Randal Rauser's Blog, page 148

God of the Gaps and Mind of the Gaps

Dan Barker says: “Many of these [theistic] arguments are reduced to a ‘god of the gaps’ strategy. At most, the theists might prove the existence of a current gap in human knowledge, but this does not justify filling the gap with their god. After all, what happens when the gap closes someday? The gaps are actually what drive science–if we had all the answers there would be no more science.” (Godless, 104-5)

Reductive Physicalist says: “Many of these [non-reductionist] arguments are reduced to a ‘mind of the gaps’ strategy. At most, the substance and property dualists might prove the existence of a current gap in human knowledge, but this does not justify filling the gap with their mind. After all, what happens when the gap closes someday? The gaps are actually what drive science–if we had all the answers there would be no more science.”

Do theists need a proof for God to be rational? A response to Dan Barker

Over the last few days I’ve been reading through Dan Barker’s book Godless. I thought it only fair to do so after writing a critique of a few sentences. I plan to write a review of the book in the next week or so. Not to give things away, but I can say both that the book is a good read and is well worth picking up, and that I can find things to disagree with on most pages. And in this article I want to offer a brief response to another one of those many things.

In the passage in question, Barker offers the following rebuff to theists who suggest their theism is rational based on the evidences they provide for theism:

“if they are suggesting that I must agree that it is okay for them to accept the so-called evidences, I can’t do that. None of the ‘evidences’ proves a supernatural being, so those who continue to believe are acting irrationally.” (Godless, 90)

Oh, there is so much to talk about here! We need to start by wrapping our brains around Dan Barker’s extraordinarily bold thesis. According to that thesis, theists are irrational because they fail to provide proofs for God, where a “proof” is presumably a deductively valid argument with universally compelling premises.

Wow. That’s a high bar.

But wait, does Barker have a proof (i.e. a deductively valid argument with universally compelling premises) for atheism? I’m not sure. I haven’t finished the book yet. But I’m getting pretty far into it and I haven’t seen one yet, not even close.

So let’s consider the unthinkable. What if (gasp!) Barker doesn’t have a proof for atheism? What then? Does it follow that his atheistic belief is irrational?

If not, why does Barker pick on the theist? Isn’t it a bit hypocritical to place epistemic deontological obligations on others you yourself cannot meet?

Perhaps Barker will say that proofs are only required for existential beliefs, not in the withholding of existential beliefs. But who says? Why think that?

Don’t bother answering that. Instead, I’ll provide three reasons to reject Barker’s claim outright.

First, demanding a proof of all positive existential claims would entail that the idealist, and indeed the solipsist, are rational for withholding belief in the external world and other minds. Meanwhile, it would also follow that the rest of us are irrational in believing in such things until we can provide a proof to persuade the idealist and solipsist to abandon their doubt. This is a reductio if ever I saw one.

Second, this claim misses the crucial point that disbelief in one entity entails belief in another. The solipsist who disbelieves in other minds believes in a mind that can create its own reality de novo. That’s an extraordinary thing to believe in. The idealist who disbelieves in the external world believes in a world of mental substances alone which can create a matrix of simulated material reality. That’s an extraordinary thing to believe in. The atheist who disbelieves in God believes in a dysteleological world of self-organizing material existence. If I do say so myself, that’s also an extraordinary thing to believe in. So right back atcha’ Dan!

Third, it is deeply confused to think the matter of justifying truth claims is limited to positive existential claims. The real matter of justification extends to any truth claim at all, not just positive existential claims. And by the way, that includes the matter of Dan Barker’s own justification for claiming that theism is irrational barring a proof for God’s existence.

And Now for a Word From Banksy

I just combined my favorite Banksy work with my favorite Banksy quote.

All Lives Matter. But Black Lives Still Matter.

Jones says “Black lives matter.”

Smith replies “All lives matter” in a not-so-subtle rebuke. Apparently Smith was interpreting Jones as saying “Only black lives matter.”

Such a response suggests to me that Smith has a tin ear. Jones is surely not saying “Only black lives matter.” Rather, Jones is saying “Black lives matter too.” Or, more fully, “Black lives matter just as much as other lives.”

If you want to see why it is so important to say that “Black lives matter,” you could start with the fact that people choose to misunderstand when you say it.

Credulity at the Skeptic Convention

Go to the local skeptics convention and say “Millions of Christians were murdered in the twentieth century by atheists!” and you will meet a wall of resistance. “Where’d you get your figures?!” “What makes you think that was because of atheism?!” “Don’t confuse communism and atheism!” And so on.

Go to the local skeptics convention and say “Millions of witches were murdered in the Middle Ages by Christians!” and people will nod in agreement.

Skepticism. Yeah…

 

Sabbatical and Public Speaking

I’m presently on a half-time year-long sabbatical. Over the next year I’m teaching two online classes and one week-long class next May. As a result, I have a lot of flexibility in time and I am looking to schedule more public speaking events. So far I have booked three Sundays in August and three weekends in October. Beyond that my schedule is open, so if you’re interested in having me come to speak at an event, email me with your proposal. (I’ve been enticed to travel as far away as Rio de Janeiro for a speaking invitation, so anything’s possible. But yeah, you’ve got to cover my expenses!)

By the way, in the three weeks since Justin Schieber and I submitted the manuscript for An Atheist and a Christian Walk into a Bar, I’ve completed about 40,000 words on another book which I plan to release next year (information forthcoming in the near future).

On reading a few sentences of Dan Barker’s Godless

I’ve had Dan Barker’s book Godless sitting on my shelf for a couple years but I haven’t yet had a chance to read it. However, today I opened it up and read the following passage:

“Exodus 22:18 says, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ This one verse was responsible for the murder of thousands, perhaps millions, of women who were believed to be witches. Anyone who thinks this is a good moral teaching should become a fascist. It is manifestly immoral to deal with enemies, real or perceived, by genocide.” Dan Barker, Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists (Berkeley, CA: Ulysses, 2008), 184.

Several things struck me about this passage.

The first was the bewilderingly simplistic apportioning of “responsibility” for countless crimes throughout history to a single sentence in an ancient near eastern law code with no attention to matters such as translation, interpretation, or the complex and varied social and cultural factors that lead to persecution of specific individuals in specific times and places.

The second thing that struck me was Barker’s numbers: he says that thousands, perhaps millions of women were murdered as witches. “Millions” presumably means at least two million. Where’s the evidence to support the historical assertion that plausibly over two million women were murdered as a result of Exodus 22:18? Alas, the man provided no documentation at all to support his claim.

Third, I am at a lost as to why Barker thinks assent to this verse would constitute sufficient grounds to become a fascist. Certainly this makes no sense if fascism is intended in the political sense. One could think that Barker was referring to a colloquial usage where “fascist” refers to a person who is recognized to have dictatorial views. But that makes no sense for two reasons. First, the belief that individuals who engage in particular practices ought to be killed is not sufficient to be dictatorial. Consider, Smith might believe those who commit treason should be executed. It doesn’t follow that Smith is thereby dictatorial. And in a theocracy like ancient Israel, the practice of witchcraft would be seen as tantamount to treason. Moreover, even if we grant, for the sake of argument, that this is dictatorial, then it would follow that the individual is fascist (in this colloquial sense), not that they need to become fascist (as Barker says). So I truly can make no sense of this.

Finally, if Barker thinks this verse constitutes genocide then he should familiarize himself with Article II of the “UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide”. Such misuse of the term “genocide” irritates me because the more you misuse a critically important term like “genocide” merely to get a rhetorical advantage, the more you dilute its proper meaning and render it less effectual at flagging legitimate instances of genocide.

I cannot comment on the rest of Godless, but this short paragraph does reflect some problems I’ve often seen in the writings of secular/skeptical/atheistic polemicists. In particular, I often find this kind of careless, rhetorically loaded use of terms as well as the proffering of bold claims with little to no supporting documentation.

One could only wish the “skepticism” that so many of these folks love to talk about might be applied to their own writing.

Ken Humphreys’ strange prejudice against the Bible

The British radio show Unbelievable is a reliable source of good material for further reflection, and this past week’s episode pitting young apologist Sean McDowell against Jesus mythicist Ken Humphreys was no different. That’s not to say it was an even match, not even close. McDowell was excellent: crystal clear, consummately cordial, and coolly collected. And he ably defended his claim that we can have some degree of historical knowledge on the martyrdom of some of the early apostles including James, James the brother of Jesus, Paul, Peter, and Andrew.

By contrast, Humphreys adopted a truly fringe position by resisting even the modest claim that the apostles were historical persons. Rather than respond to McDowell’s points, he griped about receiving unfair treatment from the host (Justin Brierley). As Humphreys complained, he wasn’t getting equal time to make his points.

Whining about equal time?! Give me a break. That’s like an invited guest in your home complaining that the person next to him at the table got a larger piece of chicken. Hey buddy, just be thankful you got invited in the first place and eat your chicken with a smile, you ingrate.

Anyway, back to the episode. McDowell appealed to several sources drawn from the New Testament documents to support beliefs in the apostles’ martyrdoms. He made clear, however, that he was appealing to these documents as historical sources rather than inspired religious documents. Thus, for example, McDowell readily conceded that the documents evinced “bias” and he never appealed to a theological category like inerrancy or inspiration.

But Humphreys would have none of it. He dismissed all these documents simply because they were part of the Bible. And so he kept demanding that McDowell should provide non-biblical documentation.

And this brings me to the subject of this post. As McDowell repeatedly pointed out (to no avail, it would seem), historians don’t work like that. They don’t exclude entire classes of documents a priori. Instead, they consider all materials available to them, carefully examining them for any value they may offer.

I get that Humphreys doesn’t agree with Christians. But that provides no justification for such a bizarre method. Imagine a WW2 historian who states that he refuses to use any Nazi materials as he seeks to reconstruct the events of WW2. That would be a truly bizarre self-imposed limitation. On the contrary, a real historian would consider all materials available including Nazi materials — letters, propaganda flyers, flight manifests, etc. — as valuable resources at reconstructing the past. The historian does not shun the historical value of materials simply because he deplores the Nazis. But Humphreys is apparently so opposed to Christianity that he will not even concede that much.

So what is the issue, exactly? Is it that Humphreys believes the early Christians are biased? So far as I can see, that isn’t really the nub of the issue for him. Rather, his objection is that the New Testament documents are part of a religious text, the Bible. Apparently in Humphreys’ mind, simply being included as part of a religious canon is sufficient to render these documents verboten for historical analysis.

Humphreys’ reasoning becomes even clearer when McDowell points to the document of 1 Clement to make his case. Humphreys effectively counters the appeal to 1 Clement by pointing out that the document was included in some early lists of New Testament canonical books. That rebuttal makes it clear that the disqualifying marker for Humphreys is inclusion in canon (or, apparently, even mere consideration for canonical inclusion).

This isn’t a new prejudice. Many decades ago F.F. Bruce made the following observation:

“Somehow or other, there are people who regard a ‘sacred book’ as ipso facto under suspicion, and demand much more corroborative evidence for such a work than they would for an ordinary secular or pagan writing.”

Indeed, Humphreys takes the matter even further. In his mind sacred books aren’t merely “under suspicion”. Rather, they’re disqualified, period.

It isn’t hard to demonstrate that Humphreys’ reasoning is nothing more than a bizarre prejudice. After all, canonicity is a declaration which was made decades if not centuries after the composition of the works in question. Consequently, whether a work is recognized as canon or not simply has no relevance to the historical status of the work. How could anybody think that a church council declaring some writings inspired could somehow retroactively negate the historical value of those writings?

While I can’t defend the rationality of Humphreys’ reasoning, I do think there is a plausible psychological explanation for his behavior. Picture the fifteen year old who discovers Led Zeppelin for the first time. Then as he is playing one of their albums suddenly his extremely uncool dad bursts into the room. “Houses of the Holy!?” the old man says. “I love this album!” Then as the boy looks on aghast, his dad starts singing along and doing an impressive Jimmy Page air guitar.

That’s it. As soon as the elder leaves, the boy immediately deletes the album from his computer and goes back to listening to Bruno Mars.

What’s going on here? After all, the boy loved  Led Zeppelin mere moments ago, so what changed now? Simple: at this point the boy has such a need to disaffiliate from his father that the discovery that the old man likes a particular group is an immediate reason to disqualify that group from his playlist.

In a similar manner, it could be that Humphreys has such an aversion to Christianity and its founding document, the Bible, that the inclusion of any text within the Bible is an immediate reason to disqualify it from historical consideration.

Andy Bannister on God, Human Beings, and Intrinsic Value

This evening Andy Bannister posted another strikingly bold assertion about the connection between theism and value:

On a first pass, this tweet appears to me to be obviously false. For two statements to be contradictory, one must make an assertion that is directly inconsistent with the other such that they could not simultaneously be true. For example, “There is a God” and “There is no God” are contradictory statements. And so are “Human beings have intrinsic value” and “Human beings have no intrinsic value”. But what contradiction is there between “There is no God” and “Human beings have intrinsic value”? I can see none.

Perhaps Andy is speaking loosely and really means to say that atheism cannot provide a coherent account of intrinsic value. That would certainly help his tweet’s fortunes, for a time at least. Regardless, we’d still need to ask, what reason is there to believe that it is not possible for human beings to have intrinsic value if God doesn’t exist?

I’m sorry to say, but even on this more modest point I don’t think Andy has a good case. Imagine, for example, that an atheist adopts a metaphysic according to which there are some metaphysical transcendentals like goodness, truth, and beauty which exist of necessity. And all creatures that have the capacity to exemplify those transcendentals have intrinsic value precisely in virtue of being the kind of beings that can exemplify goodness, truth, and beauty. In that case, if one believed that human beings have the capacity to exemplify those attributes, it would follow that human beings have intrinsic value.

That seems to me to be a perfectly possible metaphysic. (Whether it is plausible is a question that each individual must answer for themselves.) And given that it is perfectly possible, it is manifestly clear that there is no contradiction even in this weaker, colloquial sense.

Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy is living history … in the worst kind of way

It is worthwhile to step back for a moment and take stock of what has unfolded just in the last week.

On Thursday, June 30th a woman stood up at a Trump rally and asked Trump to remove all the “heebie-jobies” (an apparent reference to Muslim women who wear hijabs) from the TSA and replace them with “veterans”. (Presumably she meant to exclude all veterans who wear the aforementioned “heebie-jobies.”)

Trump replied: “We are looking at that, we are looking at that. We’re looking at a lot of things.” Think about that. Trump openly admitted to looking into the possibility of purging Muslims from government positions. This is simply staggering.

Then on Saturday, July 2, Trump retweeted the infamous meme depicting Hillary Clinton’s face set against the backdrop of $100 bills and a Star of David. The image originally appeared a couple weeks earlier on an anti-Semitic, racist feed. Trump, the habitual liar, claimed the image was just a simple star, or maybe a sheriff’s badge (despite lacking the rounded end points of a sheriff’s badge). But anybody moderately literate in anti-Semitic propaganda would get the message: Hillary is corrupted by “Jew money”.

Finally, yesterday (July 5th) Trump praised Saddam Hussein (again!) for the tyrant’s willingness to kill terrorists. As Trump put it, “Saddam Hussein was a bad guy, right? He was a bad guy, a really bad guy.” Then he added, “But you know what he did well? He killed terrorists.”

Yes, he did. Hussein was tried by the Iraqi High Tribunal in 2005-6 for crimes against humanity. Michael P. Scharf and Michael A. Newton summarize the first trial in their article “The Iraqi High Tribunal’s Dujail Trial Opinion” (Dec. 2006). They write:

“The first IHT trial, which was televised gavel-to-gavel in Iraq, dealt with allegations that Saddam Hussein and his co-defendants responded to a 1982 assassination attempt in the town of Dujail by attacking the inhabitants with helicopter gunships; destroying the town‘s farmland, date palm groves, and water supply; arresting 300 residents and interrogating them at torture centers where one-third died; interning whole families at a remote desert compound for four years; and referring the survivors to the Revolutionary Court where they were found guilty without a real trial, sentenced to death, and executed.”

That’s one single incident in 1982, but it provides a snapshot of the kind of thing Hussein “did well”, the kind of thing Donald Trump clearly admires.

Think about it. These three examples have all occurred in the last week. By this time comparisons between Trump and Hitler have become overly familiar, and you might be tempted to chalk it up to Godwin’s Law. But the evidence is overwhelming. Trump is not just a bloviating carnival barker, entertainer, and over-rated business mogul with an orange pall and bad hair. He’s a dangerous dictator in the making. Watching his rise in the completely corrupted GOP is chilling. Seeing the way his demagoguery appeals to millions of disenfranchised voters is terrifying. And having witnessed pathetic conservative Christian leaders line up behind him is enough to make one vomit.

We’ve all heard the apocryphal Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.” Sadly, this is a very interesting time. The question is whether we shall be mere witnesses to history, or whether we shall rise to the challenges it presents.