinions about religion, their cultural dependence, and mutual exclusivity (and only those facts) the likelihood that any opinion on the matter is correct is very low, including his own. He might then appeal to other facts and knowledge in order to justify his not adopting a stance of extreme skepticism toward his own view, but religious people can do the same thing. So he hasn't advanced the ball a step.

In the book he quotes Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga making a similar point: 

[T]here is no safe haven here, no way to avoid risk. In particular, you won’t reach safe haven by trying to take the same attitude towards all the historically available patterns of belief and withholding: for in so doing you adopt a particular pattern of belief and withholding, one incompatible with some adopted by others. You pays your money and you takes your choice, realizing that you, like anyone else, can be desperately wrong. But what else can you do? You don’t really have an alternative.

Precisely. It's this critique and some closely related objections that Loftus spends most of the second half of the book attempting to ameliorate the effects of, but without any success. In response to Plantinga, without so much as a hint of self-awareness, he avers that "Plantinga fails to understand the huge difference between assenting to a belief and doubting it or denying it. There is no epistemic parity at all between accepting a belief and doubting (or rejecting) it. Doubting (or rejecting) a belief is easy. We all do it all the time. The hard part is to set forth a positive case on behalf of any one particular truth out of the choices available." But Plantinga is obviously making the point that rejecting one belief – especially the particular species of belief that belief in God is – logically entails holding another belief (if not a whole array of other beliefs). In this case, rejecting belief in any religion entails the belief that all religions are very likely false. There exists no neutral epistemological vantage to occupy.

Numerous times throughout the book Loftus accuses believers (usually falsely) of special pleading on behalf of their religion. But in response to these sorts of critiques he special pleads on behalf of atheism or skepticism constantly. When speaking about the cultural dependence of religious belief he cites statistical global maps of religion that show high concentrations of religions by geographic area (as if this could alarm or surprise any informed believer). When responding to the objection that atheism is similarly geographically situated – heavily in places like Sweden and Denmark for example – Loftus gets to the special pleading. He does so by citing wide agreement between scientists on scientific matters, regardless of where they're from. But this would be akin to a Roman Catholic citing broad agreement on many central matters of faith, regardless of where the Catholic lives. It doesn't actually address the critique but moves the goal posts, and equivocates between atheism and science. The mechanical philosophy of the Enlightenment is not a neutral, necessary outcome of science and reason, rather it's just as much a culturally and historically contingent source of belief as being born into a Christian home in the 21st century. And, if you live in much of modern Europe, it's at least as big a culturally determining factor of your beliefs about religion as Christianity is.

Loftus responds to one of his interlocutors on a similar point by declaring that "If he thinks for one moment that, as an outsider, I must take an outsider stance to an informed skepticism based in science and reason, then he needs to show why the science I base my argument on is faulty." Must Loftus first exhaustively demonstrate why each believer's particular faith, or epistemology, is faulty before suggesting they submit to the OTF? Not according to him. He claims the facts of diversity, dependence, and mutual-exclusivity makes this incumbent on any rational believer, irrespective of whatever defenses they may have for their particular faith. Yet these same facts do not make the same thing incumbent on him: one must first knock down his position, then demand he take a stance of skepticism towards it, while the believer must avail himself of no defense before adopting the same stance. Again, he’s special pleading.

Another critical problem with this text is the explicit faith-reason false dichotomy that runs throughout, and comes to a head in the final section. He conceives of faith and reason as diametrically opposed and competing epistemologies. This is fine when preaching to the choir of atheists who share this understanding of ‘faith’, and while remaining incurious about what faith actually is in its essence. But since the stated purpose of the book is to propose a test for believers to apply to their religion and determine whether it's likely true, it would be of more significance if he examined what ‘faith’ has been considered to be throughout history, and across cultures, or at least what current believers – his main audience – understand it to be, and what its relationship to reason is. If he did so, he would see that he's attacking a straw man.

He would further have to acknowledge that, on this proper understanding of faith, it isn't optional. Every act of reason always-already entails an act of faith. When some of his interlocutors (mostly Christians who tenaciously comment on his blog, apparently) point out that there are many things we do not know by way of scientific or rational inquiry, such as that there is a material world, that we aren't currently in a virtual reality, that our senses are reliable etc. rather we must accept these things on faith, he replies:

Christians retort that I have faith in reason, in skepticism, in science, in my senses, and in the evidence, but what can they possibly mean? Could trusting them be conceivably wrong at times? Yes, of course. We even know this. But there simply is no alternative but to trust them.

Well, yes. Quite. That's precisely the point. Faith isn't optional.

He further objects to these sorts of objections by, once again, reiterating that we must go on probability, and the probability is extremely unlikely that, for example, the material world doesn't exist. But what tests can be devised to assess the probability that we do not currently reside in a virtual reality? Or that you didn't pop into existence 5 minutes ago with all of your memories intact? By the very nature of these sorts of problems, the probabilities can't even be assessed at all and so appealing to probability is a nonsensical move. He's right, of course, that we can do nothing but proceed as if our senses can be trusted and as if the material world exists. But to claim that this doesn't constitute a faith commitment requires justification, and he gives none.

Loftus attempts to make hay out of the fact that believers will use science and reason when objecting to the truth claims of other religions, but not their own. Yet he doesn’t demonstrate that science and reason contradict the claims of the Christian faith (his admitted chief target), so we’re left to take his word for it that they do. If these inputs don’t unequivocally disprove the Christian faith or make it very unlikely to be true (and they don’t), then there’s no reason to suspect that believers aren’t critically availing themselves of the tools of science and reason in examining the question of religion. Begging the question, Loftus assumes an answer to the very matter of contention without any justification.

It all gets a bit tedious after a while – the hectoring tone, the argument-by-assertion, the repetition, the special pleading and question-begging, the myopia. And quickly. Despite the book's massive flaws, the central contention – that it's a profitable endeavor to subject our culturally inherited beliefs and biases to critical scrutiny, availing ourselves of the tools of science and reason – is certainly true, and not particularly controversial. The OTF itself can be salvaged from the wreckage of the book if you broaden it to include all manner of beliefs, rather than only explicitly religious ones, and extricate the author's unsubstantiated foregone conclusions which permeate the text. But really, what's the point? In a culture as modern, pluralistic, and secular as our own, this amounts to preaching to the choir. Even if the sermon did happen to echo beyond the pulpit, reaching the apostate faithful out on the street corners and miraculously leading to some of their conversions, they still won't have become outsiders. They'll have done the only thing that's possible: traded one insider vantage for another.

Evidentialist Atheism

If you traffic in atheistic circles, online or elsewhere, you'll notice that the primary objection lodged against belief in God is the evidential objection i.e. "I believe things based on [usually 'scientific'] evidence (and others ought to as well); in the absence of evidence for some proposition, I withhold (and others ought to withhold) belief in it; there is no evidence for God's existence that I've ever seen; hence I can't justify believing in God (and neither can anyone else)." Not only is this the primary objection, it's virtually becoming the sole objection. There are many weaknesses to this argument, but I just want to examine one of them in this post. Namely this: for someone who adopts this stance, what would count as evidence of the supernatural or of God? And if it turns out there is not any sort of event, fact, datum, or combination of facts that would count as evidence of the supernatural or of God, then how is this stance distinguishable from a priori atheism, rather than a result of a survey of the pertinent evidence? And if it is indistinguishable from a priori atheism, why countenance the objection seriously at all?

If an atheist can give criteria for what would count as evidence for God or the supernatural, and a good reason for adopting whatever particular criterion they choose, then they can be rationally justified in their unbelief if they have never been confronted with the sort of evidence they require. The vast majority of atheists I've encountered  adopt the 'scientific' criterion for belief. That is: they will believe in those things which are deliverances of scientific method and nothing else. Now, this doesn't mean that some atheist somewhere couldn't adopt some other criterion, in which case I would have to address whatever criterion that would be, but in this post I will be content to address the criterion that the vast majority of unbelievers appeal to.

If 'science' is that certain sort of investigation of natural phenomena via a particular systematic method of observation and experiment, then immediately one must ask why this criterion for knowledge should be adopted to answer a question necessarily outside its purview i.e. the question of the existence of the supernatural. Could the supernatural theoretically exist and never be isolated and observed in material phenomena, with conditions necessary for repeatable, controlled lab experiments? Not only could this be the case, but if anything supernatural did exist, then this would necessarily be the case: science as traditionally understood and practiced, could not be performed on said phenomena. So we are left with no sensible, justifiable reason to think that the scientific criterion for knowledge is capable of addressing the question of whether anything supernatural exists. Anyone who demands 'scientific evidence of the unscientific (or a-scientific)' makes a nonsensical demand.

This problem seems to bear itself out practically in my experience with atheists. Ask them what would theoretically constitute scientific evidence for God and most of them will struggle to think of something that would count. Recently, I tried to help them out and posed the following hypothetical: suppose the famous double-slit experiment revealed that, on the sheet behind the slits, the particles arrayed in a pattern that spelled out 'YAHWEH WAS HERE' or 'JESUS CHRIST IS THE ETERNAL LOGOS', rather than dispersing in the way that they actually do. Would this count as extremely strong scientific evidence for belief in God? The immediate reaction was that they would suspect a hoax, so I clarified that the results were repeated and confirmed in numerous independent peer-reviewed experiments and accepted by the scientific community at large as legitimate. "Very powerful aliens could be controlling that reality", "Could be a mass delusion", "Could still be a hoax" etc. came the responses. In other words, even paradigm-shifting evidence of God's existence, literally written into the fabric of existence, would not count as evidence for God or the supernatural. At which point we can properly accuse atheists of this sort of holding to an a priori atheism that isn't the result of insufficient scientific evidence, but which is entirely impervious to scientific evidence of even the most radical sort.

In the case of atheists who hold to the scientific criterion of knowledge as solely legitimate, but who would accept this theoretical sort of evidence as persuasive (and so avoid being properly accused of evidence-independent atheism), there is another problem. Namely, that those atheists don't apply the scientific criterion of knowledge to many things that they hold to be true. An atheist who ate toast for breakfast, for example, will believe that he ate toast for breakfast if you ask him about it that evening, and he will believe it to be so on no other basis than his own memory. No repeatable experiment results, no test of any sort, no peer-review, just his memory. And, of course, it's rational for him to do so as it's a properly basic sort of belief. Same goes for that which we currently apprehend with our senses. There's no scientific way of demonstrating that these constant sources of beliefs are reliable, but the atheist (rationally) cleaves to them nonetheless, and so breaks his own standard for what counts as knowledge.

An atheist who holds to the scientific criterion of knowledge as merely the best, but not exclusive, criterion of knowledge, and who acknowledges some sensible minimum standard for what would count as evidence for God mostly escapes this particular critique but -- lucky for me -- mostly doesn't exist. I'll rationally withhold belief in such a creature until presented with evidence of his existence.

'The Master' and Catholicism

I've been a big fan of Paul Thomas Anderson since Magnolia came out in 1999, and with the epic, brilliant There Will Be Blood he cemented his spot as one of the best living American filmmakers. Along with The Tree of Life, There Will Be Blood is my favorite film to come out in the last decade or so. With that in mind it should come as no surprise that I've been eagerly anticipating Anderson's latest opus The Master -- loosely inspired by the life of L. Ron Hubbard and starring Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman -- which arrives this Friday in limited release. I've already purchased my tickets for a Friday showing in Arclight Hollywood's Cinerama Dome, where the film will be presented in the 70mm format.

I've been reading some reviews and generally following the hype surrounding the film for the last few weeks. Today an interview with Anderson appeared in the Huffington Post and one bit stood out to me:

I know you were raised Catholic. Do you see similarities between Scientology and Catholicism as you're researching the film?

Not really.

There were times watching the film when I thought, Boy, Dodd is just making up any old thing, but then you're in church and they're saying stuff that got made up 2,000 years ago.

Yeah, sure, I think a lot of people can make that argument. I don't know. I don't really think about it.

There are a couple things to notice here. First is the fact that the interviewer is asking such buffoonish questions at all. What is he thinking? This is juvenile atheistic drivel of the first order. What similarities between Scientology and Catholicism, exactly? Beyond the level of the extremely superficial, there are none whatsoever. Because there are such things as quasi-religious hucksters and charlatans, therefore Christianity was the product of religious charlatans making things up? It does not follow, sir. And, as a matter of fact, such a thesis is virtually impossible to defend given the historical record and logic. Oops.

The great thing about the exchange is Anderson's curt rejection of the initial suggestion and the subsequent polite dismissal of the follow-up. This juxtaposed with all his other responses to questions, where he generously elaborated if he had even the slightest idea what the interviewer was getting at. There's something wonderful about a petty atheist extrapolating a sweeping rejection of all religion from a narrow-minded reading of a film, only to have the auteur respond with the equivalent of a blank stare.

Sorry that none of this was actually about The Master or Anderson as a director. If you're interested in that kind of thing, I'll probably be blogging about it this weekend. Stay tuned.

Richard Dawkins: Biblical Scholar

In a recent interview with Playboy, the world's most famous atheist, Richard Dawkins, answered a few questions. Couched among the dross of the merely banal or lame was this gem of absurdity:

DAWKINS: The evidence [Jesus] existed is surprisingly shaky. The earliest books in the New Testament to be written were the Epistles, not the Gospels. It’s almost as though Saint Paul and others who wrote the Epistles weren’t that interested in whether Jesus was real. Even if he’s fictional, whoever wrote his lines was ahead of his time in terms of moral philosophy.

PLAYBOY: You’ve read the Bible.

DAWKINS: I haven’t read it all, but my knowledge of the Bible is a lot better than most fundamentalist Christians.

Let's pass over the breathtaking hubris of declaring one's self sufficiently knowledgeable of a book that one hasn't even read in its entirety in withering silence. Well, not in silence.

On one level, it's flatly absurd to suggest that Paul "wasn't interested" in whether Jesus existed -- as somehow evidenced by the Epistles being written before the Gospels -- since Paul's entire ministry is founded on the reality of Christ's life, death, and resurrection, as anyone who has read Paul attentively knows. Everything Paul teaches hinges on this. Over at Uncommon Descent they have an effective little riposte to Dawkins on this count.

On another level, Dawkins is intuiting something true, but not what he thinks. Namely that Paul isn't greatly concerned about proving Jesus' existence because it wasn't in question. Neither in his own mind nor in that of the churches he was writing to. Paul didn't know he was writing something that would come to be called "the New Testament", which would be a document modern inquirers, millenia in the future, would use to examine the "truth" of Jesus' existence -- a truth he took for granted, as did all of his hearers. He was preaching and expounding on who Jesus was, the true nature of the Faith, calling out the errors of misguided followers of Jesus, spreading the Gospel, pastoring Christ's flock etc. Contrary to what Dawkins seems to think, it's not at all surprising that this would be the first order of apostolic business, rather than documenting the narrative of Christ's life which was everywhere around in oral form or in first-hand experiences.

These are exactly the conditions we would expect to be present if there was no question about Jesus' existence because it was taken as a given. How would it come to be taken as a given so widely, so assuredly, and so quickly unless -- at the very least -- Jesus existed?  Of course, even to this day in virtually all serious first-century historical and Biblical scholarship -- even that of a strongly secular bent -- Jesus' existence still isn't questioned -- as it wasn't in the first century -- precisely because such a theory doesn't comport with reason and the evidence at all. You know, reason and evidence, those things that Dawkins follows unwaveringly, wherever they may lead.

Argument by Fiat -- Yet More on Faith and Peter Boghossian

In his aggressive public campaign against "faith", Peter Boghossian is back with another lecture on the topic titled Faith: Pretending to Know Things You Don't Know. For most people, I suggest reading the title of the lecture and allowing your feelings about it to determine whether it could be valuable for you to engage. If that is what you believe faith to be, then you may want to watch the lecture and explore some of the out-workings of this belief, while having your ego gently stroked. If you don't believe that is what faith is -- along with the vast majority of people who have ever used the term -- then there's no sense in watching the lecture because Peter offers no argument for this controversial conclusion, rather he assumes it to be true and declares it to be so by fiat.

Unless, like me, you have a somewhat masochistic streak or other reasons for which you wish to engage communities of un-faith, rest assured that the title tells the whole story and go along with your day. At the risk of losing some readers here, you probably need not even read this post any further, but if you want a more in depth explication of the reasons the presentation is entirely impotent, or if you have an inclination to defend it, then proceed.

I've already hinted at the problem with Peter's thesis, but let me expound more fully: A) That isn't what faith is. B) Peter never demonstrates that people of faith actually don't know what they "pretend to know"; it's a bald assertion. C) To the extent that it is most likely true of some or even many faith claims (due to, for example, the mutual exclusivity of the claims), this does not mean it is necessarily true of faith itself or for specific faiths. This, as in his previous lecture on the topic, commits the fallacy of division. 

In addition to his central definitional thesis, Boghossian also wants to attempt to divorce faith from its assumed alliance to morality. He thinks being a 'person of faith' tends to automatically bring up the association in many people's minds of strong moral character, while Peter thinks being a 'person of faith' is essentially neutral, in terms of morality. This seems to me mostly uncontroversial; most honest people of faith don't claim to be inherently morally superior simply because they have "faith". Christians, for instance, readily admit that sin infects the entire human race, including all Christians, and that they do nothing to merit their salvation from the consequences, reality, and dominion of sin but recieve salvation as an unmerited gift. But if Peter wants to divorce non-specific 'faith' (that is, faith-as-process, rather than faith-in-X) from the cultural linkage to morality, no thinking person of faith would be troubled by the agenda (since we have faith-in-X, not faith-in-faith-as-process).

Peter goes on in his lecture to address 5 common assertions people of faith make, such as "My faith is true for me", and substitutes his definition for "faith", for the word "faith", to yield "My pretending to know what I don't know is true for me". He seems to think this a potent move, but why? "My faith is true for me" is already silly in itself. Substituting the words of your silly definition compounds the silliness, to be sure, but it tells us nothing about the nature of faith. It only tells us that A) people of faith sometimes say dumb things and B) that you are baking your conclusion into your premises, producing a circular argument (if any).

Peter goes on to address people who, when attempting to defend the use of "faith", use the term when they really mean "hope". The difficulty here is what seems to be a prescriptivist naivety that believes words to be ontological entities with hard, fast, immobile meanings and vivid, necessary demarcations. But there's no hard distinction between "faith" and "hope"; faith isn't synonymous with hope, but hope is (usually) an element of what constitutes faith, at least for the Christian (and I assume many faiths). Faith makes knowledge claims, but that's not all it does. And you can't change this fact by fiat; if you think faith and hope should have some hard, impenetrable boundary between them, you must make the argument, and he doesn't attempt to. With that said, I'm sure people he engages with sometimes improperly invoke "faith" when they should invoke "hope", or vice versa, but so what? This also tells us nothing about the nature of faith. 

But perhaps, since he is presenting to a crowd of presumably like-minded individuals (the gathering is hosted by some sort of 'humanist' group), he wouldn't object to my characterization of him offering no arguments here. After all, in no uncertain terms, he makes it clear that the primary objective for the talk is, essentially, wholly propagandistic. That is, operating on the presumption that faith is necessarily void of content or value, what are productive rhetorical ways to create cultural and linguistic shifts that would serve to best spread this idea. If this is the case, there's nothing inherently wrong with holding meetings for PR purposes, but the lack of any underlying foundation for the ideas you're looking to propagate remains a glaring problem. 

Since these presentations couldn't possibly do anything to persuade a genuine, intelligent person of faith to abandon their faith, you might wonder why I bother responding to them. It's a good question and, frankly, there probably are much better uses of my time. But there are also those people who are not yet believers, as well as people (whether Christian already or not) who may not be diligent enough in their thinking to parse this stuff out, who may come in contact with the arguments and find the superficial rhetorical force of them to be persuasive. Of course, I'm under no delusion that my blog has enough readership to act as any hugely significant counterweight to this effect, but there still is some value in making sure such things don't go unresponded to.  

Peter recently accused me of never having anything nice to say about him, and he was completely right in his charge (I since attempted to rectify it by offering him a sincere compliment). To offer some further redress:  one good recommendation Peter had in his lecture is that we attempt to separate beliefs we find noxious from the people who hold them, and to, accordingly, respect people even as we attack their ideas. And that we ought to treat them how we want them to treat us. I do try to separate ideas from people, (or sin from sinner) and I harbor no personal ill will against Peter, I only take issue with his ideas. Per his recommendation, but more importantly per my Maker's command. 

On "Meta-Atheism" and Georges Rey

Our old friend Peter Boghossian recently posted a link to this short article from 2000, bearing the title Meta-Atheism, by Georges Rey who is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maryland. Why this old article is circulating I'm not sure, especially since it doesn't go much beyond Freud's standard account of religious belief as wishful thinking, only adding some particulars to the observation, but there it is.

The "meta-atheism" the title refers to is Rey's claim that "despite appearances, not many people -- particularly, not many adults who've been exposed to standard Western science -- seriously believe in God; most of those who sincerely claim to do so are self-deceived." This is a formulation of the de jure objection to religious belief which Alvin Plantinga deals with thoroughly in his Warranted Christian Belief (in which Plantinga rigorously demonstrates why none of the de jure objections, in their various formulations, actually work as objections).

Be that as it may, it certainly isn't controversial to suggest that if God is not real, or there is no supernatural reality, that therefore religious belief is a product of wishful thinking or self-deception. That's obviously true, operating on that conditional. Indeed, even if God does exist and one religion is True, it still may be true that other instances of religious belief in other gods are products of these mental processes (though Christians would claim that they are products of a natural desire for God, implanted by the creator, though this doesn't mean that desire can't be commingling with other, fallen mental processes). So that hypothesis (even though I don't accept it, at least as regards Christian faith) is at least understandable.

What doesn't make any sense at all is Rey's particular enumerated list of 'extensions' of wishful thinking in religious belief and practice. These seem to be specific examples of how self-deception and wishful thinking manifest themselves in things believers do and say. Rey thinks certain things believers do and say betray that they don't really believe what they claim they believe. Let's see if he has a point, and address them:

1) Detail Resistance
2) Comparability to Fiction

Though listed separately, this is actually a single objection, with #2 functioning as an addendum to #1. The problem here is that he mistakes a well established doctrine of creation ex nihilo for intellectual incuriosity to detail, when really it's acute attention to the conceptual details of that doctrine which reveals there simply can be no mechanistic 'details' of the kind he's asking for, nor is there any reason to expect they should exist. On the contrary, expecting them (as he does) shows a lack of understanding of the doctrine. The lay religious person may not articulate this to him in his interactions with them, but it's what they're intuiting when they recognize his questions as 'silly'. The one example he gives of 'detail resistance' is justified 'detail resistance'. Ignoring the specific example, and attempting to make sense of the objection itself, it still fails; given the Christian doctrine of Incarnation -- that God became flesh in a very particular, fleshly Jew, in whom all truth and hope resides -- 'detail', or the finite, or the-particular-as-such is entirely redeemed, as David Bentley Hart explains in The Beauty of The Infinite. The details of the form of Christ are everything, and we have no desire to shy from them.

However, it is sometimes, with regards to certain questions, entirely appropriate to point out that the "how" of some process is at best of secondary importance, or possibly of no functional significance at all.

3) Absence of Evidence IS Evidence of Absence

Here he attempts to flip a common theistic refrain on its head, though he fails to do so. Absence of evidence can be evidence of absence, if the evidence that's missing is evidence we would otherwise expect to find were the claim true. Which is the case (to some extent) in the murder example he gives, but not the case as regards Christian belief, and so the supposed objection is really no objection at all. If Christian belief is true there is no reason to expect we should have more evidence that it's true than what we do in fact have.

4) Appeals to "Mystery"

Some believers appeal to 'mystery' or 'paradox' at times when they ought not to. When, for instance, an answer to something isn't actually a mystery, it's just something they don't know or understand. Believers ought to have more humility and acknowledge that just because they don't understand, or aren't aware of, something, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a mystery. However, certain appeals to mystery (as it happens, the ones that are most commonly made) are absolutely justified, given that an infinite God can't be fully apprehended by finite creatures. We can -- through His Grace, the Incarnation, scripture, tradition and the intervention of the Holy Spirit -- come to know truths that He reveals to us about Him, but as finite beings we by definition will not be able to have a full knowledge of Him. This "appeal to mystery" is entirely appropriate given the infinite-finite distinction.

5) Merely Symbolic Status of the Stories

This objection is not very well articulated. First he objects to the internal coherence of the Christian doctrine of atonement (an objection which is predicated on a misunderstanding, which I will explain anon), and then says something about how if the Christian story is merely symbolism then the problems aren't relevant. Well yes, but so what? Is he saying that many believers do claim that such stories are symbolic? If so, how are they self-deceiving, according to him? I honestly can't make out what his point is here.

As for his objection to the doctrine of the atonement: One must first understand death as a consequence of sin -- rather than just something that happens for no ultimate reason, but just because of entropy or whatever -- and then one can begin to understand how the unjustified death of a sinless man can be an atoning death. I won't attempt to exegete the entire doctrine here, but he is missing the very fundamental first principles of it and then declaring it incoherent. Of course, if God doesn't exist, and death isn't a consequence of sin etc. then the atonement of Jesus doesn't make sense either, but what he's really objecting to here is the internal logic of the scheme of atonement, when that logic is absolutely pristine and he simply doesn't understand it.

6) Betrayals By Reactions and Behavior

The example he gives here may be somehow inconsistent for certain faiths, but not for Christian faith. And I suspect his confusion is a result of a confusion that is common among Christians too, which he just accepts but which is false; namely, that our eternal destiny is a disembodied heaven which we arrive at upon at the instance of our death, when actually our hope is in bodily resurrection and in New creation, a New Heavens and a New Earth. None of which has yet to come, and so mourning at death (which is a consequence of sin, and antithetical to God's plans for creation) is completely consistent and appropriate. Again, his confusion is somewhat understandable since even a wide swath of Christians share it, but it's his (and their) confusion that leads to seeing mourning as contradictory when it's perfectly consonant with orthodox Christian belief. "Blessed are the mourners, for they shall be [future tense] comforted". Jesus, significantly, didn't say "cursed are the mourners for there is nothing to mourn." Because there is something to mourn; death is inimical to God, God's enemy, and Christ defeats his enemy at the cross. Because of Christ's work death has no ultimate power over us, and therefore we don't sorrow like those without hope, but we do mourn a loss to the waste and destruction of death. For now.

7) Belief is Not a Matter of Choice

Again, his point here isn't all that clear. It seems to consist in nothing more than ponderous musings on the nature of 'faith' and how faith differs from simple 'belief'. Well, yes, quite. And? He does make the unsupported assertion that "I suspect you can have 'faith' only about what isn't really a serious contender for truth." Oh you suspect that, eh? Cool story, bro. I suspect differently. Glad that's all cleared up.

Somewhat more seriously, faith is mostly invoked with regard to propositions that are not matters of efficient, material causality, and so when he talks about "a serious contender for truth", he's pitting religious belief against scientific empiricism as a means for finding out truths about material causality -- something people of faith don't use faith for, at least not in the vast majority of cases, so the objection is just absurd and amounts to no more than "faith doesn't do what it isn't intended to do".

8) Projection

Here he merely asserts that humans have the capability to project meaning into things where it might not be there. Of course, he doesn't make an argument showing why this is what is occurring in all or most instances of religious belief, but merely asserts that it's something that can happen. Indeed it can, though I'm not sure how this supports his hypothesis. If the meaning he believes is being projected into things is actually there and he just isn't apprehending it, then it's his senses which are damaged, not the supposed 'projector'. And assuming said meaning isn't there presupposes atheism, rather than lends support to it as a conclusion.

In addition to each of these claims having problems within themselves, many of them don't even have any logical link to his central hypothesis about self-deception. His #3, for example, is just an attempt at a standard atheistic argument about God's non-existence. It's a de facto objection, not the de jure objection he was claiming that he was making. It's about the likely truth of religious belief, not whether religious persons are self-deceiving for holding to the belief. The objection, even if true, would not establish that religious people were self-deceiving when noting that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. This is true to varying degrees of a number of the listed objections.

Granted, this isn't a scholarly piece, and it comes with a disclaimer that he has developed the argument in more depth elsewhere, but with such carelessness of thought and with so many fundamental errors and misunderstandings, I can't imagine the argument gets anything but more convoluted and confused in its 'deeper' incarnation.

More on Peter Boghossian and Faith

My previous post on Peter Boghossian's talk titled Jesus, The Easter Bunny and Other Delusions was written on the basis of an interview he did, and on a description of the talk that he gave. His talk has since been made available online, and I've watched the whole thing. After watching it, I think my criticism from the initial post holds up just fine, and represents the most central problem with his thesis. But the details of his presentation brought up a few other issues.

To briefly reiterate my chief problem with the thesis of the talk that "Faith is an unreliable process". The point that I made is that the thesis is irrelevantly true. A person of faith can easily concede the point that "faith" in general, as a process, is not reliable. After all, a Christian does not believe that faith in Buddha, or Allah, or Krishna will do anything for you; indeed a Christian would hold that faith in such things is guaranteed to lead you astray, and so would concede that "faith" in general is not reliable.  People of faith don't have faith-in-faith, they have faith in specific gods. Boghossian's argument proceeds in such a way that assumes if he can demonstrate the unreliability of faith in general, as a process, that this should cause a person of faith to abandon their faith, but this expectation commits the fallacy of division; it can be true that faith in general is an unreliable process and that a faith properly-oriented, faith in the One True God, is entirely reliable. This lone objection is pretty much fatal for Professor Boghossian's entire project.

Boghossian's main examples to demonstrate the unreliability of faith, such as faith healing and transubstantiation, are really extra-biblical tenets that are not -- and never were -- central elements of the Christian faith. And so nothing at all hinges upon their standing or falling, and if and when they do 'fall', that fact mitigates against the reliability of faith in the Christian God not at all.

 Another problem with his thesis is that, in a somewhat subtle manner, it assumes a priori that various faiths are wrong. That is to say, if it were true that there is no supernatural reality, or that faith is unreliable at apprehending supernatural reality, then the conclusion that faith (or specific faiths) are dispensable is obvious enough, but no argument has been made. If, however, some faith is substantially correct in all of its claims about transcendent reality, then not only would that particular faith be reliable, but it would be reliable at determining the most important facts about reality, facts which are much more substantial than the truths that modern science reveals about immanent, empirical reality. The fact that this can't be demonstrated to be the case is, of course, unproblematic for people of faith. That's entailed by the definition of faith and the nature of the things it aims to apprehend.

Speaking of the definition of faith, Boghossian largely defines himself a victory by using this definition of faith: "Belief without evidence". If this is how you're defining the term then, again, it's not difficult to get to a place where faith is unreliable. The problem is that you've produced a tautological argument that doesn't say anything. When faith is defined as unreliable, it is in fact unreliable. Of course, Christian faith (for one example) explicitly invokes evidence in its definition of "faith" (Hebrews 11:1), and would reject this concept of "faith", which is only another reason that speaking about "faith" in general terms produces such vacuous results.

And, even outside of the Christian concept of faith, on secular grounds, faith is most often invoked, not as something that goes contrary to evidence, or completely without reference to it, but in line with it. For example, if you have faith that your brother will make it to an appointment with you on time, you base this faith on the fact that your brother has been consistently reliable in the past. You can't be certain that he will prove reliable again, as that remains to be seen, and so you ground your faith in him in the evidence that is available and pertinent. With this much more sensible, realistic understanding of faith in view -- rather than Boghossian's silly definition -- again, his project crumbles.

Also, pointing out that faith is not well-suited to answering narrow questions about immanent, material reality is of about as much consequence as pointing out that biology is ill-suited to answering questions on astronomy. Using Boghossian's methodology of argument, one could argue quite forcefully that biology fails horribly at answering 9 out of 10 different types of questions, it just happens to excel at answering biological questions. Biology is, therefore, an unreliable process. Q.E.D.

At one point in the presentation Boghossian makes the claim that all conversations on the topic of someone's faith inevitably results in the person moving the goal posts, and shifting their claim from "my faith is true" to "my faith is beneficial". Perhaps he was being hyperbolic but he claims that "This is the inevitable trajectory of every single conversation, period." Every single conversation, period? I've had dozens of such conversations, and I can't recall a single one even drifting slightly in this direction, and I could produce the testimony of my interlocutors to confirm that the conversations never go in this direction. And I doubt that I'm the lone exception to this rule.

In closing, let me draw attention to one piece of the presentation that I found somewhat helpful. At one juncture, professor Boghossian encourages his audience to criticize ideas and not people. As a pragmatic concern, if you're trying to convince people of something, attacking them will never be very fruitful. This struck me as a secular version of "hate the sin, love the sinner", which made me chuckle a bit to realize.

Peter Boghossian, Faith and True Belief

There is something irresistibly beguiling about the spectacle of an educated person making what they believe to be grand pronouncements, that they seem to think ought to shake the core of some people's very being, when in fact they are saying very close to nothing at all. I was recently introduced to Peter Boghossian, professor of philosophy at Portland State University, via Sam Harris' posting a link to an interview with him in which he speaks about how faith claims have no place in a public, secular classroom. Something he seemed to think was a very controversial position, at least when presented to believers. Of course, in reality, such a claim is not enough to even arouse mild dissent from religious persons in America, the great majority of which have no interest in 'faith claims' being taught, or utilized in public classroom settings. Perhaps he's worried about the desire of some religious people to have Intelligent Design taught in science classrooms, but even if you're worried about such a thing, you aren't worried about 'faith' being taught in science class, you're worried about what you deem to be bad science being taught in science class. So even here, 'faith in the classroom' is a non-issue for any party involved; virtually no one anywhere desires such a thing.

But maybe this straw-man, this preposterous fear of believers desiring 'faith in the classroom' was a one-off thing, and I should be charitable and cut Professor Boghossian some slack. At that point in time, I did, but Philosophy News recently posted an article that reviews a recent lecture of his titled Jesus, the Easter Bunny, and Other Delusions: Just Say No!, where he essentially reiterates the argument from the earlier interview, only with the slight twist that faith claims not only aren't appropriate in a public classroom, but that they are actually delusional. "Alright", I said to myself "that's quite enough with the charitableness."

Not to put too fine a point on it, but from the interview and the summary of the lecture, it isn't at all clear that  Professor Boghossian has any understanding at all of how faith functions for a believer i.e. do even believers themselves hold that "Faith" is the best way to investigate immanent material reality and draw the most reliable conclusions about it? No, so the fact that it isn't fails to disabuse a person of faith from anything whatsoever.

The articles of faith most believers hold are almost all about transcendent reality which is not directly accessible to empirical investigation, or are about empirical events (say, the resurrection), which are mostly only subject to historical investigation, and so the fecundity of empirical, scientific investigation of material reality tells us nothing about whether Faith-as-such is successful at apprehending these realities it actually purports to apprehend, or whether non-Faith -- which is Faith's actual competitor here, not science -- is preferable.

Boghossian's example of transubstantiation -- conceived of as the physical elements transforming physically into flesh and blood, which is a somewhat dubious interpretation -- is uninteresting because it merely demonstrates an article of faith that is subject to empirical, scientific investigation and which we can dismiss as bad faith, or an example of faith in something that isn't true. The history of science is just as chock full of ideas about reality which have proven to be false. If someone persists in holding them, in the face of facts to the contrary, by all means call out that person as ignorant or obstinate, whether it's a scientific belief that is called into question or a matter of faith. None of this has any bearing on the question of whether faith-as-such is reliable, though, anymore than the existence of bad scientific theses throughout history is evidence that science is unreliable.

In addition to all of this, most systems of 'faith' are not completely insulated from the influence of facts or reason; indeed, many systems -- certainly most Christian systems -- are responsive to these things, where applicable, in much the same way that science is.

The more intractable problem for Boghossian's position is that people of faith don't have faith in faith-as-process, they have faith in a particular God, particular tenets, particular traditions, particular institutions etc. And Boghossian's particular critique proceeds as if believers do have faith in faith-as-a-process-for-producing-true-beliefs, which believers do not. Believers in the Christian God, for example, will readily admit that many religions, and non-religious systems of belief, invoke faith at various points (secular systems might not call it 'faith', but at some point they must appeal to some unverifiable 'first principles', which is substantially no different). Christians would merely contend that this is always a misguided -- or at least, in the case of philosophical first principles, incomplete -- faith that will not produce true beliefs. Hence it isn't faith itself that believers elevate, worship, obey, but rather the object of their faith which they believe is the source of their true beliefs, simultaneously remaining completely aware that faith-as-process is very often unreliable and un-illuminating. What is important -- from the believer's perspective -- is having a faith properly oriented, and there is no dispassionate, objective standard by which we can say that a faith properly oriented does not produce true belief, because we have no dispassionate, objective, empirical criteria for demonstrating the truth or falsity of (mostly) claims about transcendent reality.

So, as a believer, I can readily concede that faith-in-faith-as-the-process-most-well-suited-to-reliably-determining-truths-about-immanent-material-reality is misguided, and still hold that Faith in the Christian God of the Bible (a person, not a process) is perfectly warranted and uniquely accurate at apprehending the true nature of reality (that is, the most crucial, spiritual, transcendent level of reality, not scientific facts about immanent reality).

In the same way, a believer can completely affirm various critiques of "religion" in general and still advocate for a particular religion, without contradiction. Thus said critiques of "religion" in general are very often vacuously true, in a way that could never bother actually religious people, who don't subscribe to "religion" but rather subscribe to a particular religion. In the same way, this critique of "faith" could never trouble a person of faith, even if they were to concede that the critique was entirely valid.

If it were just a simple category error of this sort which undermines his entire point, and it wasn't accompanied by such condescending, self-righteous bombast, or if it were a one-time thing, I probably wouldn't even bother addressing it. But this combination is particularly worthy of derision and sharp correction.

Christianity, Witches and Witch-Burning

In my review of David Bentley Hart's Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies I didn't delve into many specifics of the book, instead opting to give a more general overview. Some recent readings and discussions prompted me to return to its pages on the topic of witches and witch-burning.

Of course, witch-burning in the Middle Ages is one of the main tentpoles of atheist critiques of Christianity as a historical phenomena and the nefarious influence it has had on history. The idea being that witch hunts and witch burning were remnants of a pre-modern, superstitious past and that the Catholic church and other religious fanatics were the ones who were the source of the superstitions, and who perpetrated most of the hunts and burnings.

Hart questions this narrative, not only on the matter of whether witch-burning and fear of sorcery could be genetically attributed to Christianity or the Catholic Church (rather than the culture at large), but even going so far as to suggest -- and demonstrate -- that it was more a product and cohort of early scientific modernity.

[I]t was the Catholic Church, of all the institutions of the time, that came to treat accusations of witchcraft with the most pronounced incredulity. Where secular courts and licentious mobs were eager to consign the accused to the tender ministrations of the public executioner, ecclesial inquisitions were prone to demand hard evidence and, in its absence, to dismiss charges. Ultimately, in lands where the authority of the church and its inquisitions were strong -- especially during the high tide of witch-hunting -- convictions were extremely rare.  ... The rather disorienting truth about the early modern fascination with witchcraft and the great witch hunts is that they were not the final, desperate expressions of an intellectual and religious tradition slowly fading into obsolescence before the advance of scientific and social "enlightenment"; they were, instead, something quite novel, modern phenomena, which had at best a weak foreshadowing in certain new historical trends of the late Middle Ages, and which, far from occurring in tension with the birth of secular modernity, were in a sense extreme manifestations of it. 

On the face, it seems a bizarre claim, but he presents evidence and a rigorous argument in defense of the claim that is quite fascinating. He goes on:

[S]ome of the great early theorists of modern science and scientific method were believers in magic, and consequently were often willing to prescribe the prosecution of those who used it for maleficent ends. Rodney Stark is not overstating his case when he declares, "The first significant objections to the reality of satanic witchcraft came from Spanish inquisitors, not from scientists."' One might even argue that an interest in magic (though not of the maleficent variety) was one of the essential ingredients in the evolution of modern scientific thought. 

The upshot of all this is historical context. While a critic of Christianity might correctly point out that the Church did participate in witch hunts and execution of heretics, if this is all that they have to say on the matter, then they have presented a piece of data that is out-of-context and misleading. Properly qualified by all of the relevant facts, these admittedly sad episodes of Christian history are seen for what they are; products of the era and culture, of which the Church was only one influence, and often the influence that most strongly resisted these evils -- though it was also, unfortunately, complicit in them.

Sam Harris on Mutually Exclusive Religious Claims

In his recent debate with William Lane Craig Sam Harris trotted out one of my favorite arguments against religious belief. Harris pointed out that people of all religions claim to have certain similar types of experiences--moments where they feel they are in some way in the presence of God, moments of awe, moments of exhilaration at their apprehension of the divine. He then argued that since all religions report such experiences, since in some sense all these reports are qualitatively similar, and since all these religions have mutually exclusive truth claims then the claims of religion can not possibly be true.

Well, certainly these religions can't all simultaneously be true, but few believers claims that they are. The vast majority of believers hold that their religion is true and that others are false. Believers can account for other religious 'experiences' easily enough. Either the reports of those experiences are misconstrued by those who experience them as a divine encounter, but they are mistaken (just as Harris would contend), or the Christian, for example, might say that these experiences could indeed be legitimate encounters with God's divine presence in the natural world, though not necessarily an affirmation of the beliefs of the person who has the experience. In either case the existence of those experiences across religions is not difficult for a person of faith to account for.

The mutually exclusive truth claims of religion only precludes all religions from being true simultaneously, but they do nothing to preclude one of them from being true. Moreover, atheism--while not a religion per se--can be included in the fray. If atheism is true then no religion is true. If Christianity is true then no other religion or perspective on God (including atheism) is true. This observation, quite obviously, gets you absolutely no where. With only this information to go by, all we have established is that any religion (or atheism) could be true. Gosh, I think we all owe Sam Harris a debt of gratitude for clarifying that!

The frightening thing is that this vacuous observation of Harris' is probably interpreted by many to be a forceful objection against religious belief in general. And while I have no stock in religious belief in general, I do have stock in Christianity, and if someone writes off religious belief in general then it will be difficult for them to ever get to Christianity specifically. So while this is a silly objection it's still worth refuting.