Veronica Abbass has very kindly referred me, via her comment at the Canadian Atheist site, to the “religion experts” of the Ottawa Citizen where, this week, they address the question: “What is the greatest obstacle to faith? ” Kevin Flynn, an Anglican priest and director of the Anglican Studies programme at St. Paul University — a Catholic school which, according to its website offers “degrees in Philosophy, Theology, Human Sciences and Canon Law” — in other words, not a university at all — suggests that science itself is not an obstacle to faith; rather, he says,
the greatest obstacle to faith in our culture is the notion — widely held but little examined — that science has made religious faith absurd and untenable. This is not science, but “scientism.”
Now, I have gone of record as suggesting that scientism is, in fact, a misunderstanding of the status and scope of science. The belief that all that we know can, in the end, be reduced to the statements of science is, I believe, an imperialist gesture by some scientists who cannot conceive of knowing what is not, at base, scientific. This is very clearly stated by Jerry Coyne in a recent piece about Thomas Nagel’s new book, Mind and Cosmos, where, countering Nagel’s claims about reductionism, he says this (he is referring to this review of Nagel’s book, by Brian Leiter and Michael Weisberg, in The Nation):
Here all three academics (Weisberg is a philosopher; Leiter a professor of law) make a mistake: the view that all sciences are in principle reducible to the laws of physics, which is materialism, is not identical to an attempt to reduce all sciences to physics. The former must be true unless you’re religious, while the latter is a tactical problem that will be solved to some degree as we understand more about physics and biology, but is unlikely in our lifetime to give a complete explanation for higher-level phenomena. Remember, though, that “emergent phenomena” must be consistent with the laws of physics, even those laws may not be useful for explaining things like natural selection.
And then, a bit later, he simply denies that there are moral truths, for this would contradict his claim that all that we can know can be reduced to the propositions of science. Now, I haven’t made a study of reductionism, and what it is possible to say regarding the reduction of one science to another, but it strikes me that saying, as Coyne does, that “‘emergent phenomena’ must be consistent with the laws of physics” does not, in fact, contradict the claim, made by Nagel, Weisberg and Leiter, that such reductions are or at least may not be possible. Whether it is or is not possible to carry out successive reductions of science that do in fact account for higher level phenomena, so that science is truly unified, is not something that can be based on the claim, which is obviously correct, that higher level phenomena must be consistent with the laws of physics. The question is — and it has not so far been answered, all attempts at producing a unified science to the contrary — whether the laws of physics can explain higher level phenomena. In other words, doubts about the in principle reduction of all sciences to the laws of physics is not clearly only an option for a religious believer, because there is no inconsistency in the belief that higher level phenomena may be only explicable at that higher level, even though such phenomena are consistent with the laws of physics. That seems to me almost trivially true, although I acknowledge that I have not studied the logical conundrums at the heart of concepts of reduction, emergent phenomena, and so on.
Not having read Nagel’s book — and it seems clear to me that he is simply wrong when he states, in the very subtitle of his book, “Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False” — I cannot comment fairly on its content, but I simply cannot, for the life of me, see why so many “senior” philosophers have begun to make this claim. I think I have an inkling of Nagel’s reasons for doing so, since Nagel has, for some time, been deeply concerned with the epistemological problem of what he calls the “view from nowhere.” His book by that title expresses the deep conflict that arises when we compare the individual, perspectival view of reality with a view of reality which is, essentially, a view from nowhere. Using Dawkins’ language when he speaks of bats — and it is good to remember that one of Nagel’s central papers was called “What is it like to be a bat?” — the percipient individual constructs, in the brain, a model, as it were, of the external world, which enables it to navigate and explore and survive within that world. Bats do it by means of sound impulses, which allows their “image” of the world to be updated at varying rates from 10 times per second, up to a high of about 200 times per second when locating and homing in on a prey animal, such as a mosquito (see The Blind Watchmaker, 25).
Nagel’s problem is how we take that view from somewhere and translate it into a view from nowhere, so that we end up with a model of the world which is, as it were, independent of percipient individuals altogether. Now, I don’t want to pursue this particular issue here, though I think it probably stands at the centre of Nagel’s doubts about science, and I think he is wrong to see this as a problem. I can’t give my reasons for thinking this, aside from the fact that making the kinds of assumptions that scientists make about what the world is like, viewed from nowhere, works, and increases our ability to control our environment, which is what percipient modelling of the world is all about, after all.
And this brings me back to Kevin Flynn, and his idea that the obstacle to faith in today’s world is not science but scientism. Again, as I say, I think there is an important distinction here, and I also think that some scientists tend blur the lines between the two, but I think Flynn is simply wrong to suggest that science poses no problem for faith. It obviously does, and that is evident on the page on which his suggestion appears. The problem is simply this. The religious experts who comment are six, plus a humanist. There is an Anglican, a Muslim, a Bahá’í, a Roman Catholic, a Jew, a Humanist and a Buddhist. The Bahà’i says that egotism is the main obstacle to faith, the Roman Catholic mentions fear, the Buddhist nominates our unwillingness to recognise the limitations of human reason, the Jew, being the most original, says that religion is the biggest obstacle to faith, the Anglican thinks it is scientism, and the Muslim obfuscates a bit, takes the opportunity to point out the fundamentals of Muslim faith, and then says that the greatest obstacle is the weakness of faith, which misses the point, and then, finally, the humanist, Kevin Smith, thinks that the biggest obstacle to faith is knowledge. In other words, once you know, you don’t have to have faith, and so religions place a lot of effort on denying knowledge and banning the paths to it.
Of course, one of the chief obstacles to religious faith is scientific knowledge. The religious experts all disagree. Indeed, they don’t seem to notice that the very fact that they disagree, and hold different beliefs to be true, is itself an obstacle, because there is no way to resolve the differences between them. The three great monotheisms, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, are really incestuous, particularly the last two. Judaism has the advantage of having been first in the field, Christianity built upon Judaism, basically by saying that the Jews misunderstood their own scriptures, and missed the Messiah when he came, and then Islam came along and basically dismissed the first two, saying that Muhammad came with a final revelation. Trouble is, of course, that Jews and Christians make essentially the same claim. For Christians, Jesus is the final revelation of God, and made a sacrifice sufficient for all. Islam, having been heir to a strange syncretic mass of teachings from Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism, which rejects all three, substitutes the supposed revelation to Muhammad as the final one, and Muslims to this day proclaim Islam as the final revelation, and the society based on Islam as the perfect society. Judaism, of course, at the heart of its own understanding of faith, think of Jews as specially chosen by God to carry out his mission in the world. In one sense, this belief is least contradictory with other faiths, because there is no reason why Jews should not hold this belief, while still holding that not all people are therefore bound to be part of the chosen people, that being a choice that can be freely made, as is made clear when Joshua (if I recall correctly) challenges the people to choose to be on the Lord’s side.
Why science presents an obstacle to all such undignified and useless bickering should be obvious. There is a decision procedure in science for coming to conclusions which are known to be true simply because they work. This doesn’t mean that the truth value of some apparently known conclusions will never shift, for this has already happened a number of times, but the whole complex of the methods and conclusions of science is additive. It builds on itself, revealing in ever-increasing detail a rich understanding of how the world works, how it got to be this way, and how we can control it for our benefit. None of the religions can do that, and, in comparison with the successes of science, the often petty conflicts between believers, and the obfuscating work of theologians, devising workarounds so that their beliefs can seem consistent with the scientific world view — and each religion, of course, in its own way – make the religions look, not only like human creations, for science is also a human creation, but also like arbitrary human creations. Even though religious traditions can be incredibly complex structures, they look like they have been made up during their journeys through the centuries, to deal with this or that contingency, without any clear sense of what should be abandoned, and what should be held on to. The result is a cacophony of different voices, all shouting at the same time. There are no clear paradigm shifts in religion, as there are in science, and so paradigms accumulate and exist side-by-side, without distinction, unlike science, where paradigms may shift, but when they do, the old paradigms are no longer useful for guiding scientific research and discovery.
Some of the religious voices, of course, pretend to be the only ones, but no religion has yet shown a reason why one set of religious beliefs and practices should be preferred over another, and, interestingly, religious believers themselves have been best at providing reasons not to believe. Doubt is a part of faith. Read some of the Psalms, or Job, or Ecclesiastes, to find out how compelling unbelief can be. The problem, however, though it may not be obvious to believers, is that this doubt, once a firm part of faith, now leads naturally out of faith. Myths only work if you don’t know that they are myths. I don’t know why this fact is not clear to some religious apologists. Paul Tillich thought that myths had to be broken before they could be religiously useful, but that was just another workaround, trying to justify faith in an increasingly disbelieving world. For a time it seemed to work, but eventually, believers realised that if it is not real belief, it is not real faith either.
A lot of apologists try to diminish the role of belief in religion, and, when religions were all-encompassing, so that in effect everyone belonged to the community of faith, the question of belief didn’t really arise. But once faiths started to butt up against each other, and with the phenomenon of unbelief, the whole scene changes. It is possible, in these circumstances, to preserve faith merely by assertion, as some fundamentalist Christians and Muslims try to do. But this is only a temporary solution, as the bleeding of the young from the ranks of fundamentalists in the US seems to indicate. Assertion, no matter how fervent, and no matter how loud, simply cannot stand up against the known facts. And this is the point that Kevin Smith makes in the Ottawa Citizen’s Ask the Religious Experts on obstacles to faith. As he says (and it’s worthwhile quoting this at length):
Some faiths are more obsessive about knocking knowledge back into the Dark Ages, and it’s quite spellbinding in its irony. They refuse to allow their kids to read stories based in fantasy such as the Harry Potter novels. This is the same flock that home schools, so they can instil in young minds that dinosaurs and humans coexisted, but not more than 6,000 years ago, of course.
It was so much easier in the good old days when the Magisterium, who were in the know, and in control, read and wrote Latin, unlike the great unwashed and uneducated. For those with inquiring minds, there was always the threat of a trip to the fire pit or an off with your head — depending on cultural preferences.
But that was before the era of the world-wide-web, which like the spider, is weaving a net where it’s said religion comes to die. For those who experience doubt, there are megabytes of information to feed their curiosity. Hitchens, Harris and Dawkins have replaced Matthew, Luke and John as disciples of the new age of reason.
Nietzsche said, “faith is not wanting to know what is true.” It might provide comfort, security and an escape from fear, but you’ll have to leave knowledge at the door.
I had never heard (or at least I do not remember) Nietzsche’s saying, “Faith is not wanting to know what is true.” That’s very powerful, for it indicates that, at the root of faith, is a deliberate turning away from the facts. In the world today this is virtually impossible for many millions of people. You can’t fail to learn the truth. And this is going to make having faith much more difficult. Only when cultures were (as it were) hermetically sealed world-view units, isolated from each other, was it possible not to want to know the truth, and be left alone in that ignorance. Now, knowledge and reason are pounding at the door. It takes an enormous effort simply to ignore knowledge in a knowledge based society. Despite the religious impulse to have faith, faith itself cannot stand up for long in a storm of facts. What will take religion’s place is anyone’s guess, because we do, after all, need to have some common understanding of ourselves and society. Being social atoms will not hold societies together, so something will come to take religion’s place, but religion, I suggest, is bound to be superseded by something that does not require beliefs that lead us away from what we know to be true. Those of us who are championing unbelief and freedom of thought are perhaps preparing the way.
According to several sources you can Google, Nietzsche did say that.
It makes sense that the religious will try to block secular schools or, failing that, try to insert revealed ‘knowledge’ into the curriculum.
You can cure ignorance with information but you can’t get that information into a vessel already filled with nonsense.
I accept scientific knowledge as the most likely way of discovering objective truth – and this can expose weaknesses in religious beliefs.
But I rather think that it is technology that is most corrosive of faith. Good sanitation, medicine, lightning conductors, government, democracy, education, relative personal security in the developed world, all reduce the need to ‘fend off’ bad things by magical beliefs. Literacy, television, books, magazines, cell phones – all expose people to the weaknesses of their clergy and the fact that other faiths exist.
If there was one bit of current technology that stands in the way of faith, it is the internet. Too many people can voice dissent without penalty. Unlike 600 years ago – John Wycliffe, who criticised the Church and also produced a vernacular Bible was ‘retired’ and later died of natural causes in 1384. Following an edict from Pope Martin V, his body was exhumed 43 years later, burnt at the sake, and his ashes thrown into a river. The Church had power then.
DiscoveredJoys. Of course, you are right. As I say science is not just about knowledge, for there are any number of things that we might know, but which it would be pointless to know. Science is also about controlling the world, and helping us find the best way through it. So, of course, you are right, technology is, to a large extent, the focus of science, and one, at least, of the main purposes for which it is conducted, and together, science and technology are corrosive of faith. Your point about the internet is a good one, I think, It is interesting that anonymity has both its positive and (as we are finding out in these last few days) its negative side. But it is true that being able to express dissent without fear (although it is still possible to identify people by their IP addresses, unless they are very clever) has a powerful corrosive effect on faith.
It should be understood that Nietzsche believed, like Schopenhauer, that existence was pure will, and that the phrase “faith is not wanting to know what is true” could also be rephrased as “the will to untruth” of which Nietzsche considered was one aspect of life, and therefore a great positive. Nietzsche considered the greatest threat to life was nihilism, no longer being able to will imaginatively anything life affirming.
That is a very different perspective to the way it may be understood to the pure materialist or pure rationalist. Nietzsche thought that Christianity was life denying because ‘God was dead’ or the life affirming creative spirit within western culture had come to an end, and had been replaced by the uninspiring spirit of modernity, a slave mentality.
Nietzsche was not only against the nihilism of Christianity, but the same nihilism practiced in the modern priesthood of the enlightenment, who were still the same idealists in different garb.
The funny thing is, Egbert, that when I went to my copy of The Anti-Christ, I had marked that section, and what you say is not Nietzsche’s point at all. It’s got nothing to do with Schopenhauer. He is speaking quite straightforwardly in this section (#52 in the Penguin, Hollingdale translation). Listen to this:
And he even goes on to make a point about interpretation or hermeneutics, and how Christian apologists read scripture (as well as other events, like the victory of an army) in such a way as “to make a philologist run up every wall in sight.” And then he goes on to speak of God being treated like a domestic servant. No, this is straightforwardly relevant to the context in which I have used it.
Obviously we’re interpreting things differently here, and Nietzsche is hardly ever straightforward.
No. no, no, Egbert, you’re quite rightly making some general assumptions about NIetzsche — that he was, for instance, influenced by Schopenhauer, just as Wagner was. But Nietzsche’s split with Wagner meant a reevaluation of his understanding of Schopenhauer. And if you read the Anti-Christ, you will see the difference that made, where, for example, his understanding of truth is very different to Schopenhauer’s. Just a few sections later, for instance, we have him saying: “… fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons … And then in the very next section (55), he says: “is there any difference between a lie and a conviction?” A conviction — that is, a williing to be true.
“We have discovered happiness, we know the way, we have found the exit out of the labyrinth of thousands of years. Who else has found it? Modern man perhaps? ‘I have got lost; I am everything that has got lost,’ sighs modern man.
This modernity was our sickness: lazy peace, cowardly compromise, the whole virtuous uncleanliness of the modern Yes and No. This tolerance and largeur of the heart, which ‘forgives’ all because it ‘understands’ all, is sirocco for us. Rather live in the ice than among modern virtues and other south winds!” [The Antichrist, 1]
Nietzsche’s split with Schopenhauer was only because he could not follow a philosophy of resigned pessimism, he wanted to view life as positive instead. However, the metaphysical assumptions of the world as will, he still retained.
An excellent article. I have forwarded it to several people.
Egbert, even if that were so, you do not respond to the contextual argument that I have made. While there is some truth in the idea that Nietzsche continued to see will as important to being, it was in particular personal being that he had in mind. Will was essential to the expression of selfhood, not to Schopenhauer’s Kantian idea of being itself, or the neumenon. This is an important difference which you ignore. And, in the example I supplied, Nietzsche is speaking quite plainly about truth and faleshood in a very ordinary, even scientific sense. You must at least show that his notions of will and the assertion of being are relevant in this context, before you dismiss the use that I make of the quotation.
Consciousness or Mind is indeed a great mystery (or rather it’s in front of our faces), which can’t be reconciled with physics or even evolution. If we accept only a materialistic notion of the universe, then consciousness would simply not be there, and we would all be zombies. Hence why skepticism needs to pull us back from scientism, and for us to question any dogmatic materialist who views the world as meaningless, void of morality, and that people only have utilitarian worth.
Atheists have lost their skepticism for materialistic certainty, and that is the great tragedy, and why they’re no different to dogmatic Christians, who do not even understand the mystery of their own religion, which they take literally.
Only mind and therefore spirituality can we regain the path of morality, and back to a meaningful way of life. Materialism will only turn us into slaves or robots under a terrible tyranny.
Eric, Nietzsche did view existence as will, or at least that is how to understand him, and a person is part of nature, the will working through them. Hence his love of fate.
As for myself, I am not ‘convinced’ (see the irony) that the universe is ‘will’, but I am also not ‘convinced’ that the universe is purely materialistic.
Ah, as to materialism, Egbert, neither am I, as you can see from my questioning of Jerry Coyne. I am not convinced, as Nagel is not, that consciousness is reducible to physics. So, you have in me in that respect an ally. However, I am not convinced that in relationship to the question of faith and wanting not to know that NIetzsche did not mean this is a quite straightforward sense. However, I am not a scholar of Nietzsche, and could easily be corrected.
Eric, feel free to view the references in this post on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_to_power
I have been reading Nietzsche for years, but still struggle to fully understand him, and so I’m no scholar either. However, I am confident that a proper understanding of Nietzsche is to understand how his idea of will to power develops from Schopenhauer. However much I admire Nietzsche, I think he goes wrong in many ways.
Although Nietzsche hated Christianity, he did admire Judaism and Islam, so you have to remember that too.
I am always a bit suspicious of The Will to Power, edited as it was by his sister Elizabeth, who had more than Nietzsche’s irons in the fire. I am not so sure as Wikepedia that Nietzsche can be so closely related to Schopenhauer, nor am I convinced that he admired Judaism or Islam except insofar as there was in both, as in Homer, a brilliant affirmation of the warrior spirit. The cry of exaltation of the warrior in the midst of battle is something which, almost unnaturally, affected the studious and short-sighted Nietzsche more than it should. Someone in the English tradition who adopted many of Nietzsche’s ideas is DH Lawrence, whose affirmation of life, at least at the start, was in many ways more positive than Nietzsche’s, since he was not so deeply coloured by the influences of Christianity. I ignore here his disastrous exploration of Aztec romanticism. I don’t think there can be any one understanding of Nietzsche. He is so internally contradictory. At one moment he seems quite rooted in the Enlightenment, and the next he is extolling the virtues of war and plunder! He was a mystery to himself, I think, and died that way. The quotation I used was in the Enlightenment mode, and can scarcely be associated with his more exuberantly romantic ideas of will and power.
You’re correct, there is no single interpretation, but one can get close to understanding him, and his time. See section 60 for his admiration of Islam in his Antichrist.
Rejecting pure materialism does not mean that evolutionary theory is rejected, only that it is incomplete. I think that’s a fair enough position, but since evolution has become so politicized amongst atheists, then very few whom have become so emotionally and financially invested in it, are willing to fall out of their scientism.
But our over confidence in materialism is why we became so self-righteous, and it’s why I was at least in error in doing so, during my new atheist phase. Since I’m not emotionally nor financially invested in new atheism, I can admit to being wrong, but what about those who are so invested? It means that they are unlikely to admit to their error, especially to the great damage they have done in attacking their enemies so stridently.
And this idea of objective morality, I still don’t buy at all. For me, moral understanding has to be subjective based, or in other words based in consciousness itself. Objective morality only seems to be making the same mistake of pure materialism. These are still things I’m working through myself, but I can’t see me making the same mistake again.
This reads as an argument from incredulity so I suspect that the problem is in my interpretation of your comment.
However it seems quite reminiscent to arguments used by creationists (on this blog and others) to posit a supernatural explanation for life as the (pick the biological subsystem of choice, say the eye, blood clotting, bacterial flagellum etc.) is just too complex to have arisen from purely natural mechanisms.
I’m not implying that you think that consciousness has some supernatural or non material component, it may be that I conflate physics with material explanations while your definition is broader.
I suspect that this is also pivotal with respect to your position on free will, an area I have avoided comment on as I suspect my differences with your position are due more to a misapprehension of your position than to any substantive disagreement.
Steve, that remark is made simply on the basis of my question about the status of reduction, and whether there can be, in any demonstrable sense (as opposed to mere supposition), a unified science. As I say, I am not sure that higher order systems, such as consciousness, can be reduced, without remainder, to lower order systems, such as the laws of physics, though, of course, higher order systems cannot be inconsistent with the laws of physics. So, it is not an argument as such at all; it is a reserved judgement about something for which there is, at present, no clear answer. In this respect it is a judgement that may reflect as you say, on my position (such as it is) on free will. I say may, because I simply do not know enough about either the epistemology or ontology of reductionism in science.
You write “That’s very powerful, for it indicates that, at the root of faith, is a deliberate turning away from the facts.” Martin Luther observed that those of us who use reason tend to lose a need for God. His solution was to crush reason. One must be unreasonable for God’s sake.
http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/Quotes.htm
I like to think that Daniel Kahneman’s book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, shows that we all have the capacity to reason, but it is easier to be reactive, unreasonable. As it is also easier to be unlucky. Luck is what one does with chance. For luck you have to have practiced the good habit of reasoning. Understanding why I say that comes with appreciating Norman Doidge’s book The Brain That Changes Itself.
People might be interested in Massimo Pigliucci’s recent posts on emergence at Rationally Speaking.
Thanks for the suggestion Michael. The first of these posts is available here, and the second, here. I shall read them with interest.
I bought Thinking, Fast and Slow for a friend. I am interested in what you have to say about it Donnie.
Sorry no. The biggest obstacle to faith is the complete and utter lack of coherence in what is being demanded to be believed “on faith”.
Has nothing to do at all with science or scientism.
Let’s stick to what I know — Christianity. You’re asked, at bare minimum, to accept.
1. There is a super-intelligent, super-powerful being that created the entire universe specifically with the objective of creating the human race.
2. After having created the entire universe specifically to create the human race, this being created the human race according to its own specifications using the same super-intelligence and super-powers it used to create the universe. Or “guided” the process in some fashion — the end result is the same — humans.
3. Even with all of its super-intelligence and super-powers, the human race became somehow “separated” from god. Some believe it’s because humans behave in a manner that this super-being believes is inappropriate. Others believe it’s either a literal or metaphorical “sin nature”. (Which leads to the question of — design or designer? But let’s set that aside.)
4. The only way this super-intelligent, super-powerful creator/guider of everything could reconcile itself with the human race was to …. get a virgin pregnant in a primitive desert town so he could have her give birth to his human avatar, then preach revolution against the authorities as an adult in order to get himself executed by those authorities. And then come back from the dead, showing himself to only illiterates, semi-literates, and the powerless…why, for example, did he now show Pilate and Herod his wounds? And then to leave forever, leaving absolutely zero trace of his very existence behind.
This I’m supposed to swallow? Leaving aside the scientific improbabilities involved, it’s incoherent on its face. What god would act like this? What god would choose as the ONLY method of reconciliation with its favored species a bloody show-trial and execution in a primitive time and place, and a resurrection that nobody of importance witnessed? It’s doesn’t even rise to the level of patent nonsense.
Apologists that use the charge of scientism always seem to really be talking about the denial of revelation as valid. Since revelation amounts to little more than guessing with great confidence, putting its claims to the test, as science demands, always harms the revelations. Science is perhaps the most straightforward and undeniable way to challenge and defeat revelation claims, but there are also many philosophical ways to identify contradictions an outright absurdities in the various religions as well.
I have come to agree that there are indeed types of knowledge that are not obtainable by the strict use of the scientific method, but they must always take a back seat when in conflict with the “real” science. The charge of scientism ends up mostly being an ad hominem, since religion remains easily deniable even if scientism is shown to be false or unreasonable. Perhaps we can start calling the apologists “revelationists”.