Keith Parsons's Blog, page 2
January 18, 2013
More Straw Manning of the Opposition
Over at He Lives, David Heddle provides another example of a theist straw manning the opposition. He writes:
The problem with this list is that, with the possible exception of John Loftus* (see below), Heddle doesn't list atheists who are professional philosophers of religion, such as Draper, Oppy, Le Poidevin, Parsons, Martin, Schelleneberg, Rowe, Drange, Rundle, Philipse, Quentin Smith, Stephen Law, Pigliucci, Maitzen, and so forth. It is little surprise, then, that he does not fairly or accurately represent the best arguments for atheism, i.e., the arguments developed by those authors.
Furthermore, Heddle portrays Loftus and Carrier as uncharitably as possible. Loftus has much stronger arguments against theism than the size of the universe. Furthermore, Heddle caricatures the actual argument Loftus does make about the size of the universe. Likewise, Carrier has defended numerous arguments for atheism that have nothing to do with the historicity of Jesus.
Is it really so difficult for people to fairly and accurately represent the best arguments of their opposition?
* I am not sure if Loftus should be classified as a "professional philosopher," but he clearly has the most formal academic training in philosophy of religion and apologetics out of the individuals in Heddle's list.
Intellectual atheism in the 21st century:
• If God made everything, who made God? (Dawkins)
• Religion poisons everything! (Hitchens)
• Science and religion are not compatible! (Coyne)
• I'm a genius and can use Bayes's Theorem to show Jesus didn't exist! (Carrier)
• Menz suck! Theists is dumb! (Myers)
• If I were god, I'd make a small universe, ergo no god! (Loftus)
The problem with this list is that, with the possible exception of John Loftus* (see below), Heddle doesn't list atheists who are professional philosophers of religion, such as Draper, Oppy, Le Poidevin, Parsons, Martin, Schelleneberg, Rowe, Drange, Rundle, Philipse, Quentin Smith, Stephen Law, Pigliucci, Maitzen, and so forth. It is little surprise, then, that he does not fairly or accurately represent the best arguments for atheism, i.e., the arguments developed by those authors.
Furthermore, Heddle portrays Loftus and Carrier as uncharitably as possible. Loftus has much stronger arguments against theism than the size of the universe. Furthermore, Heddle caricatures the actual argument Loftus does make about the size of the universe. Likewise, Carrier has defended numerous arguments for atheism that have nothing to do with the historicity of Jesus.
Is it really so difficult for people to fairly and accurately represent the best arguments of their opposition?
* I am not sure if Loftus should be classified as a "professional philosopher," but he clearly has the most formal academic training in philosophy of religion and apologetics out of the individuals in Heddle's list.
Hostility of the Universe to Life: Understated Evidence about Cosmic Fine-Tuning?
I've blogged before about the fallacy of understated evidence. Here I want to explore further how it applies to fine-tuning arguments.
Even if we assume that so-called cosmic "fine-tuning" is evidence favoring theism over naturalism, that argument commits the fallacy of understated evidence. In other words, even if the general fact of fine-tuning is more probable on the assumption that theism is true than on the assumption that naturalism is true, it ignores other, more specific facts about fine-tuning, facts that, given fine-tuning, are more likely on naturalism than on theism.
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Even if we assume that so-called cosmic "fine-tuning" is evidence favoring theism over naturalism, that argument commits the fallacy of understated evidence. In other words, even if the general fact of fine-tuning is more probable on the assumption that theism is true than on the assumption that naturalism is true, it ignores other, more specific facts about fine-tuning, facts that, given fine-tuning, are more likely on naturalism than on theism.
Read more »
Podcast: Objective morality and atheism; the evil god challenge; risks posed by religion
I did a podcast for Malcontent's Gambit here. It's about 45 mins long. Alan and I got into some interesting topics, including: whether atheists can allow for absolute moral values, my evil god challenge, and the potential dangers posed by religion.
An Argument from Scale -- Poster Style
HT: Adam Taylor
As a nitpick, theism by itself does not say anything about God
having a personal relationship with anyone. Only sectarian versions of
theism, such as Christian theism, make such claims.
Putting that aside, another worry I have about this graphic is that it seems to attack a caricature of what theists believe. God could have multiple purposes for creating the universe; I don't see any reason to think that even Christian theism says that the sole reason for the universe's size is human beings.
Jewish and Christian theism do teach that man is created in the image and likeness of God. (Islam may teach that also; I don't know.) So on Jewish and Christian theism, humanity does have a special kind of significance. But, on the assumption that we are created in the image of God, I don't see why it would follow that the size of the universe should be on a human scale. The image of God doctrine, as I understand it, seems to be about humanity's role on earth and the attributes which differentiate humans from non-human (Earthly) life, not the size of our earthly domain compared to the size of the universe.
ETA: Also, if Wikipedia is correct that "the diamater of the observable universe is estimated at about 28 billion parsecs (93 billion light years)," then the post is wrong when it says the universe is "13.75 billion light years across."
See Also:
Index: The Evidential Argument from Scale
Religion in Human Evolution
I tried to read Robert N. Bellah's Religion in Human Evolution. It should have been interesting—prominent social scientist writes ambitious, sweeping book about religion—but I abandoned it about a third of the way through. I rarely fail to finish books. But I couldn't stand this one any more.
My impression: it's a profoundly learned but also profoundly superficial book, because it's so obsessed with finding transcendent depth in every religious and wisdom tradition. Bellah just seemed incapable of recognizing bullshit. So the book effectively indulges in apologetics in the form of pathological avoidance of any criticism. We get other ways of knowing, poetic, propositionally inexpressible truths—even in the drivel produced to ostensibly explain other items of bad poetry. We get "unitary events"—not just interesting psychological phenomena but self-validating religious experiences that break into deeper realities.
Biological evolution becomes another "true myth," comparable to all those other religious true myths. None of this implicit natural science-bashing relies on anything as pedestrian as arguments or evidence, beyond some unfortunately typical misreadings of controversies over "selfish genes," taking some embarrassing cosmic effusions by Eric Chaisson too seriously, and so on and so forth. Bellah even takes the verbal diarrhea of people like postmodernist psychoanalysts seriously as a kind of wisdom literature. It's not so much that Bellah kept pulling stuff out of his own ass, but quoting tons of material others have pulled out of their asses, as long as they are congenial to his overall mushy point of view.
It quickly turned into a bad stereotype of liberal religiosity: everyone (every tradition) is right, though some may have more depth than others. An implicit avoidance of criticism threads through the part of the book I endured, though it does not prevent Bellah from substituting condescendence for criticism.
Oh, did I mention that there was Templeton support behind this work? Typical.
My impression: it's a profoundly learned but also profoundly superficial book, because it's so obsessed with finding transcendent depth in every religious and wisdom tradition. Bellah just seemed incapable of recognizing bullshit. So the book effectively indulges in apologetics in the form of pathological avoidance of any criticism. We get other ways of knowing, poetic, propositionally inexpressible truths—even in the drivel produced to ostensibly explain other items of bad poetry. We get "unitary events"—not just interesting psychological phenomena but self-validating religious experiences that break into deeper realities.
Biological evolution becomes another "true myth," comparable to all those other religious true myths. None of this implicit natural science-bashing relies on anything as pedestrian as arguments or evidence, beyond some unfortunately typical misreadings of controversies over "selfish genes," taking some embarrassing cosmic effusions by Eric Chaisson too seriously, and so on and so forth. Bellah even takes the verbal diarrhea of people like postmodernist psychoanalysts seriously as a kind of wisdom literature. It's not so much that Bellah kept pulling stuff out of his own ass, but quoting tons of material others have pulled out of their asses, as long as they are congenial to his overall mushy point of view.
It quickly turned into a bad stereotype of liberal religiosity: everyone (every tradition) is right, though some may have more depth than others. An implicit avoidance of criticism threads through the part of the book I endured, though it does not prevent Bellah from substituting condescendence for criticism.
Oh, did I mention that there was Templeton support behind this work? Typical.
Loftus's Outsider Test for Faith viewed in HD with Bayes's Theorem
In a recent post, I mentioned that anyone interested in the discussion regarding "atheism versus faith" should be reading John Loftus. Particularly, I noted an argument from his excellent Why I Became an Atheist,
the "Outsider's Test for Faith" (OTF), which he is elaborating upon in a
new book of that title to be published by Prometheus Books next spring.
Subsequently, I made a comment that piqued his interest by saying that
"[the OTF could be] greatly strengthened by appropriately applying
Bayes's theorem." Since my background is in mathematics, this caught
John's attention.
To quickly clarify what I mean by that, I do not mean to imply that I
can improve upon the OTF itself but rather that a clear understanding of
Bayes's theorem, which is a mathematical result that underlies
essentially all hypothesis-test reasoning, will greatly enhance the
rigor with which someone might view what the OTF is telling them--and
perhaps get them to take it much more seriously than they might have
otherwise. That's one thing about mathematics--it's nearly impossible to
argue with it, try as some ideologues might (maybe they should call
Nate Silver about that?).
LINK (HT: Richard Carrier)
January 17, 2013
Scalar Connection to Meaning of Life?
Because I've written so much about arguments from scale lately, the following statement in Dennis Prager's op-ed on atheism and consolation caught my eye.
This sounds very similar to the temporal aspect of arguments from scale: humans do not enjoy a temporally privileged position in the universe's history.
Read more »
"'And we promise to work for more gun control. But the truth is we don’t
have a single consoling thing to say to you because we atheists
recognize that the human being is nothing more than matter, no different
from all other matter in the universe except for having
self-consciousness. Therefore, when we die, that’s it. Moreover, within a
tiny speck of time in terms of the universe’s history, nearly every one
of us, including your child, will be completely forgotten, as if we
never even existed. Life is a random crapshoot. Our birth and existence
are flukes. And you will never see your child again.'" (emphasis mine)
This sounds very similar to the temporal aspect of arguments from scale: humans do not enjoy a temporally privileged position in the universe's history.
Read more »
Tom Flynn on Dennis Prager
As always, Tom Flynn has written another spirited essay, this time in response to Dennis Prager on atheism and consolation.
LINK
I agree with pretty much everything he writes. Yet I find myself thinking, "Yeah, but ..." as I read it.
I think the first thing that needs to be said is that what counts as "consolation" is inherently subjective: it's going to vary from person to person and from time to time. Some people will find it consoling to know that the dead cannot suffer, whereas other people will not. I guess that has at least something to do with how much a person was suffering before or at the time of their death. When someone dies after a long and painful battle with a terrible illness, I think most loved ones are comforted by the fact that the deceased person is no longer suffering. But when it comes to the death of little children who presumably were in perfect health at the time of their murder, I doubt most parents will be consoled by the fact that the children are not suffering.
Flynn writes:
Everything Flynn writes is obviously correct. Again, however, since what counts as consolation is inherently subjective, there is no objective fact of the matter. All we can do is survey people and ask what would console them. In the event of the hypothetical murder of one of their small children, my guess is that most people would not find much consolation, if any, in the fact that the future sufferings described by Flynn would be avoided by the dead children.
I, for one, would not find any consolation in that fact.
LINK
I agree with pretty much everything he writes. Yet I find myself thinking, "Yeah, but ..." as I read it.
I think the first thing that needs to be said is that what counts as "consolation" is inherently subjective: it's going to vary from person to person and from time to time. Some people will find it consoling to know that the dead cannot suffer, whereas other people will not. I guess that has at least something to do with how much a person was suffering before or at the time of their death. When someone dies after a long and painful battle with a terrible illness, I think most loved ones are comforted by the fact that the deceased person is no longer suffering. But when it comes to the death of little children who presumably were in perfect health at the time of their murder, I doubt most parents will be consoled by the fact that the children are not suffering.
Flynn writes:
Prager denies that "the dead do not suffer" offers any true consoling
power. "Were these children suffering before their lives were taken?" he
asks. "Would they have suffered if they had lived on?" If you live in
the real world, you know the answer is yes. Everyone suffers! Children
get taunted on the playground, they fall and skin their knees. Their
dogs bite them. When they get older, they'll probably have their hearts
broken a few times. Maybe they'll lose a valued job, maybe they'll go
through a bitter divorce. Some of them will die too young of terrible
diseases, whether in childhood, young adulthood, or middle age. And some
will know truly terrible suffering from chronic disease, injury, or
violence. That's just life.
Everything Flynn writes is obviously correct. Again, however, since what counts as consolation is inherently subjective, there is no objective fact of the matter. All we can do is survey people and ask what would console them. In the event of the hypothetical murder of one of their small children, my guess is that most people would not find much consolation, if any, in the fact that the future sufferings described by Flynn would be avoided by the dead children.
I, for one, would not find any consolation in that fact.
January 15, 2013
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