I know that Jerry Coyne has dealt with this already, and I almost simply let it pass by, but then, I thought, this is much too important. Jerry says that Karl Giberson disses the evangelicals at last. I don’t think he does, and I find that worrying. What Giberson does in his HuffPo article is to take evangelicals to task for their failure to accept the conclusions of science, but he still can’t help being on their side. He just doesn’t get their being anti-science. He actually thinks that being anti-science is in conflict with their religion. He thinks American evangelicalism has taken a wrong turning, but he still thinks that evangelicalism itself is true.
Of course, Jerry has the man’s measure. He knows that Giberson hasn’t really dissed evangelicalism. As he says at the end of his post on Uncle Karl’s newest venture into the science-religion wars, Giberson needs to take one step further:
– he doesn’t seem to realize that it’s the business of religion itself to blur the boundaries between real and fake knowledge. If you swallow things like Adam and Eve, the Resurrection, or transubstantiation, then you’re already halfway to denying global warming and evolution. For the faithful, truth is not what’s supported by evidence, but simply what they want to be true.
Of course, it’s not quite this simple. They may want certain things to be true, but they think they have a reason to believe that these things are true. and that is precisely where Uncle Karl fails to oppose them. He still obviously thinks that there is every reason for believing that evangelicalism is true. He just doesn’t think this forces them to cut science adrift. He puts the point with exemplary clarity:
The tragedy is that nothing within the faith commitments of evangelicals requires the adoption of these various knowledge-denying views. There are authentic and contributing evangelical Christians within every knowledge community. Francis Collins, for example, is a committed evangelical Christian and an important leader in the scientific community. He is also an outspoken critic of Intelligent Design and has written widely on the reconciliation of his faith and his science.
American evangelicals desperately need credible leaders to wean them off their preference for discredited and indefensible knowledge claims. At the moment, however, it is hard to imagine where these leaders might come from.
What Karl Giberson fails to do is to recognise that what we have here is what Alisdair McIntyre would speak of as another rationality — an ingenious but hopeless position. I just bought a second-hand copy of Whose Justice, Which Rationality?, where McIntyre begins — I haven’t got much farther than that — by speaking of different traditions of rationality. Rationality, he thinks, is only meaningful in the context of traditions of rationality.
Take John Rawls’ idea of justice. (McIntyre doesn’t mention Rawls, but it’s not hard to see that this is who he has in mind.) Rawls imagines what he calls the “original position,” from which people are going to choose the rules that will govern their society. He suggest that it would be most rational for people to choose a maximin strategy, that is, a strategy which will maximise minimum outcomes. If you don’t know whether you’re going to be at the bottom of the society or the top — the original position assumes that you can’t know this — then you will choose a strategy that will maximise minimum outcomes, in an arrangement that will guaranteed the best outcomes for all, so that, if you end up at the bottom, you won’t have nothing.
McIntyre says that this will guarantee liberal outcomes. It is, in fact, a liberal rationality. Giberson says that in his new book (The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Scientific Age), co-authored with the historian Randall Stephens, they
… look at the widespread and disturbing inability of American evangelicals to distinguish between real knowledge claims, rooted in serious research and endorsed by credible knowledge communities, and pseudo-claims made by unqualified groups and leaders that offer “faith-friendly” alternatives.
Jerry Coyne says, with some justice, that this is because “it’s the business of religion itself to blur the boundaries between real and fake knowledge,” and that Giberson doesn’t seem to understand this. And while I agree with this assessment, it is important to see that, whether fake or not, what is at work is what McIntyre might call an alternative rationality. The point is, as Timothy Williamson says in an article in the New York Times this morning, that science, which may win, as Hawking says, because it works, has a problem showing, by means of hard science, that it is the only rational way to achieve knowledge, and the evangelicals that reject appeals like those of Francis Collins and Karl Giberson, think that they know another rational way. That’s why the Discovery Institute tries to mix it up with science, by catching the coat-tails of the argument that peer-reviewed science is often a failure at producing results that we can be confident in. I think Williamson is wrong, by the way, and that naturalism is not self-defeating in the way that he suggests, because Rosenberg, to whom he is responding, didn’t need to leave question marks around mathematics, history and other pursuits. They may not be hard science, but we can still speak naturalistically about them. History produces or doesn’t produce evidence, and while historical explanations and interpretations may be open to question, if they are not based on evidence, they do not qualify as history at all.
Giberson wonders where the new evangelical leaders are going to come from, because evangelicalism has been hijacked, he thinks, by forces of unreason. He just doesn’t see that evangelicalism itself is unreasonable and irrational, that religion is unreasonable and irrational, and so long as he doesn’t see this — so long as he doesn’t see that there is no way to turn evangelicalism, or any other religious beliefs, into science-friendly ways of responding to experience — he’s simply missing the point. Didn’t the nonsense of Biologos teach the man anything? What did he think all that nonsense was about? Didn’t he see that fiddling around with the story of Adam and Eve is a lost cause? And that goes for any other religious beliefs. Just because science developed in the West, which had a long Christian tradition, and just because the early scientists could square their science with belief, by pretending that God wrote two books, the Bible and Nature, doesn’t mean that science developed out of Christianity, and doesn’t mean that Christianity and science can ever be made consistent. It’s quite clear that they cannot be, despite all the special pleading from people like Arthur Peacocke , John Polkinghorne, Alister McGrath, Francis Collins, and so on and on. These guys want Christianity to be true. They want to believe, so they turn themselves into intellectual pretzels in order to go on believing.
The Church didn’t close down the Greek philosophical schools for nothing. They closed them down because they knew that their speculations were not only inconsistent with Christianity, but that speculation must inevitably move away from what was held by Christians to be the truth — just had to, inevitably, because that is what rational thought must continue to do – and Aquinas, despite his big brain, didn’t change that. He may have domesticated Aristotle, turning him into a Catholic lap-dog, but he didn’t, for all that, show that Catholicism is reasonable or rational. I was once a strict, conservative, Anglo-Catholic, and I went through all the motions of proving that this was the only true faith, Eric Mascall, a lesser Anglican Aquinas, and all. Had I kept it up, I’d probably be taking myself off to the Anglican Ordinariate of the Catholic Church right now. But then I realised that it was all hokum, and I switched horses in mid-stream, and I found that it was just as easy to defend liberal Christianity as it was to uphold strict Anglo-Catholic principles. It’s not a rational pursuit. It uses reason, but it really uses reason to blunt and subvert reason. That’s why sometimes it is held that history is not a rational pursuit, because it can so easily be hijacked by bias. But it still needs evidence, and bias can’t hold it in thrall forever. But, with theology, it can. Despite trying to diss evangelicalism, Giberson is still a prisoner of it. He thinks it just needs new leaders, and he can’t see where they are to come from. It’s time for him to realise that it’s not lack of leaders that is at issue, but lack of substance.
This is precisely why I think that those skeptics that think skepticism should stick to science, and stay away from philosophy are wrong. We have good reasons to be skeptical about the claims that religion provides another rational way to gain knowledge. We can even use evidence-based reasoning to show religion has a problem supporting that assertion.
As for Karl Giberson, you can’t help but wonder when he’ll take that next step. Sooner or later he must realize he’s too far outside the evangelical main stream. If he doesn’t leave himself, he’s likely going to be pushed out. The threat of exclusion from the community is a powerful tool to keep people in line and in the faith, but eventually, they will act on that threat.
Deen, I agree with both these points. It is simply impossible for scepticism to be placed on a firm foundation solely by referring to the procedures of science. And I wonder too when Giberson will take the next step, or when he will be pushed.
According to John Gray’s Enlightenment’s Wake MacIntyre does indeed conclude that reason can’t transcend traditions, but MacIntyre also concludes that the Thomistic-Aristotelian tradition is a superior tradition of reasoning. That is rather unsurprising considering MacIntyre is Catholic.
This recent thinking (which sounds so similar to postmodernism or cultural relativism) is probably more correct than our idea that reason is transcendental and universal, although I still can’t help but associate reason or logic with mathematics, and hence it has a universal application. I can’t help but remain sceptical (which is itself a tradition).
This makes things rather complicated, and I think we’re only scratching the surface.
At least he’s come to the realization that the problem lies in the opposite direction from us nasty old methodological naturalists.
BioLogos seemed to be on a “blame the messenger” kick for a long time — trying to blame science for the fact that religion is nonsense. And to kick at atheists for shining a spotlight on it.
It seems Karl now understands that we’re actually on the same team — and it’s Albert Mohler, et al, who are the ones in the wrong here (quite literally in the wrong).
Just one more step, Karl. Maybe a big one, maybe not. Find the methodological naturalist solution to the problem “what happens after death”. You will find that all of the evidence points to a single happy conclusion — nothing at all. No rewards, no punishment, no eternal anything, no judgment, no Jesus, no devil, nor angels nor demons. Only what the Eastern traditions called “blessed nothingness”.
And why do I call that conclusion “happy”? Because conceptualizing — truly thinking HARD about what an eternal consciousness would entail — makes one realize that such a thing not only is impossible by physics (where’s the energy source? how does consciousness remain coherent?), it’s ethically appalling. Eternal bliss isn’t bliss — it’s pure torture.
Happily, there is no such a thing. You’re here, then you’re not. Stop cowering. Get on with living your life out of the shadow of an imaginary judge.
Agreed. The laughable notion, promulgated by some apologists, that science arose from or was nourished by religion is soundly dispensed with by Charles Freeman in ‘The Closing of the Western Mind.’ That book should be force-fed to a lot of people!
Despite trying to diss evangelicalism, Giberson is still a prisoner of it.
Every place of refuge has its price. Christianity talks of saving souls, but in many cases the price of that refuge is literally one’s mortal, if not immortal, soul.
Deen said (#1):
This is precisely why I think that those skeptics [who] think skepticism should stick to science, and stay away from philosophy are wrong. We have good reasons to be skeptical about the claims that religion provides another rational way to gain knowledge.
Quite agree that the targets of skepticism should not be at all limited. Though I’ll disagree that religion is incapable of yielding useful and valid knowledge, even if they are frequently diamonds in the rough that require a lot of processing before they have much use. I’m reminded of the discussion in a book by Richard Tarnas – The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View – wherein he describes how the gods of the Greek pantheon evolved into the concept of archetypes. And where would we be without such myths as Prometheus and Sisyphus and Pandora? And even, subsequently, the myth of Adam and Eve has some utility as a metaphor for the dawning of consciousness and all its attendant consequences. And, in addition, even Dawkins lists some two pages in The God Delusion of allusions and metaphors and parables without which Western Culture would be impoverished. Trick is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
If he doesn’t leave himself, he’s likely going to be pushed out. The threat of exclusion from the community is a powerful tool to keep people in line and in the faith, but eventually, they will act on that threat.
True. Reminds me of a quote of his (unknown source at the moment):
As a purely practical matter, I have compelling reasons to believe in God. My parents are deeply committed Christians and would be devastated, were I to reject my faith. My wife and children believe in God, and we attend church together regularly. Most of my friends are believers. I have a job I love at a Christian college that would be forced to dismiss me if I were to reject the faith that underpins the mission of the college. Abandoning belief in God would be disruptive, sending my life completely off the rails.
Seems to me that he is putting the cart – his allegiance to some of the “idols” (phantoms, sources of deception) that Francis Bacon identified as hindering the progress of science – ahead of the horse – his rationality, his integrity, his social responsibility.
Egbert said (#3):
This makes things rather complicated, and I think we’re only scratching the surface.
Big time.
Don’t know if you’ve ever read Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach [most highly recommended], but he has some marvelous expositions on the limitations of any and every system of logic, notably his use of “The MU-puzzle” – a very simple system of letters (M,I & U) and rules of transformation – to illustrate those limitations.
Although the crux of the matter is that some systems are broader and more powerful than others in that some “truths”, some facts, are accessible in one system but not in others – the proof being in the pudding. For example consider this quote [from Massimo Pigliucci’s Nonsense on Stilts - also highly recommended]:
For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert; but for every fact there is not necessarily an equal and opposite fact. Thomas Sowell, American economist.
And the facts of the matter are that science and the philosophies which undergird it have delivered far more goods and benefits than anything from Aristotelian-Thomist metaphysics – that “tradition of reasoning” – which has delivered absolutely diddly-squat – except maybe much grief which I expect we could quite easily do without.
Kevin said (#4):
Eternal bliss isn’t bliss — it’s pure torture.
“Against boredom the gods themselves struggle in vain.”
Though one might suggest that your statement is an assumption, a projection, a hypothesis, if not an article of faith. Might be true; might not be: might be nice to have the option – I still think that “three score and ten” sucks, big time; “a long habit of living indisposes us to dying”.
Loren Amacher said (#5):
Agreed. The laughable notion, promulgated by some apologists, that science arose from or was nourished by religion is soundly dispensed with by Charles Freeman in ‘The Closing of the Western Mind.’
Sounds like a worthwhile book to put on my list. Although I would argue that the book I referred to earlier – Tarnas’ The Passion of the Western Mind – strongly indicates that the Church itself was in fact instrumental in promoting science. While one might argue that other vehicles would have been better that still does not detract from the facts that it did so – even if it made some efforts to ensure that it alone carried the torch:
Under these new circumstances [at the beginning of the Mediaeval era], the Church began to sponsor a tradition of scholarship and education of extraordinary breadth, rigor, and profundity. Characteristic of this change in intellectual climate was the development of a school in early twelfth-century Paris at the Augustinian Abbey of Saint-Victor. Although working wholly within the tradition of monastic mysticism and Christian Platonism, Hugh of Saint-Victor proposed the radical educational thesis that secular learning, focused on the reality of the natural world, constituted a necessary foundation for advanced religious contemplation and even mystical ecstasy. [pg 175]
But definitely somewhat amusing how the Church frequently is caught in a bind having painted itself into one corner or another, for examples Galileo and now the conflict between the Adam and Eve myth and modern evolutionary biology. It frequently promotes science when it apparently aids or advances the theology but shuts the door, posthaste, to the resulting enlightenment when various monsters lurking therein are blinded. That conflict between those opposing, if not fundamentally antithetical, perspectives or value systems reminds me of a scene from the movie Pete and Tillie wherein another character, Gertrude, was tricked into being the head of some commission or organization that required her to give her age to the police as part of the process of authorization. As I recollect the conflict between her vanity and the obligations of her position caused her fainting or death. In the case of the Church I think it couldn’t happen to a nicer organization.
@Steersman:
Then tell me: by which process do you think religion generates this knowledge? Because as far as I can tell, religious people can make stuff up like everyone else, or use observation and reason like everyone else, but I have seen no reason to think they have anything more special than that, something not available to non-believers.
Also, by what criteria do you judge the usefulness and the validity of religious knowledge? If they are criteria that only the religious could accept, then why should the non-religious accept it as “knowledge” to begin with? And if the the criteria are secular, why couldn’t the origins of that knowledge be secular as well?
You can’t actually establish the value of religion by pointing at the value of storytelling and metaphor. The argument for that is simple: you don’t need religion for either. There are plenty of stories and myths that are not religious in nature, yet still capture our imagination, or convey some moral lesson. The examples that you think support your position actually support mine: those stories can still be considered relevant, even though the religion they were associated with has been long gone.
And again, the fact that these stories were told for religious purposes doesn’t mean they were produced by anything more than imagination. And they only contain knowledge to the extent that we can validate against real life.
That’s funny, to me it reads like a metaphor for the importance of obedience and the dangers of curiosity.
I kind of doubt that. It’s where he makes his living but I suspect that, at the end of the day, he goes home a free(thought) man. He may regret the mendacity, but probably doesn’t lose much sleep over it.
Oh no, Ken, I don’t think so. I think he’s very consciously in a prisonhouse. What he has already said about the cost to him of giving up this particular allegiance is clear enough testimony to that. That’s why he’s co-authored a book about finding the appropriate leadership for the movement that will take it out of its cul de sac. He needs evagelicanism, because too many of those who are important to him are locked into it too. He’s a prisoner, even if he knows that there is an escape route. The way out would cost too much.
Well, I guess I was reading prisoner as in the way many believers are imprisoned, by their delusions. Is he stuck with evangelical Christianity? Yeah, I guess he is. Kind of like the clergy interviewed by Dennett and LaScola.
Deens said (#11):
Then tell me: by which process do you think religion generates this knowledge? Because as far as I can tell, religious people can make stuff up like everyone else …
Good question – I don’t really know. But Dawkins in The God Delusion talks of “Binker” – childhood imaginary friends – as indicating some possible mechanism by which humanity made the transition to self-awareness. And he also discusses the theory by Julian Jaynes along the same line:
…. Jaynes’ The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (two chambers), a book as strange as the title suggests. …. Jaynes notes that many people perceive their own thought processes as a kind of dialogue between the ‘self’ and another internal protagonist inside the head. Nowadays we understand that both ‘voices’ are our own – or if we don’t we are treated as mentally ill. …. The ‘breakdown of the bicameral mind’ … was the moment in history when it dawned on people that the external voices that they seemed to be hearing were really internal. Jaynes even goes so far as to define this historical transition as the dawning of human consciousness. [pgs 392, 393]
Dawkins is skeptical but he also says he’s “hedging his bets”. And seems plausible to me, although not an excuse, by any manner of means, for remaining stuck in that cul de sac, that Shangri-La, that cultural dead-end; but no reason either to totally reject any perceptions acquired there – dreams and psychoses can be reflective of underlying realities and processes – or the explanations for them as a handle on consciousness itself.
But I’m really not arguing for any value in any literal interpretations of that “religious knowledge” – except maybe as placebos which I think do more harm than good. But as with Dawkins, I would agree that such literalism should really be considered as a form of mental illness. Though as metaphor, that is an entirely different kettle of fish.
Also, by what criteria do you judge the usefulness and the validity of religious knowledge?
Likewise don’t know for sure. Maybe the degree to which it is reflective of deeper psychological motivations and perspectives – like Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus or Steinbeck’s East of Eden.
You can’t actually establish the value of religion by pointing at the value of storytelling and metaphor. The argument for that is simple: you don’t need religion for either.
I agree; again, I’m not arguing for keeping religion because it may have provided some useful metaphors in the past: keep the metaphors; deep-six the literal connotations and implications.
“…. the myth of Adam and Eve has some utility as a metaphor for the dawning of conscious …” That’s funny; to me it reads like a metaphor for the importance of obedience and the dangers of curiosity.
Descriptive, not prescriptive – at least in the eyes of some. Like Prometheus and Pandora. These are the choices and these are the consequences – you choose. Some – like the character in Matrix who betrays Neo for “materialist” goods and other dreams and fantasies though still hooked up in the vats – chose the bliss of ignorance; many accept the pains and costs for the better rewards of true knowledge: “Better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven” – though serving in hell may be the low end of the totem pole ….
“Giberson wonders where the new evangelical leaders are going to come from, because evangelicalism has been hijacked, he thinks, by forces of unreason.”
As an outsider, it’s fascinating to watch the slow collapse of Christianity in the west. I spent some time working with human resource planning projections in the past, and perhaps that’s made me more sensitive to small trends with big implications, but what I see is a faith leaning increasingly towards messianic irrationalism as more and more of the smart, moderate people turn their backs on it. It won’t be too long before the Catholic church, for instance, consists only of those people who take the Pope seriously — and you can judge for yourself how many that will comprise, and what sort of people they are likely to be.
When the status you can achieve in a religion is determined only by the absurdity in your beliefs, that religion is approaching the end. Unfortunately the process is going to evoke a lot more hysteria, and probably a fair bit of bloodshed, before the remaining cults become small enough and crazy enough to be totally dysfunctional.