Sometimes intelligent people can say some really stupid things. I know this as an experiential fact, because I’m intelligent and I’ve said some really stupid things. In conversations. In books I’ve written. In my blog posts.
When I do this, it’s entirely fair for other people to criticize what I’ve said. That’s why I feel equally justified in calling an essay in the Atlantic by Arthur C. Brooks, “Why You Should Keep an Open Mind on the Divine,” a stupid idea.
Brooks starts off by quoting Russian cosmonaut Gherman Titov, the second man to orbit the Earth: “Sometimes people are saying that God is out there. I was looking around attentively all day but I didn’t find anybody there. I saw neither angels nor God.”
Brooks then says:
But it was of a piece with a very common viewpoint, Eastern and Western, then and now: If you don’t observe something and can’t physically find it, then it is fair to assume it doesn’t exist. If you insist on that thing’s existence because you feel it, believe in it, or have faith in it, you are deluded or a fool. No matter your stance on religion, the Titovian philosophy is a foolish position. Indeed, life is incomplete and nonsensical without a belief in the reality of the unseen.
Now, this is a common approach of religious believers. They set up a straw man argument, by misrepresenting the actual argument. Titov said he didn’t see angels or God in space. He didn’t claim that everything real must be seen.
The middle of the earth can’t be seen, but it is real. Atoms can’t be seen, but they are real. So Brooks is on firm ground when he writes:
It might strike you as unscientific to believe in the unseen, but the truth is the opposite: A good deal of the way today’s scientists understand the world operates at a purely theoretical level. Take modern physics: For many decades, particle physicists have studied the building blocks of matter—the atoms that make up molecules; the protons and neutrons inside atoms; the quarks that make up protons and neutrons. Quarks are so small that they cannot be observed at any visual scale; they are understood to be pointlike entities that have zero dimensionality. And yet, no physicist believes quarks don’t exist, because the theoretical and indirect empirical evidence that they do is overwhelming.
Okay. No argument there. But note that Brooks says we should believe in quarks because the theoretical and empirical evidence that they exist is overwhelming. So he’s saying that something unseen should be accepted as real when there is solid evidence for it.
Absolutely. If there was solid evidence for God, the supernatural, and other manifestations of divinity, I’d be a theist, not an atheist. But after thirty-five years of believing in God on the basis of faith alone, I lost faith in faith. I decided that in the remaining years of life I had left, I wanted to embrace reality rather than illusion, truth rather than falsehood.
Brooks presses onward with his straw man arguing by pointing out that animals have senses different than our own. Bats navigate by a form of sonar. Elephants can detect sounds our ears are incapable of hearing. Snakes can perceive thermal images of their prey.
Again, there is solid evidence for these unseen (to us) sensory abilities. They don’t have to be taken on faith. Scientists conduct experiments that prove animals have perceptions we humans lack. Just as with the study of quarks by physicists, biologists know about these animal capabilities on the basis of empirical evidence.
Now Brooks begins to edge into woo-woo territory. This isn’t a totally indefensible statement.
Humans lack these senses, but to assume they don’t exist would be silly, even dangerous. Similarly, we have no reason to believe that the world of science has exhausted the fields of material reality that are beyond our sensory perception. On the contrary, the most logical and rational assumption we can make is that we are surrounded by forces and entities of which we are completely unaware—and which are as yet undiscovered.
Sure, likely there are forces and entities in the universe we’re completely unaware of. That’s the nature of scientific discovery, pushing forward into the vast ocean of the unknown from the shore of current knowledge.
By contrast, this passage is pure religion and zero science.
Take, for example, this definition of faith in the existence of God, from the Bible: “the assurance of what we hope for and the conviction about things that cannot be seen.” This is a belief held not only by the unschooled, but by many of history’s most esteemed scholars and thinkers.
And those scholars and thinkers were wrong to believe that faith-based conviction about unseen things is anything more than fantasy and delusion. For once faith in the unseen is accepted as a viable guide to reality, there’s no barrier to believing in utterly crazy stuff. The moon is made of green cheese under its dusty surface. Fairies make flowers grow. Invisible dragons cause lightning. God looks down on us from the highest heaven.
There’s no end to fact-free conjectures about God and the supernatural. Yet Brooks would have us take them seriously.
Some modern scholars have gone so far as to try to blend the science of the unseen with the realm of the supernatural. Robert J. Marks, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Baylor University, suggests that God (the Christian God, in this case) exists in higher dimensions than we can see, making him real in our lives but completely invisible to our physical senses. An alternative proposition, advanced by three Harvard cognitive-science researchers, is that God is perceptible only to human intuition—a sixth sense, in effect.
Brooks concludes his essay by saying:
To dismiss something for the fact of its invisibility is a mistake. Instead, intellectual integrity should make us open to indirect evidence that comes from beyond the realm of ordinary observation.
I learned that viewpoint, in fact, from someone who lived only a couple of miles from the Space Needle: my father. A brilliant mathematician and statistician, as well as a lifelong but not uncritical Christian believer, he pondered the vexing questions of evil and randomness his whole life. He embodied for me someone whose intellectual openness also involved religious activity in the form of daily prayer, contemplation, service, and worship. He died many years ago, so I can’t check this, but I have a dim memory of him weighing in on Titov’s argument about not finding God in space. “It’s like saying Picasso doesn’t exist because he can’t be found inside Picasso’s paintings.” Amen.
Wow. I doubt that anyone who isn’t mentally challenged has ever claimed that Picasso doesn’t exist because he can’t be found inside Picasso’s paintings. We know that Picasso existed because there is plenty of solid evidence that he did. Again, if there was solid evidence for God and the supernatural, belief in the divine would be warranted.
Since there isn’t such evidence, blind faith is the only way people can believe in God and the supernatural. It’s fine with me if someone wants to do this. Like I said, I’ve done that myself. Just don’t expect others to accept that you’re laying claim to a genuine aspect of reality. All you’re doing is putting forth a stupid idea.
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Brooks doesn’t really elaborate on what he means by ‘indirect evidence that comes from beyond the realm of ordinary observation’. Is he referring to feelings, supposed spiritual healings and (what some may call) coincidences?
I also find it interesting that he has (again supposedly) quoted a definition of faith from the Bible, namely “the assurance of what we hope for and the conviction about things that cannot be seen.” It sounds like this quote may have been taken from one of Paul’s letters. Anyhow, notice the word ‘hope’, which (in my opinion) is probably the main reason for believing in God/higher power etc and the promise of a (positive) afterlife, although I firmly believe that feeling has a lot to do with belief in God as well.
The problem of a purely materialistic logic is simply that we only partially understand the mechanisms that cause what we see and feel. So there is the unknown.
The argument that we must have strong theoretical backing to believe the unseen is an argument disproven by every non-intuitive discovery.
We can’t theorize about what we don’t know. But that doesn’t stop people from trying, be they astrophysicists or neuroscientists, or theologians. That goes for religion as well as science, and no opinion should guide belief. Open minded investigation should help develop experience, knowledge, belief and understanding. And where we can’t investigate, we should avoid opinion wherever possible. Because we are likely to be wrong.
Of course, occasionally evidence supports opinion. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. But it’s not a very efficient process. Investigation and discovery is much more efficient. Why? Because whatever is found is truth. Opinions, even “scientific” conjecture is hit or miss.
Therefore no one can claim anything about what is unknown. And to claim the unknown simply doesn’t exist is just another false opinion which science disproves daily.
Every day discoveries transform some small part of what was unknown into what is known. Sometimes there is theory behind it, but more often than not, it is discovery that is counter-intuitive to theory.
Theory is an effort to explain many things by a few principles. This has proven wildly successful.
But it has also been disproven just as often. And the evidence for this is the proliferation of laws and principles to explain heretofore unknown findings.
As our instruments of measurement, both mechanical and personal, develop, more is witnessed, and usually that doesn’t support anyone’s theory. Occasionally it does, but more often some new theory must be proposed to explain the new finding.
This is certainly the case with our new telescope that has discovered many, many more and older galaxies than previously theorized were possible.
Happens every day. Discovery trumps opinion most times. And when it doesn’t, we have support for a theory.
So to claim the unknown must be circumscribed by theory in order to establish its possibility is purely unscientific.
What is the rational materialist position does not have a chance of support in the face of discovery, piece by piece, investigation by investigation, of the unknown.
That means god, spirit, call it what you will, may most certainly exist. Certainly many, many spiritual sages of the past have spoken about such things, and created words to describe them. And many of those anecdotal observations have been repeatedly witnessed from different times and geographies where individual reports were entirely independent of many of the others.
How we define things isn’t what they are. And those definitions do get better with better measurement. That goes for the science in the physical labs, as well as the science of meditation.
Beyond that, who can say about the unknown. It’s unknown, Dude!
Haha, yes! Enjoyed reading the Atlantic article you linked to, Brian, and your excellent take-down of it! 👍
Arthur Brooks’ entire thesis is no more than a hodgepodge of one logical fallacy after another — and the strawman does seem to be his favorite go-to, like you very rightly point out. Made for an interesting and entertaining read. …Amazing how grown men, educated men, and men who’ve thought long and hard about this, end up making such elementary errors in basic critical thinking. No wonder they end up with such absurd conclusions and such completely silly beliefs.
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Your own takedown of this nonsense is perfectly done! Still, given how completely full of errors is this piece, not just one or two here or there but at each and every step, I thought it might be amusing to try to exhaustively list them here. I haven’t started yet, but I’ll wager I’ll end up with a score of at least ten, all within the space of this short piece! …OK, here goes:
1. “It might strike you as unscientific to believe in the unseen, but the truth is the opposite: A good deal of the way today’s scientists understand the world operates at a purely theoretical level.” —– Strawman. Like you rightly point out, Brian. No sensible person thinks that, not if you take just “seeing”, literally. And it isn’t “foolish”, like he claims, if we take “seeing” as metaphor, as stand-in, for evidence generally.
2. “no physicist believes quarks don’t exist, because the theoretical and indirect empirical evidence that they do is overwhelming” —– Again, and like you rightly point out, Brian: Strawman. The rationalist-atheist’s position does not involve just literally “seeing”, so that it is silly to disingenuously make a show of refuting that misrepresentation, that strawman, with the air of scoring a gotcha.
3. “Humans lack these senses, but to assume they don’t exist would be silly, even dangerous.” —– Reversal of burden of proof. Like you rightly point out, that sort of thinking opens the floodgates for belief in all kinds of nonsense — which, of course, is exactly what religious belief is, quite literally.
4. “we have no reason to believe that the world of science has exhausted the fields of material reality that are beyond our sensory perception” —– Strawman. No one that bats for science says that. …Heh, this gambit’s a favorite of our Spence! (Hey, Spence! No offense! But that particular strawman is actually kind of a favorite of yours, isn’t it, from among your vast repertoire of feints and misdirections? In fact, you employ it right there, yet again, in the comment of yours right above mine!)
5. “the assurance of what we hope for” —– in other words, (fallacious) wishful thinking, pure and simple.
6. “and the conviction about things that cannot be seen.” —– in other words, and to use technical jargon, halfwittery! As you rightly point out, Brian.
7. “In his Metaphysics, Aristotle made the case for the existence of God as the unseen “first mover,” the necessarily uncaused, prior cause of all other things.” —– And that’s nonsense, pure and simple, that “first mover” thingy. Complete utter claptrap, as we’ve examined threadbare right here in this blog. Aristotle was a smart man, a genius, and there’s no shame in his having held that view back in those dark ignorant times. It is precisely by standing on the shoulders of giants like him that we’re today able to see beyond that darkness of ignorance and onto the vistas of light and knowledge and clarity. But it is no more than complete utter halfwittery to spout that nonsense today.
8. “In a 2009 survey, the Pew Research Center found that among scientists who belonged to the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science, just over half (51 percent) believed in “some form of deity or higher power. Defying the general trend that young adults are becoming less religious than their elders, scientists under 35, who have grown up amid the latest breakthroughs, were the most religious in the survey: 66 percent were believers, as opposed to 46 percent of scientists 65 and older.” —– Fallacious appeal to authority. And textbook argumentum ad populum.
…Ah, bummer! We’ve ended up with just 8 then, two short of the 10 I’d started out expecting. Or 9, if we count in the Picasso variation of his Titov theme, that you’ve so thoroughly dismantled. And the count does go beyond ten, if we count the multiple fallacies and errors that some individual items contain. …Well whatever. Even eight’s more than plenty, for a piece of this size. And in any case, half that number would have more than sufficed to show that Brook’s thesis is complete nonsense.
…Kind of low-hanging fruit, actually, no? But fair game, because this is exactly the kind of fruit that religious dupes jump up to swallow from the tree of halfwittery, Sunday after Sunday after Sunday.
Hi Appreciative:
You commented:
4. “we have no reason to believe that the world of science has exhausted the fields of material reality that are beyond our sensory perception” —– Strawman. No one that bats for science says that. …Heh, this gambit’s a favorite of our Spence! (Hey, Spence! No offense! But that particular strawman is actually kind of a favorite of yours, isn’t it, from among your vast repertoire of feints and misdirections? In fact, you employ it right there, yet again, in the comment of yours right above mine!)
Actually this isn’t a straw man at all. I think you and Brian believe this statement you have provided in quotes. And I also believe it.
It would be a straw man to imply that you don’t believe this. But of course you do.
So there is no straw man here.
However, you add conditions on your conjectures about the unknown that I suggest cannot be fact based, because what is unknown may be facts that are counterintuitive to the ones we know today. The unknown opens up different dimensions of size, scope and time where different laws may exist. That’s what we’ve learned from the history of scientific discovery. It is much more than confirming theories. Far more science over the years has been discovering stuff that didn’t fit into past theories. This is not an argument for any specific conclusion except what history has demonstrated. We don’t know what we don’t know. We do know there is stuff we don’t know.
So, why conjecture? Why not just accept what we know, and be honest about what we don’t know?
The real world contains both of these. And accepting reality as it is means accepting both. Generally we don’t know most things, but someone in each profession certainly knows more than we do in our limited space.
It is the mark of a rational thinker to claim “I don’t know” when discussing things they don’t actually know.
The strawman consists in Brooks’ implying that rationalism and science and, in this case, the atheistic POV, “(believes) that the world of science has exhausted the fields of material reality that are beyond our sensory perception”. The knocking down of that strawman consists in his saying that that isn’t the case. Like I said, no reasonable person believes the strawman that Brooks is busily knocking down, no reasonable scientist believes that, no reasonable atheist believes that.
Likewise in much of what you yourself said in your comment immediately preceding mine. For instance, where you say that, “(open) minded investigation should help develop experience, knowledge, belief and understanding”, the strawman consists in your implying that the reasonable atheist does not think that. And your further saying that “And where we can’t investigate, we should avoid opinion wherever possible. Because we are likely to be wrong,” is a strawman as well, in as much you’re implying the atheist doesn’t do that.
And likewise again, when you say to me, just now, that “It is the mark of a rational thinker to claim “I don’t know” when discussing things they don’t actually know”. Sure, it is indeed the mark of the “rational thinker” to not claim to know what one doesn’t know. The strawman consists in your implying here that the reasonable atheist does not think that.
True, no one knows if there’s a teapot orbiting Mars, or an invisible dragon within my garage: but it is reasonable to reject both hypothesis until such time as evidence bears out those claims. That isn’t closed-mindedness, at all. The null hypothesis, when you’re out investigating Russel’s teapot, is that there’s no such thing. It’s a simple matter of burden of proof.
No one is stopping anyone from investigating the God hypothesis. But it is silly to claim that such is reasonable, until such time as compelling evidence has been found to reasonably conclude that.
All of this isn’t new to you. We’ve discussed all of this threadbare, in our long series of discussions on the scientific worldview. Including, specifically, Russel’s teapot, and Sagan’s dragon as well. (Shadowfax says hi!)
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I realize that with people like Brooks, and with you as well, Spence, it isn’t about rational thinking and rational discourse, but only about going through the motions of such in order to keep up the illusion that your unfounded beliefs make sense. Having realized that, I shouldn’t have tagged you in my comment, mea culpa. Just, seeing you go stomping on that exact same strawman that I was writing about in my comment on Brooks, in the comment right above mine, is what impelled me to: but I should have resisted the impulse.
Like I said, no offense meant. By all means carry on doing your …thing. Much like Brooks’ weird little piece, having it all spelled out clearly provides people an object lesson on how not to think, and helps provide insight into how it is that all manner of nonsensical ideas come to be believed, insight into the mechanism of the thinking that embraces these fallacious beliefs.
(Although that’s the thing. In a discussion space devoted specifically to rational reasonable spirituality, which I believe is what Brian intends for Churchless, it does make sense to sometimes discuss these things. So that, while Brooks’ piece is obviously nonsense, from beginning to end, and ideally should be left alone after a quick glance: but it does make sense to sometimes dissect that nonsense clearly — not all the time, but sometimes, occasionally — which is what Brian has done here, and following him I as well. Likewise, you mustn’t mind if occasionally your fallacious thinking, that you lay out for display here, is examined and remarked on. Particularly when that bears on the main discussion, as here.)
“Preaching the Gospel of Spiritual Independence”…
I just realized what a contradiction that phrase is. “Spiritual Independence” is an oxymoron. If you are spiritual you immediately realize you are not independent at all.
Hi Appreciative
You wrote
“the strawman consists in your implying that the reasonable atheist does not think that.”
… “True, no one knows if there’s a teapot orbiting Mars, or an invisible dragon within my garage: but it is reasonable to reject both hypothesis until such time as evidence bears out those claims.”
To reject a specific hypothesis as false is not the only alternative to accepting it as true.
It’s unknown. Therefore to reject any hypothesis about the unknown as false implies a knowledge about the unknown we don’t have.
My point is that applying colloquial and pragmatic criteria to the unknown has already been shown to have a very high failure rate. Reality often is counter intuitive. Therefore the wise Atheist avoids passing comments about it except to confirm, “I can’t reject your claim nor accept it. From my perspective it’s unknown.”
The rational Atheist doesn’t need to know. They lose nothing by confirming it. But they gain universal credibility doing so.
Your objection I preempted, and have addressed aleady, in the portions immediately following those quotes, that I see you’ve carefully left out. Strawman yet again. What I said about interminally going through the motions of rational thought and discourse, as opposed to actually engaging in such and following such to where it leads.
Russel’s teapot. Sagan’s dragon. Silly to believe in such until evidence is uncovered. Which does not mean one is closed minded, no one is stopping anyone from investigating those things.
Like clearly discusses in those scientific worldview threads. And, in any case, like clearly spelled out in my comment that you responded to, in the portions you’ve carefully left out in order to go through the motions of engaging rationally with my comment.
Or, to put the same thing in context of your own words, where you say: “I can’t reject your claim nor accept it. From my perspective it’s unknown.”
No. Emphatically no. Instead, this: I can’t directly reject, nor accept, your claim that there’s a teapot orbiting Mars. But my not accepting your contention is functionally the same as my rejecting it. It is your burden of proof, the onus is on you to prove (using not the technical but the loose colloquial sense of it, to preempt yet another nitpick) the existence of this teapot. Absent such “proof”, it’s silly of you to believe it, and it would be silly of me to believe you.
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But again, none of this is new. Discussed to death in our threads of scientific worldview as well as soft atheism. (That functional rejection, by not accepting it, IS soft atheism.)
Again, all of this said like 20 times. Saying it one more time will make no difference. Because you’re not here to engage in rational thought and discussion, following it where it leads. But only to go through the motions.
Hi AR
You wrote
“But my not accepting your contention is functionally the same as my rejecting it.”
I think there is a very large difference. Not accepting someone’s statement for yourself is not the same as rejecting that individual’s right to live by their own rules. But if one rejects the other’s claim as wrong, lacking any evidence either way, or saying it is ridiculous or stupid actually is just a personal projection of ignorance. It interferes with seeing things as they are, not merely as you or I see them.
“I think there is a very large difference.”
No, there isn’t. There’s a significant epistemological difference between the two, a significant difference in the route via which we arrive at our conclusion: but not accepting a claim is, functionally and effectively, just the same as rejecting the claim. That is the substance, the meat, the tofu, of soft atheism. As you well know.
We’ve been through this exact same exchange at least like ten times, maybe more, in as many years. None of this is new to you. Your feigning of ignorance and confusion is just that, a feint.
Like I said, the interminably-going-through-the-motions-of-rational-thought-and-discourse thing, via which to keep alive the delusion that one’s fallacious worldview makes sense.
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“Not accepting someone’s statement for yourself is not the same as rejecting that individual’s right to live by their own rules.”
Strawman. No one, no one at all, least of all me, has suggested that “not accepting someone’s statement for yourself” might be anything like “rejecting that individual’s right to live by their own rules”. No idea why on earth you’re saying that with the air of saying something either meaningful or relevant. That’s just completely random nonsense you’ve made up out of whole cloth.
———-
“But if one rejects the other’s claim as wrong, lacking any evidence either way, or saying it is ridiculous or stupid actually is just a personal projection of ignorance. It interferes with seeing things as they are, not merely as you or I see them.”
No, it isn’t. And no, it doesn’t.
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Peace, Spence. Let’s just stop now, we’re simply wasting time talking nonsense. Over and out.
I think soft Atheism includes possibility, which means what we don’t actually know may be true. Therefore not accepting a claim of divinity because we don’t know for ourselves does not conclude the claim is false., as if we actually knew the entirety of the unknown.
But hard atheism, like religion, does make conclusive statements about the unknown: “No God (and x, y, z about the unknown) doesn’t exist.” That would require, honestly, a knowledge of all that is in the unknown. And therefore it is a false claim, on the same level of religious claims made without evidence. Saying “Yes this exists” is an easier go since it only requires evidence for that claim. And that evidence can be found in thousands of pages of spiritual writings found throughout all recorded history.
But claiming “No that doesn’t exist” requires evidence of the entire unknown, whatever evidence might exist. You are on much weaker ground claiming something doesn’t exist because you must have a full knowledge of all things known and unknown to make such a claim.
Now this is just my opinion about these things. So I don’t reject your slightly different view. I just say that based on the above I personally cannot accept it. Which yes, comes as no surprise to either of us. 😊
Lastly about the null hypothesis. You mentioned it.
That is the hypothesis that your proposed variable has no evidence of its effect upon another variable. That is not a statement of the existence of that variable.
You must have both variables under contol to test them. They both must exist in order to conduct your experiment.
If you do not, then you cannot test either hypothesis or null hypothesis.
Science does not actually test the existence of anything, merely its effect. And from its effect we can learn more about it. But its existence is presumed and actually necessary to conduct a true scientific test.
Without the existence of a variable that you have some control over, at least the ability to measure, nothing scientific can be claimed. Certainly not existence or non-existence.