Edward Feser's Blog, page 75

Review of Taylor

My review of Charles Taylor’s new book The Language Animal: The Full Shape of the Human Linguistic Capacity appears in the May 23 issue of National Review. 

Islamophilia and falsification

Not too long ago I discussed the relationship between liberalism and Islam.  More recently I discussed the logic of falsification.  Let’s now combine the themes.  Former federal terrorism prosecutor Andrew McCarthy recently wrote:
Last year, Americans were horrified by the beheadings of three Western journalists by ISIS. American and European politicians could not get to microphones fast enough to insist that these decapitations had nothing to do with Islam.  Yet within the same time frame, the government of Saudi Arabia beheaded eight people for various violations of sharia -- the law that governs Saudi Arabia.Three weeks before Christmas, a jihadist couple -- an American citizen, the son of Pakistani immigrants, and his Pakistani wife who had been welcomed into our country on a fiancée visa --carried out a jihadist attack in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 people.  Our government, as with the case in Fort Hood -- where a jihadist who had infiltrated the Army killed 13 innocents, mostly fellow soldiers -- resisted calling the atrocity a “terrorist attack.”  Why?  Our investigators are good at what they do, and our top officials may be ideological, but they are not stupid.  Why is it that they can’t say two plus two equals four when Islam is involved?

McCarthy’s own answer to his question is that due to a “triumph of willful blindness and political correctness over common sense,” our leaders are “unwilling to deal with the reality of Islam [and] have constructed an Islam of their very own.”  It is, McCarthy thinks, this fantasy Islam that they describe and defend, while ignoring actual, empirical, historical Islam.  Regarding terrorist Omar Abdel Rahman, the “Blind Sheikh” whom McCarthy prosecuted following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, McCarthy writes:
When [Abdel Rahman] said the [Muslim] scriptures command that Muslims strike terror into the hearts of Islam’s enemies… [that] Allah enjoined all Muslims to wage jihad until Islamic law was established throughout the world… [and that] Islam directed Muslims not to take Jews and Christians as their friends, the scriptures backed him up…
[T]he Blind Sheikh’s summons to jihad was rooted in a coherent interpretation of Islamic doctrine.  He was not perverting Islam…
Furthermore, says McCarthy:
Sharia rejects freedom of speech as much as freedom of religion.  It rejects the idea of equal rights between men and women as much as between Muslim and non-Muslim.  It brooks no separation between spiritual life and civil society.  It is a comprehensive framework for human life, dictating matters of government, economy, and combat, along with personal behavior such as contact between the sexes and personal hygiene.  Sharia aims to rule both believers and non-believers, and it affirmatively sanctions jihad in order to do so.
So, McCarthy thinks that in real-world Islam -- as opposed to the imaginary Islam he says politically correct government leaders have constructed -- there is a link between Islamic doctrine on the one hand and, on the other hand, both violence and a rejection of the freedoms taken for granted in modern Western societies.  Is McCarthy right? 
First let’s understand what he isn’t saying.  For one thing, McCarthy writes: 
Habitually, I distinguish between Islam and Muslims.  It is objectively important to do so, but I also have a personal reason: when I began working on national security cases, the Muslims I first encountered were not terrorists.  To the contrary, they were pro-American patriots who helped us infiltrate terror cells, disrupt mass-murder plots, and gather the evidence needed to convict jihadists.  We have an obligation to our national security to understand our enemies; but we also have an obligation to our principles not to convict by association -- not to confound our Islamist enemies with our Muslim allies and fellow citizens.
So, McCarthy is not saying that Muslims in general are terrorists or sympathetic with terrorism.  On the contrary, he acknowledges that many Muslims are firmly opposed to terrorism.  It is not “the people” that are the problem, in McCarthy’s view, but rather “the doctrine.”  But he qualifies this claim too.  He acknowledges that the description of sharia he gives “is not the only construction of Islam,” that “there are multiple ways of construing Islam,” and in particular that “there are ways of interpreting Islam that could make it something other than a call to war.” 
McCarthy’s claim is rather that more violent and illiberal interpretations of Islam, such as the one put forward by Abdel Rahman, are no less plausibly authentic, and indeed have very strong scriptural and legal arguments in their favor -- so much so, in McCarthy’s view, that the more pacific and liberal interpreters “seem to be dancing on the head of a pin.”  Hence, McCarthy concludes, there simply is no basis in fact for the claim that jihadists are “perverting” Islam, or even for the claim that theirs is “not a mainstream interpretation.”  The most one can say is that alternative interpretations are also possible. 
One could, consistently with McCarthy’s basic thesis, go well beyond the qualifications he explicitly makes, and acknowledge that there are many positive aspects to Islam.  For example, we surely ought to admire the genius of Islamic thinkers like Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Al-Ghazali, and Averroes, and to learn what we can from their works.  There can be no doubt that Islam has produced one of the richest and most durable civilizations of world history.  It is difficult for a devout person of any religion not to be moved by the Muslim call to prayer and the communal piety of the Muslim faithful.  We Catholics can only envy how resistant even non-observant Muslims are to apostasy and heterodoxy (or what counts as heterodoxy by Muslim lights, anyway).  We can and ought to affirm that between Christianity and Islam there is a common ground of Abrahamic and philosophical monotheism (as I have argued hereand here). 
But all of that is consistent with McCarthy’s basic claim that there is nevertheless a link between traditional Islamic doctrine on the one hand, and violence and illiberal politics on the other.  Again, is he right?
Many reject such a claim, on the grounds that adherents of other religions, and adherents of no religion at all (as in the case of some atheistic versions of communism), have also sometimes endorsed violence and illiberal politics.  Hence (so the argument goes) there are no grounds for the claim that there is any special connection in the case of Islam.  However, these considerations are hardly sufficient to falsify McCarthy’s position.  For one thing, even if there is a connection between doctrine on the one hand and violence and illiberal politics on the other in the case of other worldviews (as there is with Leninism, for example) it doesn’t follow that there isn’t any special connection in the case of Islam.  Neither McCarthy nor anyone else claims that only Islam, of all worldviews, is especially prone to generate violence, restrictions on freedom, etc.
For another thing, it is superficial merely to note that some Christians (for example) have as a matter of fact resorted to violence, favored restrictions on the freedoms of non-believers, etc.  As I noted in my earlier post on liberalism and Islam, there has from the beginning of Christianity been a clear distinction (even if not always a separation) between the institutions of Church and state, and between the supernatural, heavenly end of human beings and their this-worldly, political ends.  Since the kingdom of God “is not of this world,” there is a clear theoretical basis on which Christian teaching might be implemented without resorting to political or military means.  By contrast, from the beginnings of Islam there has been no distinction between the religious sphere of life on the one hand, and the political and military spheres on the other.  Muhammad was prophet, statesman, and general all rolled into one, and the history of Islam has always reflected this conflation of roles.  Hence there is in Islam an absenceof a clear theoretical basis by which the implementation of religious teaching might be separated from any resort to political and military means. 
Hence it is not enough to point to various specific examples of Christians, or Jews, or Buddhists, or whomever, who have committed violent acts, persecuted non-believers, or what have you.  One also has to examine the nature of these various doctrinal systems, so as to see if there is plausibly any essential connection between theory and practice.  And of course, one also needs to consider the frequencyof acts of violence, persecution, etc. committed by adherents of one religion compared to those of other religions.  Hence, suppose one could find specific examples of adherents of Jainism who committed acts of violence.  It would be ludicrous to conclude from this that Jainism is as prone to violence as any other religion.  For one thing, one would be hard pressed to find very many (if any) examples of Jain terrorism; and for another thing the centrality of the principle of non-violence to Jainism makes it extremely difficult for any Jain who is so inclined to find in his religion a theoretical rationale for such violence. 
Probably most people would admit that, given its history and the nature of its doctrines, Jainism is plausibly much less likely than other religions are to foster violence, and that this would remain true even if one could find examples here and there of Jains who resorted to violence.  But it would be intellectually dishonest to deny that, by the same token, there might also be a religion that is more likely than other religions are to foster violence, and that this would remain true even if there are many adherents of that religion who reject violence.   That is what McCarthy is claiming to be the case with Islam.
Some parallel examples can elucidate further the nature of McCarthy’s claim.  Consider the thesis that eating foods that are high in sugar or carbohydrates (candy, potato chips, etc.) increases one’s chances of getting cavities.  It would be silly to object to this claim on the grounds that there are many people who eat such foods but who do not get cavities (because they brush their teeth regularly, say); or on the grounds that there are people who get cavities as a result of eating other sorts of food; or on the grounds that there are positive aspects to eating foods high in sugar or carbohydrates (such as the energy boost they provide, or the pleasure they afford).  These points are all true, but they are perfectly compatible with the claim that there is a special causal link between eating such foods and getting cavities.  And we know there is such a link because (a) we find that there is in fact a high correlation (even if not an exceptionless one) between eating such foods and getting cavities, and (b) we can identify specific chemical mechanisms by which such foods can lead to tooth decay. 
Or consider the relationship between smoking and cancer, an example I cited in my recent post on falsification.  It would be ridiculous to deny that there is any special link here, on the grounds that there are many people who smoke but do not get cancer; or on the grounds that many people who don’t smoke also get cancer; or on the grounds that smoking has positive aspects (such as the pleasure and relaxation it affords).  All of this is also true, but it is also all perfectly compatible with the claim that there is a special causal link between smoking and getting cancer.  And we know there is such a link because (a) we find that there is in fact a high correlation (even if not an exceptionless one) between smoking and getting cancer, and (b) we can identify specific physiological mechanisms by which smoking can lead to cancer.  Nor, as I noted in the post on falsification, does a causal link have to be very strong in order to be real.  As I noted there, there is a causal link between syphilis and paresis, even if few people who contract syphilis go on to exhibit paresis. 
Or consider the claim that Protestants tend to know the Bible better than Catholics do.  I’m staunchly Catholic, but I think the claim is probably true, based both on experience and on the fact that it’s just the sort of thing you’d expect to be true given differences between Protestant and Catholic theology.  Like Protestants, Catholics regard the Bible as divinely inspired.  But Catholics also think that there are sources of binding doctrinal authority outside of scripture -- the Fathers of the Church, the decrees of Church councils, the Ordinary and Extraordinary Magisteria of the popes, and so forth.  There’s simply a lot more material that a Catholic feels bound to pay attention to, whereas a Protestant is more likely to think that scripture is all he needs to know.  Naturally, then, Protestants are in general bound to know scripture better than Catholics do, because they are more likely to focus all their attention on it, and it constitutes a much smaller body of literature than what Catholics would say needs to be taken account of.   (By the same token, the Marcionites, who accepted as canonical none of the Old Testament and only parts of the New Testament, may well have known those particular parts better than Protestants do, because they had even lessmaterial to focus their attention on.)
Or consider the claim that Quakers and Mennonites are less likely than Catholics to commit terrorist acts.  Again, though I’m Catholic, I think this is bound to be true as well, in light of the fact that Quaker and Mennonite theology is pacifist and Catholic theology is not.  It is just naturally going to be harder for a Quaker or Mennonite to come up with a rationalization for committing some terrorist act given the theological constraints he is committed to.
Now, it would be ridiculous to dismiss these last two claims on the grounds that they must reflect mere “anti-Catholic bigotry.”  Any Catholic who did so could plausibly be accused of oversensitivity and of a failure of objectivity.  Similarly, it would be ridiculous to dismiss the other sample claims considered on the grounds that they must reflect mere “sugarphobic,” “tobaccophobic,” or “syphilisphobic” bigotry.  Anyone who made such bizarre accusations could plausibly be suspected of having some excessive attachment to sugary foods, to tobacco, or to acts of the sort liable to lead to syphilis, an attachment that keeps him from being objective about these things. 
By the same token, it would be ridiculous to dismiss McCarthy’s claim merely on the grounds that itmust reflect nothing more than “Islamophobic” “bigotry.”  Indeed, McCarthy could fling an accusation of “Islamophilic bigotry” back at anyone who would make such a claim.  As I pointed out in the post on liberalism and Islam, there are several factors that predispose political liberals too quickly to dismiss the very suggestion that there might be a connection between Islamic doctrine on the one hand and violence and illiberal politics on the other.  For example, the very workability of liberalism as a political project presupposes that what John Rawls called “comprehensive doctrines,” or at least comprehensive doctrines with a large number of adherents, are compatible with basic liberal premises (and thus “reasonable,” as Rawlsian liberals conceive of “reasonableness”). If it turned out there is a “comprehensive doctrine” with a large number of adherents which is simply not compatible with basic liberal premises, that would be a very serious problem for the entire liberal project.  Hence liberals are bound to be reluctant to conclude that there is any such “comprehensive doctrine,” or to look for evidence that might support such a conclusion. 
Then there is the fact that egalitarianism is one of the dogmas of modern liberalism, just as the divinity of Christ is a dogma of Christianity or the divine origin of the Quran is a dogma of Islam.  Many liberals find it almost impossible to understand how even a mildly negative characterization of some religion, culture, or group could be anything but an expression of unreasoning hatred.  Hence epithets like “bigot” play, within liberalism, the same role that words like “heretic” often do within religion.  They are a means of silencing dissenters and sending a warning to anyone even considering dissent from egalitarianism.  The irony is that plugging one’s ears and screaming “Bigot!” at someone who is trying to present a reasoned argument is, of course, itself a kind of bigotry -- perhaps the worst kind, insofar as someone self-righteously in love with the idea that he is the paradigmatic anti-bigot is the least likely of all bigots to see his prejudices for what they are.
Again, see the earlier post on liberalism and Islam for discussion of other aspects of modern liberalism which can predispose many liberals against looking at Islam objectively.  The point for the moment is this.  On the one hand, McCarthy can note that any critic inclined to dismiss his position as mere bigotry should seriously consider that there are reasons why the critic may be himself less objective on the subject at hand than he likes to think he is.  And on the other hand, McCarthy can point to what one finds in Islamic scripture and law, in the history of terrorism during the last few decades, and indeed in the entire history of Islam as evidence in favor of his position.
Of course, that does not by itself demonstrate that McCarthy is right.  But any critic of McCarthy plausibly faces a “falsificationist challenge” of a sort that parallels the falsificationist challenge Antony Flew once raised against theists (a challenge I discussed in the earlier post on the logic of falsification).  Paraphrasing Flew, the challenge might be stated as follows:
What would have to occur or to have occurred to constitute for you a disproof of your claim that there is no special connection between Islam and terrorism, or between Islam and illiberal politics?
In other words, if evidence of the sort McCarthy cites does not establish his claim, what evidence will the critic admit wouldestablish it?  Unless the critic can offer a serious response to this question, he cannot plausibly claim that it is he rather than McCarthy who is free of prejudice.

Apologia interview

I am interviewed at some length in the Spring 2016 issue of The Dartmouth Apologia on the subjects of Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics, classical theism, and related matters.  You can read the interview and the rest of the issue here.  And while you’re at it, check out the Apologia’s main website, where you’ll find past interviews and other features from the magazine.Interested readers can find some past interviews I’ve given in other venues linked to here.

Spiering on Neo-Scholastic Essays

In the March 2016 issue of The Review of Metaphysics, philosopher Jamie Spiering reviews my book Neo-Scholastic Essays .  From the review:
Feser has found that Aristotelian-Thomistic teaching is a strong, coherent system that can provide clarity and answers in vexing contemporary debates… Feser writes admirably, with a clear, direct style that is polemical but not uncharitable or contentious… These would make excellent texts to offer to students... The clarity may also be appreciated by professional readers as a refreshing change from the sometimes fusty level of detail in recent work on natural theology -- instead, Feser allows us to refocus on perennial issues…
Feser has a gift for seeing the heart of a problem, as well as a gift for clear expression and high-quality, fair polemic -- these factors, together, offer the best reasons to read anything written by him, and this work is no exception.I thank Prof. Spiering for the very kind words.  Naturally, she also has some criticisms.  Spiering worries that aspects of the book may be too “neo-scholastic” in a pejorative sense.  For one thing, she judges that there are not enough citations from Aristotle, noting that “there are very few direct references to ‘the Philosopher’ of the scholastics, and I saw only one in which Bekker numbers were included.”  For another thing, she says that:

[Feser] tends to characterize Thomistic arguments metaphysically, and to some extent he avoids discussing how observations of nature provided the foundation for terms such as matter, form, motion, nature, and end.  This is a troubling trend, since without paying attention to the observations on which the Aristotelian system is founded, we cannot engage those who continue to observe nature.
Many readers of this blog are bound to find these remarks puzzling, given how often I defend distinctively Aristotelian theses and arguments, and given how often I emphasize that between modern natural science on the one hand and metaphysics on the other, there is a neglected but crucial middle ground field of study known as the philosophy of nature.  (Indeed, there is a whole essay in Neo-Scholastic Essays on the theme that natural theology must be grounded in the philosophy of nature.) 
To understand why Prof. Spiering raises the criticisms she does requires, I think, some knowledge of Thomistic “inside baseball.”  So let me say a little about that.  (The excursus to follow may seem a little long for a response to a book review, but I think readers will find the points I am about to make useful for understanding other disputes between Thomists.)
Longtime readers will recall a couple of posts from a few years back (here and here) summarizing the various schools of thought within twentieth-century Thomism.  Four of these schools are particularly relevant to the present discussion.  Neo-Scholastic Thomism emphasizes the way in which Thomism can be worked out systematically and applied to a critique of the fundamental assumptions of the various schools of modern philosophy.  Its systematicity is reflected in the style of the manuals of philosophy and theology with which it is famously associated.  Laval or River Forest Thomismemphasizes Thomism’s foundation in Aristotelianism, and in particular in Aristotle’s philosophy of nature rather than in the more abstract domain of general metaphysics.  It is particularly interested in questions about how the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition ought to interpret the results of modern natural science.  Existential Thomism, by contrast, emphasizes the centrality to Aquinas’s thought of general metaphysical themes that go beyond what Aristotle himself held, namely the distinction between essence and existence, the notion of God as subsistent being itself, and so forth.  Accordingly, it tends not to emphasize either questions about how to interpret natural science, or what in Thomism is specifically Aristotelian.  Analytical Thomism emphasizes the ways in which themes and arguments in the Thomistic tradition can be brought into conversation with contemporary Anglo-American analytic philosophy. 
Now, none of these approaches is necessarily in conflict with the others, and I have myself been deeply influenced by all four of them.  Unfortunately, however, some representatives of these schools are a little too prone to accuse the others of deviation from genuine Thomism.  For instance, Laval Thomists sometimes accuse Existential Thomists and Neo-Scholastic Thomists of overemphasizing the metaphysics of essence and existence and neglecting the distinctively Aristotelian and philosophy of nature oriented aspects of Aquinas’s thought.  Existential Thomists accuse Neo-Scholastic Thomists of being too influenced by the modern rationalist tradition of Leibniz and Wolff.  Both schools accuse Neo-Scholastic Thomists of being insufficiently attentive to the history of philosophy and to the actual texts of Aquinas and/or Aristotle.  “Neo-Scholastic” became a general term of abuse in part because of factors like these, and also in part because of the polemical use made of the term by Nouvelle theologie writers (to bring yet another school of thought into this often confusing mix).  My own view is that most of these sorts of criticisms are unjust and exaggerate the significance of what are really only differences of emphasis.  (I have defended Neo-Scholasticism against such charges in a recent article.)
Then there is the fact that “analytical Thomists” are sometimes accused of distorting Thomist ideas and arguments by reading them in light of alien philosophical assumptions that are taken for granted by contemporary analytic philosophers but ought to be questioned by a Thomist.  Sometimes there is justice to such charges.  For example, I would certainly agree that it is a deep mistake to read a Fregean notion of existence into Aquinas’s doctrine of being, and that Anthony Kenny’s famous criticisms of Aquinas’s doctrine reflect such a misreading.  However, here too, such charges are often unjust.  Many so-called “analytical Thomists” have no interest in trying to marry Thomism to incompatible contemporary dogmas.  They are simply traditional Thomists who happen to have been trained in and/or to have an interest in the analytic tradition, and aim to present Thomistic ideas and arguments in a way that will be as accessible as possible to contemporary academic analytic philosophers.
Thomists who are not very familiar with the contemporary analytic tradition -- which is the dominant approach in Anglo-American academic philosophy departments -- need to keep in mind that contemporary philosophers do not always use technical terms the way Thomists traditionally do, but that sometimes (by no means always, but sometimes) these differences in usage reflect what are really only semantic rather than substantive differences, and that it is therefore unwise to make too big a deal out of them. 
For example, in Aristotelian and Thomistic philosophy, the term “science” is traditionally used in a much broader sense than contemporary philosophers and natural scientists use it.  When I use the term, though, I often tend to use it in the narrower modern sense, as long as nothing of substance rides on that usage.  The reason I do this is that it is the sense that the vast majority of my readers will be familiar with, and they would be confused and misled if I were to use it in the older sense.  Nor would it always be advisable in the context of a blog post or a mainstream article to include some explanation of why one is using the term in a way most contemporary readers are unfamiliar with.  Since, again, in most cases nothing of substance rides on it anyway, I think it advisable in many cases to accommodate contemporary usage of the term.  Most of my fellow Thomists are well aware of this and have no problem with it, but occasionally some persnickety Thomist reader will show up in the combox to complain that what I said about science was in “error” when in fact there is no error at all when the sense I had in mind is properly understood.  To be sure, there certainly are some cases where it is important to fight for returning to the older usage of some term, but there are also cases where it is not so important (at least in certain contexts and for certain particular purposes), and a wise man will know the difference.
Another example is the term “metaphysics.”  Contemporary analytic philosophers tend to use this term in a very broad way, and include within the boundaries of metaphysics issues that Thomists would not count as metaphysical.  For example, the question of whether the objects of sensory experience are composites of form and matter would for Thomists be regarded as an issue for philosophy of nature or natural philosophy rather than metaphysics.  Metaphysics, as Thomists understand it, is concerned instead with issues that are not limited to what is true merely of material, changeable reality.  In the very general sense in which contemporary analytic philosophers use the term, however, the question of whether to adopt a form/matter analysis of physical objects isa question of “metaphysics.”  Moreveor, many analytic philosophers are not familiar with the term “philosophy of nature.”  Hence, in my own case, while I will in some contexts emphasize the difference between metaphysics and philosophy of nature, in other contexts I will instead use the term “metaphysics” in the broader contemporary sense.  The reason is that in some contexts (not all, but some), nothing of substance rides on the usage, and accommodating the contemporary usage is in those contexts often the best way to make Aristotelian and Thomist ideas accessible to contemporary readers unfamiliar with them.  In such contexts, using the term in the older way would be confusing to many readers, and explanations of why one is adopting what to them will seem an eccentric usage would be tedious. 
One final consideration before returning to Prof. Spiering’s remarks.  Academics who specialize in the study of the history of philosophy -- most definitely including those who have a special interest in ancient and medieval thought -- are often wary of what they regard as a too-superficial appropriation of the ideas of thinkers of the past, and accordingly emphasize the need for careful scholarship, generous quotations from original texts, recourse to the original languages, etc.   Sometimes this is salutary and can help us to avoid reading contemporary prejudices back into earlier thinkers.  But sometimes, if one is not careful, it can degenerate into mere pedantry and a perpetual deferral of questions of contemporary application.  (“We need fifty more years of scholarship on the minutiae of what was said by each side of such-and-such a medieval debate before we can hope even to begin thinking about someday approaching the question of which side was right!”)  To borrow an apt analogy introduced by Karl Popper in a different context, scholarship in the history of philosophy is sometimes like endlessly cleaning one’s spectacles and never actually using them for what they are for. 
Another danger, though -- one of which Aristotelians and Thomists must be especially wary -- is that when contemporary application is made, scholarship can turn into mere proof-texting and argument from authority.  (“Aristotle actually wrote such-and-such; therefore…”)  I had occasion in a recent post to discuss one recent controversy among Thomists in which such an approach arguably plays too large a role.
So, to return at last to Prof. Spiering’s criticisms: I certainly would not accuse her of all of the foibles I describe above.  But it seems to me that some of them may to some extent have played a role in her remarks.   I gather that her background is in the Laval Thomist tradition and that she specializes in the history of medieval philosophy -- certainly all absolutely terrific stuff, in my view.  My suspicion, though, is that on reading a book by a self-described “Neo-Scholastic,” whose training is in analytic philosophy, who sometimes uses terms like “metaphysics” the way contemporary analytic philosophers do, and who emphasizes questions of contemporary application rather than historical scholarship, Prof. Spiering too hastily drew some conclusions that are not in fact correct, viz. that I would not ground Thomistic arguments in the philosophy of nature, and that my approach is not sufficiently Aristotelian.  Certainly Prof. Spiering gives no specific examples of how I got Aristotle wrong or of Aristotelian insights that I overlooked, nor any specific examples of how my arguments in natural theology or in other areas of philosophy are insufficiently attentive to the grounding of concepts like act, potency, form, matter, finality, etc. in the philosophy of nature.
(For what it is worth, the reasons why, in some of my writings, I do not proceed by giving extensive quotations from Aristotle or Aquinas are (a) to make it clear that I am focusing on what is actually true and defensible today, and not doing mere textual exegesis or history of philosophy, and (b) to make it clear that I am not arguing from authority.  So, whereas some people accuse me of being too slavisha follower of Aristotle and Aquinas, others occasionally accuse me of being insufficiently Aristotelian or Thomistic.  I take it that the fact that I’ve had both charges flung at me is a sign that I’m doing something right!)
Finally, in another point of criticism, Prof. Spiering regrets that I don’t engage Einstein’s theories in more detail in my essay “Motion in Aristotle, Newton, and Einstein.”  The reason I did not do so, however, is that the essay is concerned specifically with whether motion as Aristotelians understand it -- the actualization of potential -- has been shown by modern science to be illusory, or, if real, as not in need of explanation.  Where Einstein is concerned, the chief issue relevant to this question is whether the Minkowskian four-dimensional block universe casts doubt on the reality of the actualization of potential.  Accordingly, that is what I focus on.   Naturally, relativity raises a great many other philosophical questions, including questions of special interest to Aristotelians.  But those were questions beyond the narrow scope of the paper.  (As it happens, I have a lot more to say about relativity in the book on Aristotelian philosophy of nature I am currently working on.)
All the same, I thank Prof. Spiering for her review, and for her thoughtful and sincere criticisms as well as her kind words. 

Craig on divine simplicity and theistic personalism

A number of readers have called my attention to a recent podcast during which William Lane Craig is asked for his opinion about theistic personalism, the doctrine of divine simplicity, and what writers like David Bentley Hart and me have said about these topics.  (You can find the podcast at Craig’s website, and also at YouTube.)  What follows are some comments on the podcast.  Let me preface these remarks by saying that I hate to disagree with Craig, for whom I have the greatest respect.  It should also be kept in mind, in fairness to Craig, that his remarks were made in an informal conversational context, and thus cannot reasonably be expected to have the precision that a more formal, written treatment would exhibit.
Having said that…I was surprised at how many basic mistakes Craig made in his characterization of the views of his opponents, and at how little argumentation (as opposed to mere assertion) was offered in response to those views.  Let’s walk through the various issues Craig addresses and dissect his comments.  (A side note on the most minor mistake:  The man interviewing Craig mispronounces my name.  The correct pronunciation is “fay-zer,” like the word “phaser” in Star Trek.) 

What is theistic personalism?
Craig and his interviewer give the impression that “theistic personalism” is a label that Thomists apply to non-Thomist theists in general; that David Bentley Hart -- who, like me, is critical of theistic personalism -- is, accordingly, a Thomist; that what “theistic personalism” amounts to is just the traditional Christian understanding of God; and that rejecting theistic personalism entails regarding God as impersonal.  None of these things is true. 
For one thing, Hart is most definitely not a Thomist.  Indeed, as readers of my various exchanges with Hart over the years know well, Hart is very critical of Thomists.  That alone suffices to show that, contrary to the impression Craig gives, the dispute between theistic personalists and their critics is simply not the same dispute as that between Thomists and non-Thomists.
For another thing, “theistic personalism” is a label which (as far as I can tell) was introduced by Brian Davies in his book An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion , and he contrasts theistic personalists, not merely with Thomists specifically, but with classical theists in general.  Now, as Davies explicitly says, the classical theist tradition includes thinkers as diverse as Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Maimonides, Avicenna, Leibniz, the Protestant Reformers, Jonathan Edwards, and many others.  And the aspect of classical theism that Davies emphasizes throughout the book is its commitment to the doctrine of divine simplicity, together with such implications of that doctrine as the theses that God is immutable, that he is timeless, that he is not a particular instance of some general kind of thing, and so forth.
What makes someone a “theistic personalist” as opposed to a classical theist, then (as I read Davies), is essentially that he either explicitly denies the doctrine of divine simplicity, or that he at least implicitly denies it by virtue of denying God’s immutability, or claiming that God is an instance of a kind, etc.  Classical theist critics of theistic personalism thus include not only Thomists, but also Augustinians, Scotists, and Suarezians, not to mention traditional Eastern Orthodox and Protestant theologians, as well as traditional Jewish theologians, Muslim theologians, and purely philosophical theists.
Davies also explicitly says that what he is calling “theistic personalism” is the same thing as what Norman Geisler calls “neo-theism.”  Now, what Geisler attacks as “neo-theist” are views which characterize God as composite rather than simple, changeable rather than immutable, temporal rather than atemporal, and so forth -- views such as “open theism,” process theology, Plantinga’s attack on divine simplicity, etc.  What he’s attacking, then, are not “non-Thomists” as such.  Geisler also emphasizes that the classical theism he defends is the traditional Christian conception of God, and the conception that Christian theologians have traditionally seen as implicit in the Bible.  Geisler thus condemns “neo-theism” not only on philosophical grounds, but also precisely as a departurefrom Christian tradition and a departurefrom scripture.  (Davies does the same.)
Now, as Craig notes in the podcast, he was a student of Geisler’s.  He really ought to know, then, that it is extremely misleading to represent the dispute between theistic personalists and their critics as if it were merely a dispute between Thomists and non-Thomists, or between traditional Christian theists on the one hand and philosophical corrupters of scriptural teaching on the other.
It is also simply false to imply, as Craig does, that Thomists and other critics of theistic personalism regard God as “impersonal.”  When classical theists like Davies say that God is not “a person,” they do NOT mean that God is impersonal, an “it” rather than a “he.”  On the contrary, most classical theists, including all Thomists, would say that among the divine attributes are intellect, will, omniscience, freedom, and love.  Naturally then, they regard God as personal rather than impersonal, since nothing impersonal could intelligibly be said to possess these attributes.  As I have said many times, the problem with the thesis that “God is a person” is not the word “person,” but rather the word “a.”  And as Davies (and I) have argued many times, there are two key problems with it, a philosophical problem, and a distinctively Christian theological problem. 
The philosophical problem is that this language implies that God is a particular instance of the general kind “person,” and anything that is an instance of any kind is composite rather than simple, and thus requires a cause.  Thus, nothing that is an instance of a kind could be God, who is of course essentially uncaused.  (Obviously these claims need spelling out and defense, but of course I and other Thomists havespelled them out and defended them in detail many times.)  The distinctively Christian theological problem is that God is Trinitarian -- three divine Persons in one substance -- and thus cannot be characterized as “aperson” on pain of heresy.  (As Davies has pointed out, it seems that the first time the English language formula “God is a person” appears in the history of Christian theology is in the 1644 heresy trial, in Gloucester, England, of someone named John Biddle -- where the formula was condemned as implying Unitarianism.) 
So, the reason Davies labels the rejection of classical theism “theistic personalism” is not that he thinks God is impersonal.  The reason is rather that he takes theistic personalists to start with the idea that God is a particular instance of the general kind “person” and to go from there.  And this, he thinks, is what leads them to draw conclusions incompatible with classical theism, such as that God is (like the persons we’re familiar with in everyday experience) changeable, temporal, made up of parts, etc.  To reject theistic personalism, then, is not a matter of regarding God as impersonal, but rather a matter of rejecting the idea that God is a particular instance of the kind “person,” or of any other kind for that matter.  (For example, though classical theists certainly regard God as the uncaused cause of the world, they do not think that this is correctly to be understood as the claim that God is a particular instance of the general kind “cause.”) 
Now, I have found over the years that even though I have repeated these points many, many times, some critics of classical theism still constantly mischaracterize the dispute between classical theism and theistic personalism as a dispute over whether God is personal or impersonal.  It is regrettable that Craig, who is a serious scholar and an intellectually honest one, would perpetuate this misunderstanding.  I don’t believe for a moment that Craig is intentionally mischaracterizing the classical theist position.  I hope these remarks will clear the air on that issue once and for all, at least for Prof. Craig and his readers.
Divine simplicity
In characterizing the doctrine of divine simplicity, Craig gives the impression that the doctrine involves, among other things, the claims that we can only make negative predications of God, that we can make only analogical predictions of God rather than univocal ones, that analogical predications are non-literal, and that we not only have to be agnostic about God’s nature but that God has no essence.  None of this is correct.
First, while some adherents of the doctrine of divine simplicity (such as Maimonides) are committed to a purely negative theology, most are not.  Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, et al. certainly agree that we can make positive as well as negative affirmations about the divine nature.
Second, while Thomists hold that all language about God has to be understood in an analogical rather than univocal way, not all classical theists or adherents of the doctrine of divine simplicity would say that.  For example, Scotists both affirm divine simplicity and hold that theological language is univocal.  Of course, we Thomists regard this Scotist position as unstable, but the point is that it is (contrary to the impression given by Craig) simply not the case that the debate over divine simplicity is as such a debate over whether theological language ought to be understood in an analogical rather than univocal way.
Third, when Thomists say that theological language ought to be understood analogically, they do NOT mean that it ought to be understood non-literally.  To suppose otherwise is to confuse analogical language with metaphorical language.  And not all analogical language is metaphorical.  For example, according to the Thomist view about analogical language, when I say that the enchilada I had for dinner last night was good, that William Lane Craig writes good books, and that William Lane Craig is a good man, I am not using the word “good” in the same, univocal sense.  Rather, I am saying that there is something in the food which is analogous to the goodness of the books, something in the books which is analogous to the goodness of a man, and so forth, even if it is not exactly the same thing in each case.  But I am not speaking non-literally or metaphorically in any of these cases either.   Similarly, when Thomists say that there is in God something that is analogous to what we call “goodness” in us, something analogous to what we call “power” in us, etc., they are not saying that God is good, powerful, etc. in only a non-literal or metaphorical sense.  (The idea that Thomists regard talk about God as “just a metaphor” is another unfortunately very common and very annoying misunderstanding.)
Fourth, neither the doctrine of divine simplicity nor the Thomist understanding of it entails that God has no essence.  On the contrary, Thomists hold that God’s essence just is pure actuality or subsistent being itself.  The claim is rather that, unlike everything else that exists, God does not have an essence distinct from his existence.  (The reason is that, if he did have an essence distinct from his existence, then he would be composed of metaphysical parts and thus require a cause, i.e. something independent of him which accounts for how those metaphysical parts are combined so as to compose the whole.) 
Fifth, if the Thomist were saying that God has no essence, then it would follow that we would have to be “agnostic” about God, would have to regard him as entirely “incomprehensible,” etc. (as Craig says the Thomist view implies).  For you can hardly understand something that has no essence or nature to be understood.  But again, that is not what the Thomist says.  To be sure, Thomists do say that God is “incomprehensible” in the sense that our minds -- accustomed as they are to understanding things by analyzing them or breaking them down into their constituent parts -- have great difficulty grasping the nature of that which is utterly simple or non-composite.  But the incomprehensibility here derives, not from any unintelligibility in God (as it would if God had no essence), but rather from the limitations on our finite intellects. 
Then there is Craig’s claim that there is just “no reason to accept” the idea that God is subsistent being itself rather than a being.  This simply ignores, without answering, the traditional Thomist arguments to the effect that if God is other than subsistent being itself, then it would follow that there is a distinction between God’s essence and his existence, in which case he would be composite and thus require a cause of his own -- in which case he would not be God.  (Neo-Platonists, Aristotelians, and other classical theists would give other, related arguments for similar conclusions.)  The doctrine of divine simplicity, its defenders claim, far from being some odd and unmotivated fifth wheel that philosophers have for no good reason tacked on to the Christian idea of God, in fact follows necessarily from an analysis of the claim that God is the uncaused cause or ultimate explanation of everything other than himself.  It is, they maintain, a logical concomitant of theism, and its denial is thus tantamount to atheism.  Craig no doubt disagrees with this, but he does not even engage the key arguments, much less refute them.
Miscellaneous issues
Craig also makes a number of further claims which are very strange.  For example, he says that whereas the Bible describes God as holy, loving, a creator who knows us and causes us, etc., “all these things are denied by Thomism.”  This is simply a bizarre claim.  I know of no Thomist who would deny any of these things.  Indeed, every Thomist I know of would staunchly affirm each of these attributes.  Perhaps what Craig means is that whatever the intentions of Thomists themselves, Thomism implies a denial of these attributes.  But if that is what is meant, then it is a mere undefended, question-begging assertion. 
Craig also gives the impression that Thomists accuse non-Thomists in general of denying the doctrine of divine conservation.  Furthermore, though Craig himself does not deny that Thomists believe in miracles, some listeners might get that impression from what he and his interviewer say about the issue of divine “intervention.”  These are also serious misunderstandings.  For one thing, neither I nor any other Thomist or classical theist that I know of has ever denied that many non-Thomists, and indeed even many theistic personalists, affirm the doctrine of divine conservation.  For another, no Thomist that I know of denies that God causes miracles to occur.  As I have said many times (e.g. here), the question about whether God “intervenes” is rather a question about whether a miracle ought to be understood on the model of the action of a machinist who tinkers with the operation of a machine that is otherwise running along on its own.  (The problem here is in part that the question to which Craig was responding was badly formulated, with the questioner sloppily running together issues that need to be carefully disentangled.)
Finally, Craig suggests -- in commenting on a reader’s questions about Herbert McCabe’s formulation of the Thomist conception of God -- that an empty spirituality, along with a rejection of miracles, of divine providence, and of traditional Christian morality, is inevitable if one accepts McCabe’s position.  He also suggests that there are “non-intellectual” and “emotional” factors lurking behind the reader’s question.  It is hard to know what to say in response to the first claim other than to point out that it is mostly just an undefended and sweeping assertion (and, where an argument is implied, also presupposes a caricature of McCabe’s position).  It is hard to know what to say in response to the second claim other than to point out that it seems an ad hominem piece of long-distance psychoanalysis. 
But again, since this is an informal and conversational context, I think we ought to cut Craig some slack.  It is also only fair to note that Craig directs his listeners to his book (co-written with J. P. Moreland) Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview , wherein his criticisms of divine simplicity are developed in a more systematic way.  In the same spirit, I direct my own readers to my forthcoming book Five Proofs of the Existence of God, which (among other things) includes a detailed and systematic defense of divine simplicity against Plantinga, Craig, et al.  (More on that in due time.  In the meantime, I also direct your attention to an earlier post on Craig and divine simplicity, and other posts on the dispute between classical theism and theistic personalism.)

Review of Hart

My review of David Bentley Hart’s The Experience of God appears in Pro Ecclesia , Vol. XXV, No. 1 (the Winter 2016 issue).  (Yes, the book has been out for a while, but the review was written almost a year ago.  The review doesn’t seem to be online at the moment, unfortunately.)While on the subject of Hart, I might note that many readers have called my attention to William Lane Craig’s recent comments about Hart’s views and mine.  I’ll respond in a forthcoming post.

Lofter is the best medicine

New Atheist pamphleteer John Loftus is like a train wreck orchestrated by Zeno of Elea: As Loftus rams headlong into the devastating objections of his critics, the chassis, wheels, gears, and passenger body parts that are the contents of his mind proceed through ever more thorough stages of pulverization.  And yet somehow, the grisly disaster just never stops.  Loftus continues on at full speed, tiny bits of metal and flesh reduced to even smaller bits, and those to yet smaller ones, ad infinitum.  You feel you ought to turn away in horror, but nevertheless find yourself settling back, metaphysically transfixed and reaching for the Jiffy Pop.Recall some current events recounted in a recent post.  Atheist philosopher Keith Parsons had lamented the tendency of New Atheists to ignore rather than answer the best arguments of the other side, to refuse to do their homework before commenting on philosophical matters, and to resort to mere invective in place of argumentation.  Loftus, entirely ignoring what Parsons actually said, dismissed him on ad hominem grounds, averring that Parsons is “just old” and likes getting attention -- thereby deploying, in defense of the New Atheism, some of the very traits Parsons deplores in the New Atheism.  A restrained Parsons then replied with a polite and reasoned defense of himself against this gratuitous attack.  Whereupon Loftus accused Parsons of “unfairly” “attacking” him, and dismissed Parsons’ new remarks too as something which “obvious[ly]” “don’t need” a response. 

Well, no sooner had the pixels dried on that, than Loftus put up another anti-Parsons rant .  Maybe he decided it was not so “obvious” after all that Parsons’ remarks “don’t need” a response.  Or maybe not, because as it happens, Loftus’ latest tantrum also completely fails to respond to what Parsons actually said.
Start with the (unintentionally) comically best line of the rant, wherein Loftus predicts, vis-à-vis his latest post: “I take it Parsons is probably too arrogant to respond to me.”  This despite the fact that the allegedly too-arrogant-to-respond-to-Loftus Parsons already had responded to Loftus (indeed, his response is precisely what Loftus is complaining about), and, again, did so politely rather than arrogantly.  And this despite the fact that Loftus himself had just gotten done arrogantly dismissing Parsons as not worth responding to.  If Loftus isn’t the most clueless man on earth, the only alternative can be that he is in fact the Platonic Form of Cluelessness, that in which all merely finitely clueless men participate. 
Yet arrogance is not the only Loftus-like quality Loftus projects onto Parsons.  He assures us that Parsons is “both arrogant and ignorant.”  How so?
First, Loftus charges that Parsons is an “elitist” who “arrogant[ly] think[s] only sophisticated atheist philosophers can adequately respond to sophisticated Christian philosophers, such that any non-philosopher who tries is ignorant and shouldn't respond at all.”  The slight problem with this, of course, is that Parsons never said any such thing.  What he said is that an atheist should take on the best arguments of the other side rather than the weakest, and should try to understand those arguments before criticizing them.  He never said that only a professional atheist philosopher is capable of doing this.  Loftus is simply attacking a straw man.
Loftus also asserts, in defense of his fellow New Atheists, that “scientists like Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne know more than enough to argue sophisticated Christian philosophers are wrong, even though they don't know as much as they do to respond on their turf.”
Well, suppose some creationist said that he already “knows more than enough to argue that Darwinian biologists are wrong, even though he doesn't know as much as they do to respond on their turf.”  Loftus would be outraged, and rightly so.  Darwinian biologists are precisely the ones who know best the arguments for Darwinian evolution, so that no one who is unwilling to respond “on their turf” could possibly “know more than enough” to reject those arguments. 
But exactly the same thing is true of the arguments of natural theology.  Unless you know the “turf” that Aquinas, Leibniz, et al. are playing on, you cannot possibly “know more than enough” to reject their arguments.  No doubt Loftus will assert that the cases are not really parallel.  But merely asserting is all he does, which is exactly the problem.  For whether the cases are parallel or not is precisely what is at issue between him and Parsons.  Hence merely to assert that the cases are not parallel is simply to beg the question.
With a straight face, apparently (though really, who the hell knows what Loftus is doing behind that keyboard?), Loftus describes himself as “a philosophically sophisticated atheist.”  Philosophically sophisticated?  Well, he certainly knows something about logical fallacies, I’ll give him that.  Unfortunately, he must have left his logic class early the day the professor said: “Oh, and by the way, class, these are ways not to reason.”
Then there are Loftus’s grounds for calling Parsons “ignorant.”  Here they are.  Brace yourself:
I also consider Parsons to be ignorant not to realize that the real ignorance is the ignorance of faith… The whole reason sophisticated Christian arguments exist in the first place is because it takes sophistication to make their faith palatable. The more the sophistication then the more the obfuscation, since their faith can only be defended by confusing people who don't share that sophistication. Defenses of Christianity are nothing but special pleading hiding underneath several layers of obfuscation with a sophistication to make it appear otherwise. It's nothing less than special pleading all the way down.
Now, of course, to know that the defenses really are nothing more than “special pleading,” you’d first have to actually examine them, to show exactly how they go wrong, and to show also that they go wrong so badly that no one could possibly be convinced of them except as a dishonest exercise in special pleading.  Yet examining them in this way is precisely what Loftus says he and other New Atheists can justifiably refuse to do.  That is to say, they insist dogmatically that they can reject arguments and evidence without having actually to examine them -- just like, you know, they constantly accuse religious people of doing.  Evidently, it isn’t really dogmatism and ignorance Loftus dislikes, but only religiousdogmatism and ignorance.  Atheistic dogmatism and ignorance are OK.  But you knew that already if you’ve ever had the misfortune of wasting more than five minutes of your life reading John Loftus.
Anyway, this is of course just the old New Atheist story, the core, manifestly question-begging argument underlying the entire movement: We know even the most sophisticated religious arguments aren’t worth bothering with, because religious claims are just too obviously stupid to be true; and we know they are just too obviously stupid to be true because even the most sophisticated religious arguments aren’t worth bothering with!  Loftus is a metaphysical marvel.  He isn’t just a never-ending train wreck; he is a train which somehow manages to speed into a brick wall despite running in a perfectly circular loop.
Loftus has said that while he is all for “reasonably dissecting” the views of one’s opponents, there are some views that are so manifestly “irrational” that outright “ridicule” is what is called for.  Well, by now he’s certainly proven that much beyond any doubt!

The smell of the sheep (Updated)

Being insulted by the pop atheist writer John Loftus is, to borrow Denis Healey’s famous line, like being savaged by a dead sheep.  It is hard to imagine that a human being could be more devoid of argumentative or polemical skill.  Commenting on my recent First Things exchange with atheist philosopher Keith Parsons, Loftus expresses bafflement at Parsons’ preference for the Old Atheism over the New Atheism.  Unable to see any good reason for it, Loftus slyly concludes: “Keith Parsons is just old.  That explains why he favors the Old Atheism.”  He also suggests that Parsons simply likes the attention Christians give him.
Well, as longtime readers of this blog will recall from his sometimes bizarre combox antics, Loftus certainly knows well the reek of attention-seeking desperation.  Sadly, being John Loftus, he tends to misidentify its source.Something else that never occurs to Loftus is that if he really wants to know why Parsons prefers the Old Atheism to the New, he might, y’know, try checking to see what Parsons actually said about that in his letter to First Things.  (You’d think a purportedly tough-minded, science-based skeptic like Loftus might prefer this method of gathering actual evidence to that of, say, going with whatever lame ad hominemexplanations popped into his head.  Or at any rate, you’d think that if you hadn’t actually had to deal with John Loftus before.)

Now, what Parsons actually said is that the trouble with New Atheist writers is “their logical lacunae and sophomoric mistakes” when addressing philosophical matters, and their tendency to “tar everything with the same brush” rather than distinguishing more sophisticated religious arguments and claims from cruder ones.  “[D]efeating your opponents’ arguments,” says Parsons, “requires (a) taking their best arguments seriously, and (b) doing your philosophical homework.”  The “Old Atheists” were more likely to do that than the “New Atheists.”  Hence Parsons’ preference.  He simply prefers to address what the best arguments of the other side actually say, rather than attacking straw men, begging the question, and committing other fallacies.  What could Loftus possibly object to in that?
The answer, of course, is that if attacking straw men, begging the question, and committing other fallacies were ruled out of bounds for New Atheists, Loftus would find himself suffering from permanent writer’s block.  Consider his reasons for holding, contra Parsons, that the New Atheism is superior to the Old.  The New Atheism, says Loftus, is willing to tell “the whole truth and nothing but the truth about religion,” and to expose the “irrationality” of arguments for religion, which “deserve little or no respect.”  New Atheist intellectuals “are so convinced religious faith is wrong from within their own disciplines they will venture outside their disciplines, disregarding the fact that people like Feser and Parsons will call them ignorant for doing so.”
But of course, Parsons’ point is precisely that New Atheists do not in fact tell “the whole truth and nothing but the truth about religion.”  Rather, they tend to attack straw man, to criticize weak arguments while remaining silent about more interesting and formidable ones, etc.  Parsons’ point is precisely that some religious ideas and arguments, despite being (in Parsons’ view) mistaken, are nevertheless not simply “irrational” or “deserv[ing of] little or no respect,” but rather ought to be responded to seriously.  Parsons’ point is precisely that those academic New Atheists who have “ventured outside their disciplines” have not earned the right to do so, because they have proven themselves incompetent where matters of philosophy and theology are concerned.  And it is not just that critics like Parsons and I call them ignorant; we have shown that they are in fact ignorant by citing a great many specific examples of straw men they have attacked, questions they have begged, arguments they have ignored, and so forth.
Loftus says absolutely nothing to show that Parsons is wrong about all of this.  He simply assertsthat Parsons is wrong.  That is to say, he simply begs the question.  Which means that he does exactly the kind of thing Parsons accuses New Atheists of doing -- in the very act of trying to defend the New Atheists against Parsons.
Pretty obviously a problem, you might think.  But maybe Loftus can’t see the obvious because he’s got his head lodged so far up that goofball hat he’s always wearing.  Or at least, that’s where he thinks it’s lodged.
(Related reading: My First Things review of Jerry Coyne’s Faith versus Fact, which was the occasion for my recent exchange with Keith Parsons, can be found here.  A follow-up post on the book can be found here.  A couple of years ago, Parsons and I engaged in a much more substantive and very fruitful series of exchanges, an index to which can be found at The Secular Outpost.)

UPDATE 4/8: Keith Parsons offers a polite and reasoned reply to Loftus at the Secular Outpost.  Naturally, Loftus says that he refuses to respond to Parsons, other than to whine that Parsons is “attack[ing]” him, is “ignorant,” and that the Secular Outpost is “unfair.”

Got that?  In Loftus’s mind, Parsons’ offering a polite and reasoned defense of himself against Loftus’s argument-free, evidence-free ad hominem attack on Parsons is tantamount to Parsons unfairly and ignorantly attacking Loftus.  Loftus evidently has lifetime pass to New Atheist Fantasyland.

The smell of the sheep

Being insulted by the pop atheist writer John Loftus is, to borrow Denis Healey’s famous line, like being savaged by a dead sheep.  It is hard to imagine that a human being could be more devoid of argumentative or polemical skill.  Commenting on my recent First Things exchange with atheist philosopher Keith Parsons, Loftus expresses bafflement at Parsons’ preference for the Old Atheism over the New Atheism.  Unable to see any good reason for it, Loftus slyly concludes: “Keith Parsons is just old.  That explains why he favors the Old Atheism.”  He also suggests that Parsons simply likes the attention Christians give him.
Well, as longtime readers of this blog will recall from his sometimes bizarre combox antics, Loftus certainly knows well the reek of attention-seeking desperation.  Sadly, being John Loftus, he tends to misidentify its source.Something else that never occurs to Loftus is that if he really wants to know why Parsons prefers the Old Atheism to the New, he might, y’know, try checking to see what Parsons actually said about that in his letter to First Things.  (You’d think a purportedly tough-minded, science-based skeptic like Loftus might prefer this method of gathering actual evidence to that of, say, going with whatever lame ad hominemexplanations popped into his head.  Or at any rate, you’d think that if you hadn’t actually had to deal with John Loftus before.)

Now, what Parsons actually said is that the trouble with New Atheist writers is “their logical lacunae and sophomoric mistakes” when addressing philosophical matters, and their tendency to “tar everything with the same brush” rather than distinguishing more sophisticated religious arguments and claims from cruder ones.  “[D]efeating your opponents’ arguments,” says Parsons, “requires (a) taking their best arguments seriously, and (b) doing your philosophical homework.”  The “Old Atheists” were more likely to do that than the “New Atheists.”  Hence Parsons’ preference.  He simply prefers to address what the best arguments of the other side actually say, rather than attacking straw men, begging the question, and committing other fallacies.  What could Loftus possibly object to in that?
The answer, of course, is that if attacking straw men, begging the question, and committing other fallacies were ruled out of bounds for New Atheists, Loftus would find himself suffering from permanent writer’s block.  Consider his reasons for holding, contra Parsons, that the New Atheism is superior to the Old.  The New Atheism, says Loftus, is willing to tell “the whole truth and nothing but the truth about religion,” and to expose the “irrationality” of arguments for religion, which “deserve little or no respect.”  New Atheist intellectuals “are so convinced religious faith is wrong from within their own disciplines they will venture outside their disciplines, disregarding the fact that people like Feser and Parsons will call them ignorant for doing so.”
But of course, Parsons’ point is precisely that New Atheists do not in fact tell “the whole truth and nothing but the truth about religion.”  Rather, they tend to attack straw man, to criticize weak arguments while remaining silent about more interesting and formidable ones, etc.  Parsons’ point is precisely that some religious ideas and arguments, despite being (in Parsons’ view) mistaken, are nevertheless not simply “irrational” or “deserv[ing of] little or no respect,” but rather ought to be responded to seriously.  Parsons’ point is precisely that those academic New Atheists who have “ventured outside their disciplines” have not earned the right to do so, because they have proven themselves incompetent where matters of philosophy and theology are concerned.  And it is not just that critics like Parsons and I call them ignorant; we have shown that they are in fact ignorant by citing a great many specific examples of straw men they have attacked, questions they have begged, arguments they have ignored, and so forth.
Loftus says absolutely nothing to show that Parsons is wrong about all of this.  He simply assertsthat Parsons is wrong.  That is to say, he simply begs the question.  Which means that he does exactly the kind of thing Parsons accuses New Atheists of doing -- in the very act of trying to defend the New Atheists against Parsons.
Pretty obviously a problem, you might think.  But maybe Loftus can’t see the obvious because he’s got his head lodged so far up that goofball hat he’s always wearing.  Or at least, that’s where he thinks it’s lodged.
(Related reading: My First Things review of Jerry Coyne’s Faith versus Fact, which was the occasion for my recent exchange with Keith Parsons, can be found here.  A follow-up post on the book can be found here.  A couple of years ago, Parsons and I engaged in a much more substantive and very fruitful series of exchanges, an index to which can be found at The Secular Outpost.)

A note on falsification

Antony Flew’s famous 1950 article “Theology and Falsification” posed what came to be known as the “falsificationist challenge” to theology.  A claim is falsifiable when it is empirically testable -- that is to say, when it makes predictions about what will be observed under such-and-such circumstances such that, if the predictions don’t pan out, the claim is thereby shown to be false.  The idea that a genuinely scientific claim must be falsifiable had already been given currency by Karl Popper.  Flew’s aim was to apply it to a critique of such theological claims as the thesis that God loves us.  No matter what sorts of evil and suffering occur in the world, the theologian does not give up the claim that God loves us.  But then, what, in that case, does the claim actually amount to?  And why should we accept the claim?  Flew’s challenge was to get the theologian to specify exactly what would have to happen in order for the theologian to give up the claim that God loves us, or the claim that God exists.Now, there are several problems with Flew’s challenge.  Some of them have to do with specifically theological matters, such as the analogical use of the term “good” when applied to God, the role that divine permission of evil plays in the realization of a greater good, and so forth.  Some of the problems have to do with the idea of falsification itself.  As Popper himself emphasized, it is simply an error to suppose that all rationally justifiable claims have to be empirically falsifiable.  Popper intended falsificationism merely as a theory about what makes a claim scientific, and not every rationally acceptable claim is or ought to be a scientific claim.  Hence not every rationally acceptable claim is or ought to be empirically falsifiable.

For example, the thesis of falsificationism itself is, as Popper realized, not empirically falsifiable.  This does not make Popper’s falsificationist theory of science self-refuting, because, again, he does not say in the first place that every claim has to be empirically falsifiable.  Falsificationism is a claim about science but it is not itself a scientific claim, but rather a philosophical claim (what Popper called a claim of “meta-science”).  It is subject to potential criticism -- by way of philosophical analysis and argument, say -- but not by way of empirical testing, specifically.  
Claims of mathematics and logic are like this too.  We can analyze and argue about them philosophically, but they are not plausibly subject to empirical refutation, specifically.  And metaphysical claims are like that as well.  With at least the most general sorts of metaphysical claims (e.g. about the nature of causality as such, or substance as such, or what have you), it is a sheer category mistake to suppose that they do, or ought to, entail specific empirical predictions.  The reason is that the claims are too general for that.  They are claims about (among other things) what any possibleempirically observable phenomena must necessarily presuppose (and any possible non-empirical realities too, if there are any).  Naturally, then, they are not going to be undermined by any specific empirical observation.  By no means does that make them immune from rational evaluation.  They can still be analyzed, and argued for or against, by way of philosophical analysis and argumentation.  But as with claims of meta-science, or claims of mathematics and logic, so too with claims of metaphysics, it is a mistake to suppose that they stand or fall with empirical falsifiability.
Now, the fundamental claims and arguments of theology -- for example, the most important arguments for the existence and attributes of God (such as Aquinas’s arguments, or Leibniz’s arguments) -- are a species of metaphysical claim.  Hence it is simply a category mistake to demand of them, as Flew did, that they be empirically falsifiable.  To dismiss theology on falsificationist grounds, one would, to be consistent, also have to dismiss mathematics, logic, meta-science, and metaphysics in general.  Which would be, not only absurd, but self-defeating, since the claim that only scientific claims are rationally justifiable is itself not a scientific claim but a metaphysical claim, and any argument for this claim would presuppose standards of logic.
There is also the problem that, as philosophers of science had already begun to see at the time Flew wrote, it turns out that even scientificclaims are not as crisply falsifiable as Popper initially thought.  Indeed, the problem was known even before Popper’s time, and famously raised by Pierre Duhem.  A scientific theory is always tested in conjunction with various assumptions about background conditions obtaining at the time an experiment is performed, assumptions about the experimental set-up itself, and auxiliary scientific hypotheses about the phenomena being studied.  If the outcome of an experiment is not as predicted, one could give up the theory being tested, but one might also consider giving up one or more of the auxiliary hypotheses instead, or check to see if the background conditions or experimental set-up were really as one had supposed.  That does not mean that scientific theories are not empirically falsifiable after all, but it does mean that falsifying a theory is a much messier and more tentative affair than readers of pop science and pop philosophy books might suppose.
Then there are claims that are empirical and not metaphysical in the strictest sense, but still so extremely general that any possible natural science would have to take them for granted -- in which case they are really presuppositions of natural science rather than propositions of natural science.  For example, the proposition that change occurs is like this.  We know from experience that change occurs, but it is not something falsifiable by experience, because any possible experience by which we might test it itself presupposesthat change occurs.  In particular, in order to test a proposition via observation or experiment, you need to see whether or not your current experience is followed by the predicted experience, which involves one experience succeeding another, which entails change.  Natural science itself, then, which involves attempting to falsify theories (even if it involves more than this) presupposes something which cannot be falsified.
Necessary presuppositions of natural science like the one just described are the subject matter of that branch of philosophy known as the philosophy of nature (which, though more fundamental than natural science, is less fundamental than metaphysics as Thomists understand “metaphysics,” and is thus something of a middle-ground discipline between them).  For example, the Aristotelian theory of actuality and potentiality (which is the core of the Aristotelian philosophy of nature) is grounded in an analysis of what change must involve, where the existence of change is presupposed by natural science.  Hence the theory of actuality and potentiality is grounded in what is presupposed by natural science.  That is why even natural science cannot overthrow it.  But the characteristically Aristotelian argument for God’s existence -- the argument from change to the existence of an unchanging changer of things (or, more precisely, of a purely actual actualizer of things) is grounded in the theory of actuality and potentiality, and thus in what natural science itself must take for granted.  And thus it too cannot be overturned even by natural science.  This “empirical unfalsifiability” is no more a weakness of the Aristotelian argument for God’s existence than the “empirical unfalsifiability” of the existence of change, including the existence of experience itself, is a weakness.  It makes the arguments in question (if they are otherwise unproblematic) more rationally secure than empirical science, not less. 
Lazy shouts of “unfalisfiability!” against theological claims just ignore all this complexity -- the distinctions that have to be drawn between empirical claims on the one hand and claims of mathematics, logic, and metaphysics on the other; between extremely general empirical claims and more specific ones; between philosophy of nature (which studies the philosophical presuppositions of natural science) and natural science itself; and between the testing of a thesis and the testing of the auxiliary assumptions we generally take for granted but conjoin with the thesis when drawing predictions from it. 
So, falsificationism is a rather feeble instrument to wield against theology.  And in fact, atheist philosophers have known this for decades, even if New Atheist combox commandos are still catching up. 
All the same, where we are evaluating a specific empirical claim -- rather than a claim of mathematics, logic, or metaphysics, or an extremely general empirical claim like “change occurs” -- falsifiability is an important consideration, even if not as decisive as Popper supposed.  Take an extremely specific and straightforward empirical claim, e.g. the claim that a large, yellowish triangular shape will suddenly appear in the center of my field of vision within the next few seconds.  If no such shape actually appears in the next few seconds, it would be pretty hard to deny that the claim has been falsified.  For example, I couldn’t say “Maybe the shape was there in the room, but I didn’t see it because it was behind a bookshelf.”  I intentionally phrased the claim so that it was about what I would experience, not about what would be in the room, so appealing to the idea that some physical object stood in the way of my seeing it won’t help avoid falsification.  Nor would it help to say “Maybe it will appear an hour from now, or tomorrow,” since the claim referred specifically to the next few seconds.
Of course, that’s not a very interestingempirical claim.  Most interesting empirical claims are far less specific than that, even though they are nowhere near as general as the claim that change occurs.  There is, needless to say, a large range of cases, some of which are more toward the general end of things, some of them more toward the specific, and the latter are easier to falsify than the former.  But even if the more general ones aren’t as crisply falsifiable as a more simplistic application of the Popperian model would imply, they are still far from unfalsifiable.
For example, take the claim that heavy smoking over a long period of time has a strong tendency to cause cancer.  Obviously this is not falsified by the fact that some heavy smokers never develop cancer, because the claim has been phrased in a way that takes account of that.  It speaks only of a strong tendency, and even a strong tendency needn’t always be realized.  But neither is the claim made vacuous by that qualification.  If it turned out that only five percent of people who smoke heavily over the course of many years ended up getting cancer, we could reasonably say that the claim had been falsified.  Whereas if it turned out that sixty percent of those who smoke heavily over the course of many years end up getting cancer, we would say that the claim had survived falsification, even though sixty percent is well short of one hundred percent.  Indeed, even if the percentage were much lower than that -- suppose it were forty percent, for example -- it would not necessarily follow that the claim had been falsified.
Nor need there be anything like even thatstrong a link between two phenomena for us reasonably to posit a causal correlation.  Take an example often discussed in philosophy of science, viz. the relationship between syphilis and paresis.  If syphilis is untreated, it can lead to paresis, though this is rare.  But it would be absurd, not to mention medically irresponsible, to conclude that the claim of a causal correlation between syphilis and paresis is falsified by the fact that actually developing paresis is rare.  All the same, if there were on record only one or two cases, out of millions, of paresis following upon syphilis, it would -- especially if no mechanism by which the one might lead to the other were proposed -- be hard in that case to resist the conclusion that the claim of a causal correlation had been falsified.
So, an empirical claim concerning a causal link between two phenomena can be substantive rather than vacuous, and also empirically very well-supported, even if there are many cases in which the one phenomenon is not in fact followed by the other.  Considerations about falsifiability, properly understood, do not undermine the point.  Indeed, someone who resists such a claim might himself be subject to criticism on the grounds that he has made his position unfalsifiable.
For example, suppose a heavy smoker said, in reply to those who implored him to cut back: “Oh come on, lots of people smoke heavily and don’t get cancer!  So how can you maintain your claim that there is a causal link, in the face of all that evidence?  Don’t you know that a serious scientific claim should be falsifiable?”  In fact, of course, it is the heavy smoker in question who is more plausibly accused of being insufficiently respectful of falsifiability.  For there is a very strong link between heavy smoking and cancer, even if the former doesn’t always lead to the latter.  And the empirical evidence for that link is so strong that it is those who denyit who are refusing to let their position be falsified by the evidence.
More could be said, but in fact these reflections on falsification are intended merely as a preamble to an application of the idea to a domain very different from the examples considered so far -- namely, an example concerning politics and current events.  I’ll get to that in another post.