I think we need to begin this with a clip from the Q&A session to start us off. In his address Dr. Haught said, as I recorded earlier:
Science decided, at the beginning of the modern age, 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.
This is, as Jerry Coyne points out, completely untrue. Science decided no such thing. Indeed, those who deal with the history of science from a religious point of view insist that the foundations of science were laid by Christianity. While I think this is untrue, at no point was it decided to leave out god, meaning, purpose and value. As Jerry Coyne points out, the god hypothesis was only abandoned gradually:
This is very important. The assumption that science decided to leave out questions of god, meaning, purpose and value is a caricature of the history of science, and Haught, who claims to be making a serious attempt to show the compatibility of science and religion, must know this. If he doesn’t, and he really thinks that science made such a decision — how does “science” do this, by the way? — then his misunderstanding of the relation of science and religion is total.
When Haught turns around, then, and castigates Jerry by saying that everything that he said was a caricature, that every quotation that Jerry took from Haught’s work was taken out of context, and that instead of reading carefully and thoughtfully Jerry got his idea of god and theology from creationist websites, this was undoubtedly the most aggressive and impolite move of the whole debate. Listen to what he says:
Given the fact that Jerry Coyne took this debate with Haught seriously, and read quite widely to that end, and that, in his comments on theology and theologians on his website he has referred to a surprising number of different theologians, this is simply outrageous! And Haught is the one who complained that the whole problem was Dr. Coyne!
The real problem is that Haught is so vague and ambiguous that there is no way that anyone could possibly characterise his theology accurately. Haught himself is clearly unsure. For example, on the one hand he says that in talking about God the Christian must start with Jesus, who exemplifies God’s self-emptying love. But he also says that God is that towards which all things are evolving. He also speaks of God as the infinite and the ultimate, claiming, what is surely false, that the ultimate is one by definition. He even characterises theology as follows:
Clearly, if, in talking about God, Christians must begin with Jesus, and our talk about God is somehow related to theology (which is the “logos”, or word, about God), then theology is about much more than just making the presupposition of an ultimate explicit. Quite aside from the fact that one of the virtues of science is not to take its conclusions as ultimate, but to go on seeking for further answers and deeper complexity, simply talking about the fact that we are never satisfied, does not lead necessarily to the famous prayer of Augustine which speaks about our restlessness, and that our hearts are restless until they find rest in God. Shopping is not empirical proof that we are seeking the ultimate or the infinite.
Indeed, I would go further. By speaking about Jesus as he does, as God’s self-expression in taking the form of a slave — an image that should disturb Haught much more than it seems to — Haught is, in effect, undermining the escape route that so many theologians prepare beforehand. Haught says that every quote that Jerry Coyne took from his books was taken out of context. (He merely asserts this, by the way; nowhere does he show them to be so.) But Coyne’s point is that either there is empirical evidence for God, or there is no evidence for God. Haught may speak vaguely enough to set our critical minds at rest, but it is vital to his position that Jesus’s being God’s communication of himself, Jesus’s life being an expression of God’s self-emptying, or his kenosis, to use the Greek word, is more than just a metaphor, more than just a figurative way of speaking about the mystery of God. It must actually say something about God’s very nature. It must, in fact, be an intervention by God in the empirical world.
Theologians like N.T. Wright, for example, or John Polkinghorne, or William Lane Craig, claim that we know this to be true because Jesus rose, or was raised, from the dead. And they go to great (sometimes excessive) lengths to show why this is reasonably thought to be historically true. If there was no resurrection, in other words, there would be no reason to think that Jesus, in his life and death, was an expression of God’s self-emptying; but if he really did, physically, rise from the dead, then we have — and this is what the writer to the Hebrews was referring to when he spoke about faith — the assurance of things hoped for. It’s also why Paul said that, if Jesus was not raised from the dead, then his preaching would be vain, and the faith of those who believe would be vain and pointless. In other words, either Haught comes out of the clouds of ambiguity that he creates by talking about ultimacy and the infinite, and acknowledges that, as a theologian, his claims are anchored in the world, or really his words are just so much fluff.
At one point in the Q&A Haught goes off at a tangent arguing about scientism, and how Jerry Coyne, by professing scientism has put science itself at risk, has, in fact, left everything in ”one big homogeneous smudge”, so that, as Haught says, a bit contemptuously, he finds himself in the surprising position of having to defend science. But at no point does Haught show that Coyne’s position is scientistic, nor does he really explain what he means by scientism, or what is wrong with it. He suggests that it makes it impossible to say something like, “The kettle is boiling because I want some tea,” which is really silly. Jerry Coyne is not talking about the many uses of language that are available to us, the language of poetry, fiction, the performative language of promising, or the emotional language of love or hate. This is a complete fabrication on Haught’s part. What Jerry is talking about is ways of determining what is true about the world in which people fall in love, get married, have sex, make promises, watch movies, speak about beauty, argue about morality, drink tea, and so on. There are many truths that we can speak about regarding such things, but Jerry is speaking of the basic constituents of the world and how their interaction brings about the wondrous universe in which we have come to be. In other words, Jerry’s claims have to do with the kind of question that the Ionian Thales asked himself: What is the world of things made of? We may be able to look at the world from many points of view, amongst which wanting to have tea is one, but the question that Jerry is asking has to do with what really exists that makes a world of tea drinking and promise making possible.
Haught deliberately complicates things here, because he wants to leave room for something besides molecules and atoms and sub-atomic particles, and talking about wanting tea is a completely misleading way of talking about the thing he wants to leave room for. For, just as we speak about things as being composed of atoms and molecules, Haught wants to leave room to speak of another kind of being altogether, non-physical, perhaps non-material and supernatural, but personal, that is not only the fons et origo of the material world around us, but is, in fact, the end towards which everything is evolving, and which, besides, wants itself to be in a personal relationship with us. And all his talk of different layers of explanation, just as he spoke in his speech of the great chain of being, is really a way of concealing his real intention from us.
Jerry, he says, has left us with a mess, because if all we can say are the propositions of science, then we are really in a pickle. We won’t be able to talk about the ordinary things that go on in our lives, the things that interest us, the people that we are related to, our favourite things as well as our pet peeves. But nothing that Jerry is saying suggests that we cannot talk about any of these things. What he is saying is that, once we have enumerated the things that are discovered by science, there is nothing else to talk about except the world and the things that are in it, including people and their interests, plans, projects, pleasures and pains, which are the product of the physical processes that constitute the universe as we know it.
So, let’s have Haught’s argument about scientism and its follies before us, before we proceed:
I apologise for the length of the clip, but it is useful to have Haught’s palaver in mind as we consider the plight of the theologian. The theologian knows that his position is bounded by faith, so it’s essential to make sure that the atheist or naturalist gets into bed with him. So what he does is simple. He thinks up a faith position which, he assumes, the atheist must hold. Thus the theologian and his opponent start off on the level. But exactly what is scientism? In all his talk about levels of explanation, Haught is never very clear. Surely he doesn’t think that Jerry is denying that there is a level at which we speak about molecular motion and heat, and another level at which we speak about making tea? In fact, Jerry is claiming that the world as we know it depends upon a number of different things that have been discovered by science. Tea drinking, in addition to being an aspect of culture, is also made possible by the structure of matter, by the evolution of life capable of consciousness and social interaction, and many other things besides. But nowhere in listing these other features of reality, upon which the custom of tea drinking rests, do we come to a point where we have any reason to speak of a god or gods. At the level of science there is no evidence for such a being or beings.
Let’s listen to the closing words of the last clip again:
Notice carefully what Haught is doing here. He says that he wants to push natural explanation as far as possible, but that, in the end, this still leaves the possibility that “there is a presence of love that wants the universe to become itself, to become as rich and diverse as possible.” And he concludes from this that there is no contradiction between a theological and a scientific way of understanding the universe. But there is! For one we have evidence, and the other is just a story! After all that talk about scientism what he ends with is the mere possibility of something, a presence of love that wants the universe to be itself. Well, what else could it possibly be? This totally anthropomorphic idea that the universe is something that is directed towards a goal, and that it is directed by a loving presence, in a way similar to the way in which a parent wants his or her children to become all that they can be, is completely unsubstantiated by any evidence. Indeed, given the stochastic way that evolution operates there is no reason to think that there is any intrinsic teleology involved at all.
It is precisely in this that it conflicts with the virtues of science. Haught says there is no incompatibility here at all. But this is like saying that wish-fulfilment is as valid a way of discerning the truth about the world and our lives as evidence. Science is the first truly successful way of coming to know what is really true. Haught wants to claim that science and faith are compatible, but it’s a trick. He says that entertaining the possibility that there is a loving presence that wants the universe to be itself is compatible with natural explanations of the universe, and that is true. There is no doubt a possible world in which this is true. All sorts of possibilities are compatible with what we know to be true. We could no doubt make up all sorts of stories that are compatible with what we know from science, but the question here is one of knowing what is true, and the basis upon which it can be known. Haught dismisses Jerry’s position as mere “scientism,” whatever, in the end, that is taken to mean. But he still can’t escape the demand for evidence. We have evidence for scientific theories, but none for theological ones. Doesn’t that make a difference?
So, let’s ask the question: Is holding the various theological possibilities to be true compatible with science? And that depends. As Jerry Coyne said in response to one young man, science cannot say anything about deism, about the story of a god who created the universe and then let it develop without further interest or intervention. One might, like Antony Flew, believe in such a “god”, but since we could have no evidence for its existence, positing its existence to get out of what seemed to the elderly Flew to be a problem in philosophy really doesn’t acknowledge very much. Indeed, David Hume actually suggests that the deistic hypothesis, if we are talking about probabilities, is more likely than the belief that there is a loving or caring purpose behind the universe as we know it.
This became a much more serious option when Darwin discovered that life evolved. When Darwin’s beloved daughter Annie died of tuberculosis, and was, thus, “selected out” by evolution, Darwin realised that he could no longer believe in a loving and caring purpose. But the question, as Darwin knew, was one of evidence. It’s entirely possible that there is a loving and caring purpose behind the universe, and we may never be able to convince every believer that there is no evidence for this love and care, since theological contortions around the problem of pain are legendary. On the other hand we could easily turn the tables on them, and, with Stephen Law, we might point out that it seems just as likely that the purpose behind the universe is malevolent. William Lane Craig never got the point, but it seems pretty obvious. Given the amount of suffering in the world, caused by predation, disease, and natural catastrophe, to say nothing of the harm that people do to one another, it seems as likely that there is a malign purpose behind the world as a loving one, if we are imagining purposes behind the universe. But what this shows is not that believing is compatible with science, but that it is completely irrelevant to it. Of course, people can believe in gods, either loving or malignant, but such a belief can be compatible with science only if it has no implication for the findings of science. This, of course, is not really compatibility, but irrelevance. And just as religion can have nothing to say about science, science can make no contribution to religion, for one is a way of knowing, while the other is a way of imagining possibilities, just as Haught says.
I’m still more than a little flabbergasted by Haught’s discussion of tea-making. The analogy to the Universe having a purpose is total baloney. We can explain that the kettle is boiling by reference to Haught’s wife’s beliefs and desires. At time t0, she wanted a cup of tea and believed that turning on the burner was a means to making a cup of tea, and this caused her to turn on the burner at time t1. But this state at t0 just is a complicated physical state. I could in principle specify it in physical terminology, although we generally identify such a state in intentional terminology instead. Intentional explanation is perfectly valid.
What are the conditions under which the Universe has a purpose? If Haught could state those conditions, does anything actually fit the bill? How is that purpose causally related to what happens in the Universe? Does Haught have any answer whatsoever to any of these questions? No. So, why is he trying to use a comparison to intentional explanation?
Well done, Eric. What struck me about Haught’s maunderings was their extraordinary irresponsibility. People like the silly Jean Kazez (over at Russell Blackford’s blog) seem to think that Jerry Coyne was ‘on the attack’ and therefore rude, but Haught’s condescending refusal to genuinely address issues, unconsidered dismissals of what he calls ‘explanatory monism’ and ‘scientism’, and easy recourse to the strategic falsehood that science rests on the same kind of faith as his brand of religion does (something that he must KNOW is a falsehood) is far more deeply impolite and contemptuous both of his opponent and his audience.
Your best post to date, Eric. Very clear. Very concise. Very damning of Haught’s exposed dishonesty as he paints Jerry’s position, accompanied by literal hand-waving, inaccurately again and again… all the while accusing him of intellectual smudging. No wonder Haught wanted the video withheld: it shows how nasty and malignant otherwise nice people will be to discredit those who have the temerity to not only ask honest questions but the audacity to expect honest and reasonable answers… an honesty Haught will not respect because it stands in conflict with the very legitimacy for his faith-based beliefs.
Again Haught, like most religious supporters, continues to respect what is believed to be true over and above what is true. And this a priori assumption – for the legitimacy of belief that promotes hand-waving metaphysical paintings to be equivalent to and effective on facts in reality without evidence that this is so – is incompatible with the method of inquiry we call science that is built on respect for drawing conclusions from the facts (ex post facto)).
It’s the difference between excluding god and not including god (because there is no supporting evidence).
Thank you, Eric – I think I now have a clearer understanding of what Haught was on about. Frankly, on first listening it amounted to a load of unintelligible waffle. At least now I have an idea of what he seems to be trying to say. What that is, is of course rubbish, but at least now I understand why it is rubbish!
Eric,
I love that last line
How do you think we can have a dialogue with people like this? Ones who use ‘evidence’ and ‘truth’ in completely different ways, Or do you think it’s not worthwhile and that Haught was being deliberately intellectually dishonest?
If the ‘scientism’ claim does concern non-scientists, and I presume that’s why it keeps being shouted – to instill fear in the audience it’s aimed at rather than stumping scientists, how do you think we combat it and reassure people that science doesn’t exclude a healthy emotional life? Because I think that’s at the heart of the lazy attack of ‘scientism’, trying to feed on people’s worry that science as reductionist reducing the need for emotions. Haught’s entire talk and Q&A was clearly spoken to reassure people and I feel scientists (including myself) need to reassure people if we are going to be listened to in preference to theologians. We just need to reassure without ‘imagining possibilites’.
I think you implied this when you talk about wish fulfillment, it seems to me the ‘I want tea’ argument did Haught more harm than good, wanting tea is subjectively different from how tea is made, but wanting tea is something that only exists inside one’s head, the comparison with god is unfortunate for Haught, therefore. Again he’s appealing to an emotional life that he thinks science can say nothing about. Of course wanting tea is something neuroscience can say something about.
I feel sorry for theologians. They have to resort to vague misty terminology because they’re describing something that they can’t see, yet refuse to admit that that’s because it isn’t there.
I am right now reading ‘Self Comes to Mind’ by the neurologist Antonio Damasio. It’s about how consciousness emerges from the brain. He’s very good on why we have such a difficult time trying to separate self from non self and where the line is between the imagination and reality.
I’d send a copy to Haught if I could afford it and if I thought he woulds read it.
Matthew (#6). I don’t think that Haught is being intellectually dishonest, although I do think he is deceiving himself. The two are quite different. He is so convinced that religion is a valid way of apperceiving the world (and I use the word ‘apperceiving’ deliberately here) that he cannot see the wood of science for the trees of imagination. He buries things under clouds of ambiguity, and then complains when someone, who is not in a fog, goes directly to the things that really count. That’s the way, in my experience, that theology functions.
Let me give you an example. While I was a priest, and had to say something to people every week in a homily, I knew within a hair’s breadth what I could say. My wife Elizabeth, who was a nonbeliever, would sometimes correct me, and say: “You can’t say that” or “You can’t say what you want to say in that way.” The point she was making was simply that dispelling the clouds too rapidly would make it impossible for us, the congregation and me, to take the next step, if we were going to take it together. So it was essential to lay down some fog, artificial fog, which would allow me to say what I wanted to say, but at the same time not to let people get too close a grasp on what I was saying, which would lead them to say, “Well, you really don’t believe at all, then, do you?” As I got closer and closer to retirement, a friend (a retired priest) used to say, “You’re going too fast. You’ll have talked yourself out of a job if you keep going at this rate” — because, at the time, I was finding it harder and harder to find anything positive to say about Christian belief.
Now, I suspect — though I may be wrong — that Haught is in this position. He wants to be able to speak about faith in very general terms, but he also wants faith to retain its position as a confidence in doctrines that he has really let go of a long time ago, and he’s developed a very comfortable way of speaking about his loss of faith in terms of what he considers faith, but most believers would not see as faith at all. He can retain all the usual Christian language, but he doesn’t believe any longer in a straightforward way — and this, by the way, is not a fundamentalist, literal style of believing, but believing in the highly intellectualised way in which the Roman Catholic Church defines its doctrines. He simply doesn’t notice that when he talks about Jesus he’s making a claim to divine intervention in the world for which there is not a shred of substantive evidence. If he noticed that, his house of cards would simply fall apart, so he has to keep it general and unfocused. As Kevin says (#7), theologians are in a tough position. If they dispell the fog the all too human levers are visible, but if they don’t dispell the fog, questions will continually arise. In other words, as Haggis says (#5), instinctively it seems that what Haught is saying is rubbish, but it’s not easy to see why, and the reason its hard to see why is that Haught has gone to a great deal of trouble of deceiving himself first.
I think that all of this comes out very clearly in the complaining open letter that Haught wrote. He simply cannot see what is wrong with his position. I suspect he will never see it, but he doesn’t see it because he really doesn’t want to. He really believes that, if there is no god, and no faith in god, then everything becomes an indistinguishable smudge. Intellectual chaos will supervene. So his faith is composed of roughly equal parts of self-delusion and fear. He simply does not see that he hasn’t got an iota of evidence for continuing to believe. It’s quite an astonishing achievement, especially when one considers that his complaining letter shows just how deep his self-deception goes. It goes so deep that he thinks he presented a logically conclusive proof that Jerry Coyne was not only wrong, but disastrously wrong. There are none so blind as those who will not see.
Eric, I think you are being far too kind when you write that you don’t think Haught is being intellectually dishonest. I think the dishonesty is very intentional.
Let’s revisit his caricature of science:
Science decided, at the beginning of the modern age, 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 method of science is self-limiting in the sense that it deals only with this universe and everything it contains but it did not decide as Haught assures us – and as you quite correctly point out is a lie – to exempt truth claims about the world under the Platonic guise of assuming these forms were beyond the world, beyond our ability to inquire into any causal effects claimed to be from this supposed beyond. Again, that is a lie, an intentional deception, a way of placing claims about the core assumptions of faith-based belief about this world beyond any method of honest inquiry we undertake including the transformative emotional experiences the religious like to claim as their own. As if that weren’t bad enough, Haught then slaps the label of Compatibility on it this special exemption from honest inquiry. It’s transparently false or, to borrow Jerry’s point, turtles all the way down, and promoted using intellectually sophisticated covers to obfuscate it enough to show that because it might be true, it is equivalent to being true.
That the intellectual dishonesty on display is a necessary component to pass on these fraudulent conclusions isn’t any excuse from withdrawing the charge that Haught is being intellectually dishonesty and intentionally so although we can feel compassion for those who feel they must maintain them at all costs… or suffer the possibility that Aunt Ida’s porcelain cat collection might be meaningless and purposeless beyond Aunt Ida’s passion for it, that all transcendent meaning for Aunt Ida is therefore stolen from her by us mean and caricaturizing gnu atheists.
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In my first year of high school we had a young priest teaching religion. I went to the first class reluctantly because I had no choice but it right away became my favourite subject because the fellow hardly ever mentioned religion. He had a way of turning the discussion to ethics and, this being the sixties, to social justice.
Starting to wonder, I stayed behind one day and put the question to him. Did he even believe in god?
‘What difference does it make? Right is right and wrong is wrong. If god is perfect then he can’t make an unreasonable demand. So you can arrive at morality by reason. To teach it from a position of authority helps because some people need that’
Just look at his answer regarding what evidence he has – a rambling jumble of words describing irrational faith, presented as a variety of “evidence”.
He’s just not using words the same way everyone else does. Trying to make sense of anything he says is a lost cause.
Thorough, meticulous, scholarly analysis, Eric. Extremely well done.
It isn’t going to make a difference how often I listen to Haught’s remarks. I find them incomprehensible–there’s nothing concrete to which his ideas can be nailed. A decade ago, we’d be in the position of concluding that it was all crap, but we’d say so carefully, and with all deference and genuflection that a theologian of Haught’s prominence could expect. No more.
As you said earlier at WEIT, Haught and his ilk are going to have to do better. Much, much better, because the days when they could expect to get their rings kissed in the ideological marketplace are behind them.
Tildeb, you say:
I think you underestimate the power of self-deception. It is not kindness that leads me to say this, but experience. I think I went through the same process that Haught is going through, and it took years. When faith is the ground bass of one’s life, then, even when faith is breaking down, there are often more reasons to keep a hold on it than to let it go, and it is done, not through deliberate dishonesty, but through a veritable maze of self-deceiving rationalisation.
What looks to an outsider like dishonesty and hypocrisy, to an insider is just common sense. A lot of people, like Haught, go to a great deal of trouble to define faith in such a way that practically anything that is done is done on faith, so religious faith seems innocuous. But that’s all part of the smoke-screen. But the fact that he is laying smoke doesn’t even occur to him, and it won’t until he can get outside of the faith box that he’s in. It took a pretty vicious jerk to rattle me out of it, and I daresay it will take as big a bump in life’s road to lead Haught out of the maze.
Looking back I can see how careful I had to be not to work too far out of the box, but at the time that I was doing it, it seemed — nay, was — perfectly sincere and honest. Haught, given his situation, will find it almost impossible to get out of the box. It’s a very comfortable one. He has status. He is respected. He enjoys the theological game. What would lead him to leave? Of course, something might. But I know, from experience, how much a religious leader loses when he has made the decision that he can no longer speak with integrity about faith. One has to step outside a society in which one had honour and respect, and into a world which is — as the world in fact is — very uncertain. sometimes confusing, and never sure.
Fantastic post Eric. I too now have a better understanding of some of Haught’s rhetorical strategies. One of the many things that bothers me about his presentation is the way he abuses the English language. It seems that part of the strategy of theologians when they debate is to infuse their speech with vagueness and in precise terms, and they never fully or honestly engage with their opponents. I would love one of these people to please define the god they believe in, and then explain how they KNOW the things they claim to know about, in at least some cases, their unknowable god
If we got rid of all god talk and moved theology into literary studies where it becomes just a specialized field studying books that are at best historical fiction, then we wouldn’t be left with scientism. We would be left with the world in which most of us live our lives and no doubt much better off. As Haught explains it – religion is a personal communication with the infinite leading to transformation – and as Eric points out this means religion has no power to impose anything. No more than literature or art or music does.
Yep. Theologians and creationists wanting to debate atheists are going to have to get used to signing releases, because we now know that even the ones claiming academic prestige can’t be trusted not to act like weasels.
This is saddening, but not unpredictable – in 1861, you could be a smart person and clear thinker and consider evolution a reasonably debatable point; in 2011, you have to be fundamentally hard of thinking at best and intellectually dishonest at worst. So too with theologians as the ones capable of clear thinking start doing it. Well, we can hope.
“And just as religion can have nothing to say about science, science can make no contribution to religion, for one is a way of knowing, while the other is a way of imagining possibilities”
Beautifully put! I’ve been looking for a way to expires this and you’ve given it to me.
“*Science* says take nothing on faith, but it takes faith to accept *scientism*; therefore, we shouldn’t accept scientism.”
Is Haught playing fast and loose with terminology here? Or is he just conveniently conflating the meaning of science and scientism?
I’m confused.
I also think the word “truth” has been bandied about so much in theological discussions, that it has become devoid of meaning. I have no idea what Haught’s “truth” is and how it can be truth.
Eric, I err on the side that Haught is deceiving himself too, but I wanted to defer to your greater experience, and indeed thanks for sharing
I think Haught’s comments that he’s an atheist of that god to and the shaking of his head over Jerry’s description of a Catholic at the end may have been Haught dispelling the fog a little more than he would have liked and a little more than many believers would feel comfortable with.
Perhaps dispelling that fog does make it worthwhile debating such people.
Eric, about your Comment #8, which is rather excellent, you seem to be coming to the same conclusion I did based on Haught’s talk. Haught seems to not believe there is a God. Haught seems to believe there is cosmic purpose or that there needs to be cosmic purpose and consequently have belief in belief in God. That’s why he spent most of the talk talking about cosmic purpose and never engaged with anything specific about what God is and whether belief that God exists conflicts with science.
I also get the feeling based on the Q&A that Haught is incapable of taking the “new” atheist position seriously. As you point out, Haught badly misunderstands what Jerry Coyne thinks and becomes very rude and exacerbated. Haught in his talk said that personal transformation is essential to understanding and criticizing theology and I don’t think he’d ever acknowledge any sort of personal transformation in an atheist who thinks his theology is wrong. Also, with the rudeness in the Q&A (as you point out) and books like God and the New Atheists, Haught’s thing seems to be to get exacerbated at the supposed intellectual efficiencies of “new” atheists, complain they don’t understand theology, and have a rude and ugly rant about atheists where he misunderstands their views. He only seems happy with atheists like Nietzsche who, like him, supposedly find the death of god to be a tragedy. The symposium in some sense is unfair (while fair in other senses) because it doesn’t seem John Haught was ever going to take Jerry seriously to begin with.
Sorry to seem to just be agreeing with and repeating you to some extent. I guess my point is I’m getting the same feelings about Haught you are and wonder if you get the exact same feelings. I’ve always been an atheist and never had the experience of being a theologian or priest that is self-deceived and lost in the fog. I’ve at best seen friends with faith in faith who almost know there is no God. Being such a person like Haught is seems tragic.
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Here’s our problem — nothing he says can be falsified. We call it the ethnic food fallacy. “I love Chinese food, Italian food is evil.” How can that be falsified or disproven? It can’t along with all sorts of other hyper-subjective reports of feelings states in an individual.
It’s in-group solipsism.
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Eric, I love this passage you wrote (in #13) about lying versus self-deception:
This online community is a gravitational accretion of smart people with minds that race forward to the implications of a given set of circumstances. So it’s easy for us to get frustrated with Haught not seeing what we see, like Big Bird got frustrated with people not seeing Mr. Snuffleupagus. Or as John McEnroe famously complained, “You cannot be serious!”
But I see two reasons to refrain from the impulse to call “lying” when someone doesn’t see what we see. My primary reason is our experience between ourselves this summer, where the easy label of “lying” was a destabilizing term in the dynamics between friends. My secondary reason is an accurate diagnosis of a theologian is required before a prescription, or else we commit malpractice. So if anyone wants to help Haught make the next step — from a teleology-based worldview to a reality-based worldview — we have to see things his way as well as our way. That’s work.
Haught says Science says take nothing on faith, as we just heard Jerry say, but it takes faith to accept scientism. Therefore, we shouldn’t accept scientism. The logic of this is so unsurpassably watertight that, really, once you’ve said that, you’ve dismantled the intellectual credibility of everything Jerry has just said. (Furthermore, I find myself in the rather peculiar position of trying to defend science and the integrity of scientific investigation and inquiry against his attempt to fuse science and philosophy and faith and religion and everything else into one homogeneous smudge. I want to differentiate the two.)
Eric, this approach is not simply a matter of self-deception – where the charge of lying can be mitigated if the perpetrator was unaware that there was a discrepancy between what was believed and what was actual. If this were the case, then I would agree with you that self-deception was the better term from the much harsher criticism of intentional intellectual dishonesty.
But Haught simply does not deserve this apologetic defense of his intentions as if they were somehow innocent. They were not. His intention was to deceive. Deliberately. This is a very intentional approach.
He intentionally sets out not to deal with anything that Jerry has just said but to smear all of it with an intentional misrepresentation. Furthermore, he is claiming that Jerry has no intellectual credibility! This astounding claim is not based on any innocent self-deception; this is a very deliberate tactic of galling intellectual dishonesty by an academic very aware of what he is intentionally doing to achieve a very specific goal: to dismiss everything Jerry brings to this ‘dialogue’ by means of substituting a straw man argument about scientism in order to intentionally attack another academic’s intellectual credibility. To call this deplorable tactic merely ‘self-deception’ I think is to offer leniency where none is offered or deserved. Haught richly deserves our condemnation of his demonstrated lack intellectual honesty and demonstrated lack of respect for the academic credibility of a renowned scientist.
It took a pretty vicious jerk to rattle me out of it
Do tell!
Haught starts off deceptive – he defines meaning as “Having self evident value” – yet he then argues meaning as though his definition is “has a message.”
Bait and switch.
Plus lets face it – the whole idea that humanity is in decline, that the ancients were somehow better off, is utter horse shit.
“utter horse shit” is that a technical term?
sleeprunning
7 November 2011 at 13:40 | #27 Quote
Of course. Bullshit is a statement made without regard to its truth. Horse shit is a statement made with regard to what is perceived to be true but is obviously false the second you take the time to think about it.
sounds pretty smelly all around….lol….couldn’t resist
The issue of “various theological possibilities” reminds me of a quote from Feynman:
Ah, no, didn’t miss that. However, Jerry’s and my disagreement on the issue of free will goes back a long way. That’s another matter altogether.
Regarding free-will (I also disagree strongly with Jerry Coyne), the following book, ‘Who’s in Charge’ by Michael Gazzaniga, is coming out shortly (I quote from the Amzon website):
‘The father of cognitive neuroscience and author of Human offers a provocative argument against the common belief that our lives are wholly determined by physical processes and we are therefore not responsible for our actions
‘A powerful orthodoxy in the study of the brain has taken hold in recent years: Since physical laws govern the physical world and our own brains are part of that world, physical laws therefore govern our behavior and even our conscious selves. Free will is meaningless, goes the mantra; we live in a “determined” world.
‘Not so, argues the renowned neuroscientist Michael S. Gazzaniga in this thoughtful, provocative book based on his Gifford Lectures——one of the foremost lecture series in the world dealing with religion, science, and philosophy. Who’s in Charge? proposes that the mind, which is somehow generated by the physical processes of the brain, “constrains” the brain just as cars are constrained by the traffic they create. Writing with what Steven Pinker has called “his trademark wit and lack of pretension,” Gazzaniga shows how determinism immeasurably weakens our views of human responsibility; it allows a murderer to argue, in effect, “It wasn’t me who did it——it was my brain.” Gazzaniga convincingly argues that even given the latest insights into the physical mechanisms of the mind, there is an undeniable human reality: We are responsible agents who should be held accountable for our actions, because responsibility is found in how people interact, not in brains.
‘An extraordinary book that ranges across neuroscience, psychology, ethics, and the law with a light touch but profound implications, Who’s in Charge? is a lasting contribution from one of the leading thinkers of our time.’
And I also recommend ‘Aping Mankind’ by the former Professor of Gerontology at Machester University (and a man who has done neurological research himself), Raymond Tallis, who addresses among other things the ‘powerful orthodoxy’ mentioned in the advertisement for Gazzaniga’s book.
Yeah, non-materialist neuroscience. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Non-materialist_neuroscience An exciting new attempt to preserve the magic.
The quotes are good examples of what a deeply confused idea “free will” is. Coming up with a workable definition is likely impossible, and everyone thinks they know the answer until they try to define it. A better question would be “Why do I *think* I have free will?” That actually has answers.
Perhaps you might try reading the book before making easy assertions on the basis of what is said in the advertisement – which does not anyway consist in ‘quotes’ from the book. The idea of free will as some kind of little homunculus sitting above it all outside space and time, or of free-will consisting in decisions unconstrained by any context, which seems to be the idea Jerry Coyne is battling, seems to me to be, well, either a ridiculous theological construct (and well worth combatting on that score) or a straw man.
OK, let’s unpack some of these silly notions:
- Gazzaniga is getting a lot of press, trading on his earlier decent work, with odd (crackpot?) moralizing on findings in neuroscience that make folks uncomfortable. His ideas are very soothing so dominate the media. They are personal opinions and, like an ethnic food preference, not science. His lectures were for a religion-based series.
- The myth of free will is simple: 1) Behavior is all we see, 2) Behavior is triggered in milliseconds and unconsciously there is no need for Jerry to decide he’ll say he doesn’t believe in free will his brain (stem, mainly) has already done it for him. If free will, really using words to direct (all?) body behaviors is so important why can’t it be found in the brain and how do all other species survive without it? duh
Try this: Pick an animal. Right now. What animal did you choose? Why? Did you exercise free will/conscious choice/verbal processing deciding? via Sam Harris.
The “scientism” straw man is a tired old rhetorical trick:
- Frame your opponents arguments as just another personal belief system/”-ism”/world view/ideology.
- Once your opponent accepts these false labels, the it all comes down to personal choices and preferences.
We call this the “ethnic food fallacy” – ethnic food preferences are personal and all are valid. Sure with food/ideology/religions/magical-delusional beliefs, not with data and facts. But it’s a clever and effective tactic since it plays on our brains default hyper-personalization or confusing and uncomfortable ideas. It’s a crowd pleaser. Simple solipsism.
“I feel something really, really strongly (right now) so it’s gotta be fact!!” Feelings aren’t inter-subjective facts.
In fact, there is no such thing as science or even really a scientific method. There is only data — form specific studies on very narrow and specific topics. “Science” and the “scientific method” are media/marketing/sales labels created, well, to sell books and ideas. i.e., for ideological purposes.
Thank you, sleeprunning, although I’m not impressed by the knockdown style and tone of what you write, nor by what arguments you offer (all of which I have heard before). I shall read Gazzaniga and judge his arguments for myself, thank you. Perhaps you might do the same.
Sleeprunning. I think this contains a misunderstanding of what we mean by free will:
The real problem here is that, while we now know that where simple tasks are assigned — such as lifting one’s arm, choosing an animal, etc. — the brain is active milliseconds prior to conscious thought, most issues concerning free will concern actions taken after a period of deliberation. It is, I suspect, hopeless to try to discern what pre-conscious brain events are going on in such cases before the decision is finally made, since there are so many factors that the person has consciously to take into account — a bit like Vronsky in Anna Karenina, listing the positives and negatives about his life, character, etc.
Obviously, for skilled actions like catching a ball, if we had to think about it first, we’d never be able to do it. So, the kinds of actions that are studied to determine how many milliseconds before the decision to raise one’s hand to precisely that height the brain is active, are really a bit misleading as to what we mean by free will. I will be interested in Gazzaniga’s book when it comes out, although its being the Gifford Lectures already raises a few warning flags for me, since the Gifford Lectures are about natural theology (or are supposed to be), and of course for many reasons religion, and, in particular, Christianity, have a peculiar need for free will (or not, of course, depending whether or not you believe in predestination, though even Calvin did not believe that predestination precluded freedom of choice — otherwise punishment would have been inapplicable, which would have lured him into the heresy of universalism — that is, the belief that all will be saved).
Ah so it’s a matter of tone and style (rhetoric) not facts and logic, of course.
Everyone knows the tone argument overrides all considerations of mere content!
http://pharyngula.wikia.com/wiki/Tone_troll
In this case, sleeprunning and David Gerard, I do not think what Tim says rises to the level of tone trolling. The point has to do with providing arguments, not just blunt dismissals. That there are considerations that do in fact make the idea of free will in a deterministic environment fairly clear — see Tom Clark at naturalism.org, especially here — or in Owen Flanagan’s The Problem of the Soul — means that argument must be provided. I have no opinion about Gazzaniga’s book (except that, being the Gifford Lectures raises a few flags for me), and it would be best to save the haughty dismissal for later. I think the point that Tim was making, fairly, is that before we offer rebuttals to contemporary arguments we are bound actually to consider them first. And, as I say in another note, I don’t think the fact that our brains anticipate simple actions really speaks very cogently to the question of free will in general, since they are, in fact, simple actions, and not the complex decision making processes that go into making significant decisions in our lives. Tim’s point was not tone trolling, which, according to PZ, concerns
Any argument assumes a level of respect for one’s opponent, if not for his arguments. But no one so far has said that it’s just a matter of tone and not of facts and logic, so in all fairness the question of tone trolling should not have been raised.
Eric – yes, sorry.
Theoretically humans can use reason and rules of principled argument to counter these tendencies inherited from other animals. Theoretically.
This is just another defensive, ad hominem personal attack to deflect the discussion of the real ideas. Predictable.
Now, sleeprunning, you must do better than that. First of all, it’s not a defensive, ad hominem personal attack. It’s an argument, whether sound or not. As to the “real” ideas, what exactly is that supposed to mean?
Here are a few examples of ad hominem arguments provided by Wikipedia:
In other words, ad hominem directs attention away from the issues involved to something irrelevant to the discussion. Here is another example of an ad hominem argument:
Abusive ad hominem (bullying/personal abuse/personal attacks) involves insulting/ belittling one’s opponent in order to attack her claim or invalidate his argument. Also includes pointing out factual but apparent character flaws/actions that are irrelevant to the opponent’s argument. This tactic is logically fallacious. Insults and negative facts about the opponent’s personal character have nothing to do with the logical merits of arguments or assertions.
Sleeprunning. I know, but why did you quote it? What purpose is it serving?
Criticizing someones style is just trumped up abusive ad hominem. duh Anyone ready to return to the ideas?
Sleeprunning. One more chance. Change your tone or leave. The ad hominem against Gazzaniga by you was precisely that, and pointing this out is not abusive. You have yet to turn to the ideas, much less return to them. As I say, clean up your act, and argue sensibly, or leave.
Thank you, Eric. You have said exactly why I find the arguments against free will one hears so unconvincing (although I am in total agreement as to the emptiness of the theological abstraction). They simply do not do justice to the complexity of our experience. I think it is important to realise that there are genuine (and not religious or sentimental) issues at stake in the debate over free will.
Haught: “Scientism is the belief … that science is the only road for truth.”
Haught gives no argument for this, doesn’t bother to even begin to define ‘science’ and ‘truth’ (which, given the far-fetched definitions he apparently uses, would be the honest thing to do), and uses this feeble notion to dismiss everything Jerry said. And manages to be breathtakingly condescending in the process. I said this on the other thread too: Haught is just a terrible thinker. How does anybody take this pompous ass seriously?
And he fails miserably at characterising science:
Here is Jacob Bronowski (Science and Human Values, p. 74-5) setting the record straight:
Haught is just babbling away. He doesn’t actually care whether what he says is true—except in the twisted sense of ‘true’ that he uses, where he claims anything following a “transforming experience” is ‘true’.
He is no defender of science, as he so grandiosely claims; he doesn’t even understand science.
Peter, you wrote:
Well, Coyne’s presentation file slide 36 says:
Are you against Coyne’s position? Or only against Haught pointing out Coyne’s position?
Scientism, in the strong sense, is the self-annihilating view that only scientific claims are meaningful, which is not a scientific claim and hence, if true, not meaningful. Thus, scientism is either false or meaningless. This is the way Haught uses the term, inserting ‘explanatory monism’ as its synonym and trying to pretend that this is the faith-based starting position people like Coyne assume.
But Jerry uses the weak sense of term, the broad view that the methods of the natural sciences and its single epistemology allows reality to arbitrate what’s claimed to be true about it rather than faith claims imposed upon it. In this sense, this method of honest inquiry – honest in the sense that reality rather than faith determines what’s true – should be applied to any subject matter that can yield satisfactory and reliable natural explanations for phenomena. Furthermore, the incompatibility of any epistemology that allows for faith claims to be equivalent in truth value is shown to be so when we gain no further knowledge from inquiries that include supernatural and paranormal speculations equivalent to made up stuff… speculations which have a very long and ‘rich’ theological history of claims about reality being startlingly inaccurate, unnecessary in complexity, untrustworthy in results, and claims assumed to be true but without any means for independent verification. The ‘explanatory monism’ Coyne uses is not a similar epistemology of the kind that informs faith-based beliefs – based on imposing a similar these faith-based beliefs on reality as Haught would have us believe – but one that is founded on a method of inquiry that extracts evidence from reality to inform truth claims made about it. This is why the epistemological differences between science and faith are insurmountable because they are in direct epistemological competition.
~b FTW!
Comment rated excellent and saved.
Shorter Haught/Coyne in two paragraphs.