After watching the Haught-Coyne debate I am left wondering what reason Haught had to be so stirred up that he had refused (though he has now recanted, and the video is accessible here) to have the video of the debate posted online for others to see. Of more concern are the reasons he gives. In his open letter to Jerry Coyne Haught says this of his reasons for being reluctant to have the video of the debate made public:
It has to do with you alone, Jerry, not anyone else, including myself. I have had wonderful conversations with many scientific skeptics over the years, but my meeting with you was exceptionally dismaying and unproductive. I mentioned to you personally already that in my view, the discussion in Kentucky seldom rose to the level of a truly academic encounter.
Quite aside from the fact that this is an invidious public attack on Professor Coyne; to anyone who has watched the encounter this is simply ludicrous. I can see why he would not have wanted his own contribution widely disseminated. It is flat, turgid, and scarcely intelligible.
It is hard to credit Haught’s suggestion that Coyne
… did not want to debate me, but simply to lay out [his] own way of looking at science and religion.
But then to go on to suggest, as he does, that Jerry Coyne’s speech is a personal attack, is a ridiculous accusation. Coyne goes out-of-the-way to draw the fangs of his own debate, by remarking at the outset that he intends to address questions raised in Haught’s books, “not to go after him personally,” but because he a pre-eminent scholar of the relationship between science and religion, and also because he was there to defend himself. Haught doubts whether he is pre-eminent in this domain in the United States, but he is unquestionably very prominent. Here is a list of books published by Haught which directly address the relationship of science and religion:
Making Sense of Evolution: Darwin, God, and the Drama of Life
God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens
God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution
Responses to 101 Questions on God and Evolution
Christianity and Science: Toward a Theology of Nature
Science & Religion: From Conflict to Conversation
Is Nature Enough?: Meaning and Truth in the Age of Science
Science and Religion: In Search of Cosmic Purpose
Deeper Than Darwin: The Prospect for Religion in the Age of Evolution
The Promise of Nature: Ecology and Cosmic Purpose
Nested Ecology: The Place of Humans in the Ecological Hierarchy
The Cosmic Adventure: Science, Religion and the Quest for Purpose
Haught’s books are a matter of public record. Many of them address directly the question at issue in the debate about the relationship of science and religion. Not to have referred to Haught’s extensive writings on the subject would have been an oversight so egregious that it would have appeared as a failure of nerve on the part of Professor Coyne.
Haught has gone out of his way to attack (I do not think this is too strong a word) the new atheists with whom Coyne associates his own thought on matters of science and religion. To take no notice of this attack, and to speak about the relationship between science and religion in purely general terms, would have been not only to fail to address questions of great contemporary interest and importance; it would also have been to avoid the thoughts of the man he was debating, thoughts which Haught has been at great pains to explain at length in a series of books. What possible reason could Haught give for suggesting that Coyne should have simply ignored the public record in this way? And in what world would trying to understand his statements and arguments be thought sneeringly ad hominem?
Haught’s open letter is a tempest in a teapot. (Perhaps it is the one orbiting the sun, somewhere between Earth and Venus, undetectable by any known radio telescope or other optical device.) In any event, his animadversions concerning Coyne’s rhetorical technique and what he considers Coyne’s failure
… to develop constructively your own belief that science and religion are always and inevitably in conflict, you were content simply to ridicule rather than refute several of my own ideas, as you interpreted them,
are simply breathtaking. I did not hear the sneering or the condescension in Coyne’s words or in his speech, though by at first refusing to make the video public, and then relenting on condition that he be permitted to be sneering and condescending in turn, Haught simply turns the focus of attention on to himself and his arguments, which represent, it has to be said, a rather comprehensive failure to make his point.
In fact, most of Haught’s speech is irrelevant to the question of the relationship between science and religion. He suggests that the problem with science is that it is inadequate precisely its failure to see any meaning or purpose in the universe itself, and he quotes a number of scientists to this effect. “Science decided, at the beginning of the modern age,” he says, “that it would not talk about god, meaning, purpose, value; it was going to leave all those things out. Science is a self-limiting method which tells us a lot of important things about the world, but not everything.” “The question,” he says, ”is whether science is wired to detect any deeper meaning.” However, this not entirely true, as so many writers in the bogus discipline of “Science and Religion” claim, and the early scientists, like most of their neighbours, were religious, and felt that science was actually helping them to discern the work of God himself by learning the truth about the laws governing the natural world. As these scholars continue to point out, nothing in early modern science suggested that the universe was composed entirely of physical processes, without inherent meaning and purpose. This is something that became more and more evident as science advanced, particularly when the nature of life as the product of evolution came to be more fully understood. As science progressed it became more and more obvious that there is no role for a god to play in the workings of the universe.
Haught talks a lot of malarkey about the old Christian hierarchical paradigm, where creation is imagined as a layered structure of hierarchically ordered planes of being, each graded in dignity of being from the lowest form of insensate matter at the bottom to higher and higher forms of being, insensate life, sentient life, consciousness, the realm of angels, and on, by degrees, up to ultimate being in God himself, and he wonders whether this hierarchically ordered chain of being in which cosmic purpose was thought to be discerned can be mapped onto “the new cosmic story that science has very recently brought to our attention.” That is, is there room for religion in the context of science?
But this is precisely where he goes off the rails. Instead of trying to find out what it might mean to map the old hierarchical view of the universe onto the new cosmic story, he goes straight to the Christian concept of God, pointing out that Christians have been taught, in their thought about God to begin with the man Jesus; and then he goes on to say that Christians should not be ashamed to talk in terms of their own beliefs, they should “start with and finish with a Christian understanding of God.” Then he explains the Christian concept of God in terms of God’s kenosis or self-emptying in the man Jesus (which of course quietly assumes the hierarchy of being, since this is what makes the kenosis of God in Jesus meaningful). It is at this point he introduces what he thinks is the most important piece of religious lore coming out of the old conception of the chain of being. He tells us each level of the chain of being is unable, without using analogical and other indirect forms of thought, of comprehending or coming to know the next higher level of being, and certainly to know the highest or ultimate level of being, which is God. It takes a form of personal transformation before we will be capable of comprehending levels of being (and meaning) superior to our own; and it is precisely here that Jesus comes in; and so, Haught suggests, we should read the gospels and allow ourselves to be transformed by them. Unfortunately, this effectively means that we must first believe in order to know, which is really begging the question.
It is just here that Haught trespasses on my own concerns regarding suffering and death, so I think we need to have his full account of the significance of Jesus.
I have to say at once that this is not a contribution to the debate about religion and science. One of the advantages of speaking the language of Aristotle and Aquinas is that it actually refers, or at least claims to refer, to the universe as we know it, and to explain how that universe came to be as it is. This is what science does, but Aquinas held that the universe as we know it could only have come about by the action of God which either brought the universe into being, and/or sustains it in being from moment to moment.
However, as we can see here, Haught wants us to begin with the man Jesus. He speaks about the self-emptying of God in Jesus, as if doing this were completely unproblematic from the standpoint of what we can know about the universe as science presents this knowledge to us; but there is an illegitimate step involved here. We are, he says, to read the gospels and allow ourselves to be transformed by them, but surely, if we want to have some idea of how science and religion are related one to the other, we must first have some understanding of how the gospels came to be, and whether, in fact, there is some assurance that these writings provide an accurate account of what happened in first century Palestine. However, it seems obvious, given the critical study of these texts, that they cannot be taken without qualification as reliable witnesses to early first century events. Haught cannot simply help himself to the facts before establishing that they are facts, and allowing a story to transform us, before we know whether or not that story is a reliable account of events described therein, is simply to put the cart before the horse. Haught believes that, in order to have any cognisance of God, we must be personally transformed. From what he says, it is clear that he takes this as an epistemological requirement. But to be transformed by a story which cannot in any reasonably critical sense be thought to reliably tell us of the events which are recorded in it, is not to provide an adequate foundation for knowing anything, let alone to give us access to knowledge that is beyond the inherent capacity of the human mind to grasp, as, without personal transformation, Haught takes knowledge of God, and cosmic meaning and purpose, to be.
But we need to take that one step further. Not only does the story of Jesus, Haught says, put us in contact with the very nature of God, but also with the very nature of being itself, in which, presumably, we participate. We find it, says Haught, quoting from John Paul II, ”inconceivable that suffering and death can express a love which gives itself and expects nothing in return.” But this is simply nonsense. Of course, we can conceive of this. Indeed, it has often been done, that people have given their lives for the sake of others. It is a perfectly human thing to do, but by insulating it like this, and making it into a mystery, what John Paul II did, and what Christianity does, is to sanctify suffering and death in an unacceptable manner. It is to put death at the centre of human purpose and meaning, and that seems to me not only offensive, but offensively dangerous. Nor does it contribute anything at all to an understanding of the relationship between religion and science. Indeed, science can provide many examples where living organisms function “kenotically” for the sake of others, from bees and ants to the much more self-aware actions of human beings who risk all to protect their loved ones from harm and death. It is largely through the mystification and sanctification of suffering and death as experienced by Jesus on the cross that has led further to the refusal of assisted dying to those who are suffering intolerably at the end of life. It is a totally repugnant conception of the role that suffering plays in the process of evolution, which, as Jerry Coyne points out later in the debate, is an extremely cruel and wasteful process. And to the extent that Christians are grasped and transformed by this image of suffering and death, they have a tendency to distort the sense and meaning of human life. We can do without this particular transformation.
It’s at this point that Haught gets caught up in a lot of hocus-pocus, despite his dismissal of the idea of God as the ultimate magician. Revelation, he says, has nothing really to do with dogmas or doctrines, but with the self-communication of the infinite to the finite world. And faith itself, he has already said, is really a matter of being grasped by ultimate reality. He doesn’t explain how this sense of the self-communication of the infinite gets transformed into doctrines and dogmas of the kind that are expressed with so much certainty and detail in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, or how being grasped by the infinite needs to be cashed in in these very specific terms, so that we can say, without qualification, that women cannot be priests, for example, or that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” (CCC, 2357) How does the infinite self-communication get spelled out in such specific ways? If, as Haught says, the best expression of our encounter with the infinite is silence, by what act of legerdemain does the church dare to break that silence to give us such specific and uncompromising directives as to the order of the church’s ministry as well as the shape of our sexual lives?
But what about ultimate purpose and meaning. Yes, of course, we know that science does not detect an overarching purpose beyond the physical processes of nature. The fact that human beings have evolved and have developed the ability to discover truths about the world which leave no room for cosmic purpose and meaning suggests that there is no such meaning, that the meaning of our lives is local and self-generated. Haught assures us that the early theologians — and philosophers too — would be deeply sceptical of science, because they perceived the need for personal transformation, and science, which is self-limited to things that can be demonstrated by means of empirical evidence alone, cannot, by this very self-limitation, have access to the meaning and purpose that is hidden in the depth of things.
The problem here is that there is no clear means of making a distinction between false and true apprehensions of this supposed depth. One thing that Jerry points out so well is that there are simply too many competing claims about the hidden depth of things. Islam, for example, claims that it is true because it is the last of revelation of the truth about the meaning of life, but Islam itself is so rebarbative and cruel in its understanding of this meaning that, whether last or first makes no difference. It condemns itself by its own conception of itself. But Christianity has no more claim to have really plumbed the depths of the meaning and purpose of the cosmos, and the role that individuals play in it. It is one thing to talk about love and self-giving, and possibly these are elements of what might be a good and meaningful life, but it seems idiotic simply to confine ourselves to love and self-giving out of all the variety of things that can give life meaning. Surely, Aristotle’s claim, in the Metaphysics, that all men by nature seek to know, is as valuable and, arguably, more valuable than love and self-giving, for without knowledge love and self-giving can be dangerous and destructive, especially when they undertake to intrude themselves, unwelcome, into people’s lives.
We are still left, by the time Haught comes to the end of his speech, wondering what the relationship of religion and science can possibly be. By insisting on speaking as a Christian, and with the specifics of Christian belief deriving from stories of the life of Jesus and his death, interpreted as an act of self-giving love, he has really failed to make a plausible case for the relationship of religion and science. Religion is a diverse phenomenon. It cannot be defined in terms of Christian doctrine, and so whatever relationship Haught may see between Christianity and science — which is very little — cannot satisfy the requirements of the claim that he is making that there is a relationship between religion and science. In order to show this by taking Christianity as an example, he must be able to show, not only that the story of Jesus as recounted in the gospels is true, he must be able to show both that other religions are wrong and why they are wrong.
In view of this failure, Haught’s complaint that Jerry Coyne’s contribution to the debate was merely an ad hominem attack on Haught and his work is simply laughable. At no point, that I could see, did Coyne address himself in an ad hominem way to Haught’s arguments or conclusions. For example, he refers directly to the point that Haught makes about the deliberate self-limitation of science to empirical evidence, that is, to the natural. Science assumes that the nature of things can be explained without introducing the idea of a god or gods. The problem here is that, even if there were some way of being grasped by the infinite, we would need words in which to express what this means. Haught says that we should start with Jesus. Instead of thinking of God as a great magician, he says, we should start with Jesus. This means, of course, that what we know about Jesus must be true; but how do we know that? As Coyne points out, the Bible is used in incompatible ways, and no one seems to be able to tell us how we are to distinguish between those things that are to be understood metaphorically, and other things that must be taken au pied de la lettre, as he points out dramatically in the following:
This is a question of great importance, which religious believers have yet to answer.
In his comment — which he asked Jerry Coyne to publish on his blog — Haught says this about Coyne’s strategy in the debate:
[Y]our strategy was to show that if the principal figure [that is, Haught himself] is stupid, then you need not take his subordinates seriously either. This is a convenient method for shrinking the territory that needs to be covered, but it is hardly a fair way of dealing with all the other theological alternatives to your own belief system.
But this is a caricature of what Coyne actually does with quotes from Haught. Consider the following:
Now, without a doubt, this is not flattering, but it can scarcely be called ad hominem. If religion claims to answer the big questions, then there must be some way of determining what constitutes the truth in answer to these questions. And yet, as Haught himself seems prepared to acknowledge, the questions themselves defy our attempts to answer them. Coyne is not saying that Haught is stupid, as Haught alleges; he is merely pointing out the attempt of the religions (plural) to give an answer (singular) to the big questions has so far not met with success, and that Haught himself acknowledges the fact that the answer to the question about the point and purpose of the universe seems to elude even the theologian.
Coyne, being an expert on genetics and evolution, points out that evolution is perhaps the heaviest blow that science has ever delivered to religion, because it undercuts religion’s strongest argument for the existence of a god, the design argument. This was the argument that perplexed Hume, although he was prepared to say that, if the universe is designed by God, it shows evidence of bad design, so that, seemingly, it must be the product either of a novice god, or of a superannuated one. What theology does now is to say, as John Paul II said, that evolution was simply the means by which God created the world as we know it.
The problem with this, of course, is that evolution is a particularly nasty way to create things, because it is so wasteful and cruel, as Jerry points out. This expedient does not serve the theologian well, since it makes the problem of evil — that is, theodicy, the justifying of the ways of God to man – an even more serious problem, but it is the solution that is forced on the theologian who does not want to contradict the findings of science.
What theology does is to rationalise things in such a way that theology, as Coyne says, comports with science, but the claim that this shows that science and theology are actually compatible is specious.
All in all, then (since this post is already overlong), what can we say about Haught’s complaint that Coyne is merely using ad hominem arguments to make his point? I do not think that he makes his case. Coyne, of course, finds fault with Haught’s position. I think it is clear that Haught himself was deeply hurt by Coyne’s arguments, but he should certainly have expected them, since Coyne actually carried on a running conversation on his website about precisely these issues as he was preparing for the debate. The nerve of Haught’s complaint is, I think, however, cut. Here is his accusation:
Rather than answering my point that scientism is logically incoherent–which is really the main issue–and instead of addressing my argument that the encounter with religious truth requires personal transformation, or for that matter instead of responding to any of the other points I made, you were content to use most of your time to ridicule several isolated quotes from my books.
I didn’t hear the argument that scientism is logically incoherent, nor did it seem to me that Coyne took quotations from Haught’s books out of context. He certainly disagrees with Haught, but this, I think, we could take for granted from the start. In any event, it is not clear that Coyne at any time adopted a scientistic point of view, that is, the view that science is the only source of truth (if by science we refer narrowly to the various scientific specialties that are represented by departments in the unversity: chemistry, physics, biology, etc.), for there are clearly truths that are not scientific: truths about personal feelings, history, biography, about literary characters and the meanings of words, and so on, though, in fairness to the position that Coyne adopts, empirical evidence is still necessary for establishing truths of this sort. And, as for the logical coherence of claiming that truth requires empirical support, there is nothing incoherent about making this claim. It is not incoherent in the way that logical positivism was incoherent. Logical positivism held that meaningful statements are limited to the class of verifiable propositions. But, since this claim is itself not verifiable, it is meaningless. Therefore, logical positivism is logically incoherent. But evidence for the claim that in order to make a claim to truth, the claim must itself be verifiable, is available. Without empirical evidence we cannot achieve agreement about what is true, and the outcome of this disagreement is social discord and incompatible theories as to how the world works or about the meaning of works of fiction, and so on. Science will win, as Hawking says, and Coyne repeats, because it works. And theology, it might be added, will lose, not because it is not scientific, but because it is not based on anything that is accessible to empirical corroboration.
Very good analysis, Eric. Mine was similar, if shorter! My feeling was that Haught drew a pretty good picture of how science and religion are incompatible and never managed to pull it back. As you say, the old hierarchy doesn’t fit with what we’ve discovered, and Haught’s attempt to reconcile them was hand waving rather than argument.
I’m particularly puzzled about the missing scientism argument, but I was wondering if it comes up in the Q & A. We shall see.
So much of this stands on definitions and Jerry’s talk reminded me of Russell Blackford’s post on defining natural and supernatural. One of the commenters there deftly adds “regularity” into the definition of natural in order to leave a space for miracles, but the time scales of various phenomena easily make regular events into seemingly one-offs (e.g. Halley’s comet). If gods do exist and they do communicate with us (provided our transformation), then we should find a sensory region of the brain capable of receiving “the infinite” and perhaps more developed in believers (phenotypic plasticity?).
All said, I do get the feeling that Haught thinks his testimony for the plaintiffs at Dover should give his religious beliefs a free pass. This is where much of the conflict arises because many of us don’t think evolution is the only issue on the table.
Great analysis Eric….I’ll just add what I said over at EIT……..
In a sense Haught is correct to perceive Jerry’s presentation as personal. And that reason is to do with the notions of harm and blame. Atheists recognise that religion causes incalculable harm to untold numbers of people and that that harm is directly attributable to the applied effects of religious doctrine to peoples lives. Jerry explained that very clearly.
Next, you don’t get a ‘get out of responsibility free’ card just because you’re a theologian. You are someone who maintains that status quo, supports the institutions responsible for those harms and attempts to give them academic credibility and social acceptability.
Yes, in other words, we are holding you to account for that…you…in person. That’s what you’re doing…and we are calling you on it. It’s actually good if you do take it personally as we want you to realise that what you are doing is harming people. We hold that you have a responsibility NOT to harm, or support the harm, of people in this way. If you don’t like that…hide in your ivory tower, and don’t step up to debate the likes of Jerry, who, imho, has absolutely nothing to apologise for.
Eric,
Truth doesn’t require empirical support. For any proposition, I could just take a guess and there’s a chance that my claim would be true by accident. We could call this “alethic luck”. Justification and knowledge require some kind of epistemic support, however, whether empirical or some other unspecified kind. Given that there is no empirical justification whatsoever for any theological claims, someone arguing that theological claims are justified would need to argue:
(1) there is another form of support than empirical justification
(2) that this particular form of justification applies to the theological claims.
(or in favor of some other epistemic virtue which theological claims can possibly achieve).
That’s what an argument for the compatibility of the methodologies of science and religion would look like. But we don’t hear that, from Haught at least.
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Excellent! Your insights are perfect. Thank you.
My problem with the whole discussion of science vs religion, is that I’m never sure what the operable definition of “religion” is. “Science”, I can define, …but now, we have “scientism” too?! Ugh.
Daniel, (#4) I guess I’m just a dyed in the wool empiricist. I can’t see what epistemic ground there could be for any statement except an empirical one, aside, of course, from tautologies. But certainly, if there is another kind of epistemic ground, this would have to be shown, and so far religious believers have not succeeded in providing one, and talk about ‘depth’ or ‘other dimensions of reality’ really doesn’t do the trick.
I’m reminded of a youtube clip I watched several years ago (you can actually find similar ones by searching youtube for ‘chi master gets schooled’). The chi master demonstrates his skills by taking on his students – with airy waves of his hands his attackers fall over or stagger back. An outsider challenges him to a match, and unimpressed by the hand waving, gives the chi master a good thumping.
My suspicion is that Haught sees himself as the ‘spirit master’ and is used to defeating his opponents in debate because they accept the quality of his arguments from the start. Along comes Jerry who does not cede religious arguments any automatic respect, and lo and behold, the sophisticated arguments are revealed to be airy arm waving.
No wonder Haught seems to be feeling hard done by. He’s been disrespected.
1. Every time any theist or apologist or philosopher of religion bases his argument on the concept of “purpose”, they’ve already lost the debate.
2. The theistic (Abrahamic or Choprakian) concept of “purpose” is nothing more than a code for an individual’s after-death state. It’s usually couched in terms as “ultimate purpose” or “deeper purpose” or “cosmic purpose” (which is especially laughable), but it’s all based on the same poisoned root. That root being that there exists a post-death state that one may aspire to or achieve, making this life nothing more than a transitional state to an eternal after-death.
3. “Cosmic purpose” is an especially egregious abuse of logic. To argue that there is a “cosmic purpose” involving humans (human ‘souls’) is to argue that the universe exists so that several billion ‘souls’ can be sorted and provided with a specific eternal after-death experience based on that sorting — even as the material universe itself blinks out. It’s patent nonsense — illogical per se. That Christians believe this after-death ‘sorting’ is based on one’s thoughts during life is even less logical. They’re actually trying to argue that an omnibenevolent, omniscient creator would sort souls based on human thoughts — rejecting billions upon billions upon billions of souls for nothing more than being born into the wrong religion or actively rejecting religion as being unsupported by logic, reason, and evidence.
4. Therefore, anyone who states that science fails because it can’t address “purpose” is merely trying to assert that Santa is real after all, and that one should continue to believe despite all of the hard evidence to the contrary. It’s the worst kind of special pleading (with a whopping big dose of argument from consequences thrown in).
I know that it’s darned hard to understand a concept when your livelihood depends on you not understanding that concept, but really…is this that difficult?
The reasons new atheism wins over sophisticated theology is that it cuts through the bafflegab and boils down the arguments to their base essences.
Argument from purpose is just plain dumb. Dumber even than argument from personal (transformative) experience.
Quite so! This needs to be said over and over and over.
(Though, I suppose this is also why natural-law enthusiasts claim that their directives are logical necessities that follow from incontrovertible premises, rather than justified through revelation or empirical inquiry.)
Eric – How do you square your empiricist stance with the subject of meta-ethics?
My issue with theologians like Haught is that they present innumerable deductive propositions (and sometimes put several together in a syllogism) without also providing any adequate methodology for protecting this inclination from intuitional error. The amount of unsubstantiated claims that Haught makes is staggering. This is where religion and science irrevocably splits. Theists see faith (acceptance of propositions without error amelioration) as a good thing whereas scientists must see it as a bad thing. As long as theists and scientists don’t work together on any subject related to understanding reality — No Problem!
Haught’s overreaction to the debate makes me wonder if doubt is nibbling at the edges of his mind. There’s nobody quite so touchy about their deeply-held beliefs as someone who is starting to question them privately.
Eric,
A very nice analysis. I’m actually surprised that Haught himself was surprised by what I said, since I have, as you said, been chewing on Haught’s theology on my website for several months. I’ve even discussed several of the quotations I showed in my talk. And he told me that he read those posts. Why on earth would he be surprised that I would reprise them in what I said?
In the end, I think he simply wasn’t used to being confronted directly with a request for evidence, and hadn’t experienced head-on attack at his syrupy obscurantism. He’s not used to people not giving “respect” to his faith. It amuses me that people who will tolerate a strong attack on their politics won’t be nearly as tolerant when it comes to their faith. Religion is supposed to get a pass, and I didn’t give it one.
As for his claim that I distorted his views or quoted him out of context, I adamantly deny that. His books are available to anyone, and I invite you to choose one (most of the ones on evolution and faith are nearly identical) and see if I’ve misrepresented him.
I would love to face the man again in a real debate, and force him to answer questions about which tenets of his church he agrees with, and which he disagrees with. I am dying to know the answer.
I’m with jonjermey. I can’t shake the feeling he’s doubting his indefensible position for the first time in his life. Why else protest so much?
@ DiscoveredJoys #7 Or the famous scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark: Haught was expecting a sword fight, but Jerry brought a gun.
“You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.”
I’m sorry I haven’t the time to offer more than drive-by movie references. But thanks for an excellent analysis, Eric.
/@
I found Haught’s absolute reliance on the assumptions that: (i) there exists a hierarchy of being, and (ii) that within this hierarchy a lower level cannot comprehend a higher level to be (how shall we say it) somewhat disconcerting given he proffered zero evidence for either. It takes no time at all to find counter examples of to (ii). Orchids seem to have no problem influencing their pollinators to pollinate them and cats have no problem manipulating us poor humans into taking care of them for little in return. Surely this means that some information has flowed from the supposed higher level to the lower one in such a way that is can be used – is this not comprehension?
I see that in catholic theology the hierarchy of being also contains the idea that the lower levels depend upon the higher ones in some way for their existence (even though each level is supposed to be perfect – I’ll leave you to figure that one out
). I’ll try reminding the active volcano when I’m standing on it’s edge.
There is no point in ‘mapping’ something to reality when the something has zero empirical basis.
I found Dr. Coyne’s talk most grounded in reality, but then as he had rehearsed his arguments on WEIT (where I’m a regular reader) this was to be expected.
I think the point of the hierarchicalists is that:
1) The hierarchy is clearly obvious to even a casual observer – anyone can easily see the progression from rock->plant->insect->cat->human->self-aware human->angel, with god(s) on top of all.
2) The apparent manipulation of insects by plants, or cats by humans is clearly impossible in view of the hierarchy
3) Therefore, something other (and “higher”) than the orchid and the cat must have set up the system for orchids to attract insects for their reproductive benefit, and the system for cats to attract human caretakers.
4) Therefore there is an underlying consciousness responsible for assembling and maintaining Life, the Universe and Everything
So the justification for #4 is provided by #1-3. But #1 is an argument from *unsophisticated science* – interesting how theologians demand that that scientists attend to their “sophisticated theology”, but are quite happy with using popular/folk science to bolster their position. Even granting #1, #2 and #3 are circular arguments. And then the whole thing fails dismally on theodicy. (A point which was, of course, made by both Eric and Dr Coyne.)
Thanks Theo, I get it now – it must have been ceiling cat
So obvious …
Theologians and religious apologists trot out the phrase “ultimate purpose” for the same dishonest or sloppy reason that they use the phrases “objectivemorality” or “absolutemorality” — to sneak or shoehorn goddy concepts into a discussion where those concepts are unwelcome or unnecessary.
I don’t remember which of my intellectual heroes said this (it might have been Gregory Bateson), but it’s stuck with me (my paraphrasing): Purpose is not an attribute possessed by people or porpoises or pansies or planets; purpose is always relational, and therfore can be clearly stated only by some creature or phenomenon in relation to another.
oh, oh …
and Eric excellent analysis as usual
Haught is even worse in the Q&A. He rambles on for sentence after sentence, but never says a damn thing. The best he can do is whinge that anything Jerry says about religion is wrong. If science cannot find “ultimate truth,” then why would Haught ever back science? Why not just get in touch with “the infinite” yourself? Isn’t that how we answer “ultimate” questions? No, because that and a double-blind experiment will get you a treatment for disease. If Haught claims he is describing religion, then what are all those people in churches doing on Sundays?
Eric,
Yes, I am an empiricist at heart as well. I just wanted to provide a roadmap for theologians if they wanted to actually make an argument rather than make bare assertions over and over. If theologians want to make an argument for explanatory pluralism and epistemic pluralism, they should go ahead and do that and stop wasting our time.
One thing that I found especially puzzling about Haught after watching the Q&A is that he says that intentional explanations are “non-scientific”. That’s a pretty big assumption to make given that the vast majority of philosophers and cognitive scientists argue that intentional explanations are just a species of natural causal explanation.
Perhaps that is why he is a theologian and not a philosopher.
One of the very curious features of Haught’s “philosophy” of religion is that he distinguishes a kind of knowledge that is only possible through personal transformation. Karen Armstrong makes a similar claim. In order to understand one must in fact be able to do it, to do religion or the faith thing or whatever it is that gives one access to the next level of being. The ordinary, earthbound human being is unable even to access the experience, let alone the knowledge that is conveyed with it. Yet there is no clear expression of knowledge, simply a reference to a book of stories about a man about whom a lot of very contradictory things are believed, and who is believed to be a representative from this other plane of being. It seems to me that the claim itself is incoherent, but Haught pretends, at the same time, that someone like Coyne should be able to be fair to his account of the religious knowledge claim. And yet this is, in fact, in the terms that Haught uses to express the theory, impossible. Haught’s position is incoherent. That’s always the problem with someone who wants to claim that religious knowledge is not accessible to anyone except believers. Haught should recognise that he makes arguing with him a waste of time.
It’s certainly not impossible that ‘enlightened’ theists should be able to exhibit skills or capacities that other people don’t have, and if they did it would obviously be a strong argument in favour of theism. The problem for Armstrong and the others, of course, is that they can’t demonstrate any of the special skills or abilities which have supposedly come to them as a result of their belief; they remain as elusive and undetectable as the object of the belief itself.
This sounds terribly close to Gnosticism – which I thought was regarded as heretical by ‘orthodox’ churches. Or possibly Magic, again frowned upon.
I think it was a pity that the questioner who asked Jerry Coyne how he lost his faith didn’t ask John Haught about his experience of being ravished by a superior power since so much, if not all, of Haught’s arguments depend on his (and, he asserts, other people) having had that experience.
Very good criticism, I hope you follow up with an analysis of the Q&A, now it’s up. I thought Haught’s true beliefs and agendas (scientism esp), but also perhaps the reasons for his complaints, showed up starkly there.
Matthew, just went online and saw your comment. Following up with the Q&A is precisely what I am online to do. As for his reasons for complaining, I’m not sure they were genuine complaints. This is what a theologian in a corner says to a scientist who has backed him there. “I don’t believe in that god either” is precisely what he says, if he doesn’t want to give a serious and honest reply.
Thanks for pre-empting me, Eric
Oh, I don’t think he was justified making those complaints, but on a purely emotional/sympathetic level I can see how he may have felt Jerry was being rude. So he has reasons, they just aren’t good ones, especially in light of his own behaviour.
Awesome analysis Eric, as usual, as is the related post on the Q&A session which I have not yet had time to read fully. Curious event though, but one that seems to be predicated on a serious strategic error on the part of Haught – one would think that a Catholic theologian would understand that suppressing information is more likely than not to blow up in one’s face. And that would seem to be due largely or significantly to Haught’s emphasis on the criticism and “ridicule” of, as he put it, “my own ideas” – you’d think he would have known of the Biblical “pride goeth before a fall”. And equally interesting is that there are close to a million hits on a Google search on the debate and a great many of those seem very supportive of Dr. Coyne while the sound of silenced voices in Dr. Haught’s case is, as they say, deafening.
But I quite agree with your point that Haught goes off the rails – and into the weeds and over the cliff – when he bases his argument on the “malarkey about the old Christian hierarchical paradigm”. For all his talk about finding common ground between science and faith – something he seems to share with other “process theologians” and Thomists such as Feser – he, and they, seem to insist on the literal interpretation of the Jesus myth. Which is unfortunate as I think there are some commendable, or at least supportable, aspects to his, and their, general position. For instance, Jerry Coyne quotes this from Haught:
For the universe to transform our hearts as well as our minds it must allow itself to be read – in one way or another – as having a purpose. To say that the universe has a purpose means quite simply that it is in the process of realizing something that is undeniably good, and that this good is also in some sense imperishable.
And in general terms that is not terribly far from the assertion of T.H. Huxley to the effect that:
… the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it.
Even if his definition of the “cosmic process” was apparently a little inconsistent – presumably that “ethical progress” is still an operative process itself that is part of the cosmos – it seems also to be championing the idea of “something that is undeniably good … and in some sense imperishable”.
And along which line Haught made a reasonable point during the Q&A (I think) when he observed that for all the criticisms leveled by the “New Atheists” at religion they still appeared to have a vision in mind of a better state of affairs for society, a purpose that motivated them. It seems that the question is less one of ends than of means and about which many, including you, seem – not without some justification – to be quite ambivalent.
For instance, you quote some scholars who point out that “the universe [is] composed entirely of physical processes, without inherent meaning and purpose” but seem, as do many, to conflate that with the hypothesis that “there is no role for a god to play” in such workings of the universe which then seems to necessitate that if one is rejected then the other must also be likewise. Yet that seems to fly in the face of the fact that the naked struggle for survival is the thread, the purpose, that runs through the entire thing and is as fundamental as, and no doubt predicated on, everything from the electromagnetics of light propagation to the progression of a slinky moving down the stairs.
[End Part Une]
As to means, you quite reasonably and cogently argue that the Church insists on making a mystery of that process – largely, I think, due to a commitment to a literalist interpretation of the myth of Jesus – and in so doing “sanctifies suffering and death in an unacceptable manner” that is “offensively dangerous” and “totally repugnant”. However, as metaphor for an underlying process it has some significant merit which you acknowledge with your several references to various instances of altruistic behaviour – which I think is unreasonably discounted as simply the manifestation of evolution, at least as it is commonly understood. And relative to which and to something implicit in your own statements, there is a sense in which “suffering and death” can be sanctified in an acceptable manner, one of the most moving examples, I think, of that being Lincoln’s Gettysburg address:
Now, one might quibble about the specific goals that those men died for, and one can reasonably point out that many men died on the same battlefield for antithetical causes, and likewise decry the specific causes that led to those deaths to begin with – as one of Clint Eastwood’s characters said, “I’ve never seen so many men so badly used” – but it seems quite a bit harder to deprecate – to not sanctify – those sacrifices in the first place.
And that “sanctification” seems not terribly uncommon – fortunately – and sees many manifestations throughout the culture, notably, I think, Francis Bacon’s aphorism to the effect that, “I hold everyone to be a debtor to their profession”: we are each the inheritors of a long line of contributors to those professions which we have some obligation to repay in one way or another and to the best of our abilities. And likewise I would argue with your own commendable and entirely admirable commitment, your own “terrible resolve”, to see that other people won’t have to suffer the way your wife did due to dogmatic and pig-headed religion – a worthy goal, a worthy purpose, and one that I’m happy to put my own shoulder to the wheel in support of.
So, purpose – whether the simple survival of the species or the “ethical progress” of it – seems ubiquitous. What seems problematic is the means by which it is attained, to what degree are the means pathological and likely to preclude its attainment. And, speaking directly to the issue of science and religion, it seems that religious literal interpretations – which Haught insists are virtually “non-negotiable” but which are the main stumbling blocks to any rapprochement – are truly pathological in their being based on a “surge of ego” and on a denial of individual human rights and on being essentially authoritarian and fascist in that denial.
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Haught’s Cosmic Ontology: begging the question all the way down. I can only hope he never calls himself a philosopher, because he is a terrible thinker. For example, he says:
I suppose he is about 500 years late for this kind of scholasticism. Science is exactly about transcending this method which has never yielded reliable insights into anything. But then Haught doesn’t seem to understand science either, which is rather embarrasing for somebody who claims to be an expert on issues of science and religion.