Taking Eaglestrong seriously
Richard Norman offers to take seriously the claims of Eagleton and Armstrong and other critics of The God Delusion in order to ‘try to do justice to the nuanced diversity of the views of the religious,’ agreeing at the outset that
Dawkins does over-simplify. Although he knows perfectly well that most Christians are not creationists, he sometimes writes as though they were, and implies that all religious belief is just obviously refuted by science and Darwin. He is inclined to treat all versions of religion as equally irrational.
He considers the relationship between religion and science first, pointing out that Dawkins is right that the claim that ‘God’ is a simpler answer to questions about why the universe exists and why it is ‘fine-tuned’ in such a way that etc etc is ‘to misunderstand the requirement of simplicity.’ It’s very simple to say ‘God’ of course, but a mind that could fine-tune a universe is actually…not simple; ‘it stands much more in need of explanation than what it is supposed to explain.
We cannot just assume that the only good explanations are scientific explanations. We need to take seriously the claim that scientific explanations are incomplete, and need to be supplemented by a different kind of explanation. But what we can properly insist is that any proposed alternative kind of explanation must still meet the same standards for what counts as a good explanation. In particular, a good explanation can’t be one which makes things even more inexplicable.
Right, but this is where I get confused. Surely ‘the same standards for what counts as a good explanation’ are at least continuous with science – not some radically different kind of thing. In a sense, standards for what counts as a good explanation are what science is all about. So if the standards are the same – then what does it mean to say that scientific explanations are incomplete, and need to be supplemented by a different kind of explanation? How can they be supplemented by a different kind of explanation when the standards for what counts as a good explanation are not different? I’m not sure that’s not a concession without any real content – yes by all means supplement science with a different kind of explanation; the only stipulation is that the explanation can’t be just pulled out of your ass.
Then there’s the ‘faith’ question.
Dawkins says at one point: “Christianity, just as much as Islam, teaches children that unquestioned faith is a virtue. You don’t have to make the case for what you believe.” That’s much too sweeping. By the very act of producing counter-arguments, Dawkins has to acknowledge that some Christians, at any rate, do make a case for what they believe. It’s just that their case isn’t good enough.
Yes but the fact that some Christians do make a case for what they believe doesn’t mean that, according to Christianity, they have to. I don’t think it is all that much too sweeping. It doesn’t rule out the claim that some Christians try to make a case for what they believe, because that fact is perfectly consistent with the additional fact that faith is considered a virtue – and faith is considered a virtue; it’s no good pretending it isn’t. Doubts are considered tragic, or guilty, or both. Some, and maybe many, Christians also consider doubts quite reasonable and understandable, but that’s because ‘Christians’ includes a lot of people. Christianity as such, however, places faith front and center, not doubts. Faith is the goal, faith is the value, faith is the hooray word. Making or trying to make a case comes way far back in the field.
Norman considers the ‘sideways move’ that people like Armstrong and Eagleton make and finds it risky.
A religion built around metaphors and stories, rather than doctrines, seems to me to be inherently unstable. If talk of divine creation is just a metaphor for the awe-inspiring beauty and complexity of the natural world, it can hold that meaning for anyone…Isn’t an identity based on metaphors and stories always going to be fragile and porous? I cannot see how, in the end, a distinctive religious identity can be possible unless it is based on the acceptance of at least some non-metaphorical factual beliefs – beliefs about the existence of a personal deity and about how his intentions and purposes explain our world. Those beliefs do, inescapably, need to be rationally defended. And they can’t be. On that point, certainly, Dawkins is right.
That’s how it always looks to me. I can see at least some of what believers get out of religion – but I also see that as depending on those beliefs, and the beliefs as not rationally defensible.
Hi OB! I think you have an html error on that link at the top of this post, which directs back to the notes page rather than to the article at http://newhumanist.org.uk/2174/beyond-belief
OB said:
While most practicing Christians won’t deny that faith is a virtue, many of them will swear up and down that doubt is not just allowed in their church, and not just encouraged, but that doubt is an integral part of what it means to have faith. This is, of course, unmitigated bullshit. The sort of “doubt” that’s encouraged in Bible study groups is the posing of straw man questions to be knocked down by easy apologetic answers, or purely emotional doubts which – however genuine and deeply felt – can always be overcome by more emoting, especially in Bible studies and prayer meetings and other sorts of frameworks specifically designed to generate and enhance shared emotional experiences. Such pseudo-doubts are deliberately constructed to shore up faith by generating weak false contrasts: “How can you say you have real faith if you’ve never experienced doubts?” However, believers who make such claims about doubt never do experience what an honest person would call doubt: Withholding one’s assent from beliefs which are not adequately supported by evidence and reason – or any other substantial conception of doubt – is simply not an option for them. Faith cannot coexist with real doubt: They are opposites, always.
I mention this because it fits the context of Norman’s excellent article perfectly. Redefining “doubt” – like Armstrong’s & Eagleton’s & many others’ attempts at redefining “God” and redefining “faith” – is just another tool in the relatively small box of cheap rhetorical tricks trotted out again and again by the intellectually dishonest to substitute for actual argumentation when they know damned well no legitimate evidence and reasoning back up the claim they prefer to believe is true. It’s just the ol’ bait-and-switch all over again. Richard Norman does an excellent job exposing it – as does OB, as usual.
Just a comment/clarification on your rhetorical question:
“Right, but this is where I get confused. Surely ‘the same standards for what counts as a good explanation’ are at least continuous with science – not some radically different kind of thing”.
Yes you are right, those standards must be _continuous_ with science. An example is that a philosophical explanation (aka theory) must stand up to logical reasoning and can be refuted by evidence. But, unlike a scientific explanation/theory, it is not required to make testable predictions. This allows philosophy to go places that science can’t.
Of course religious doctrine doesn’t come close to philosophy, never mind science. I think that Eagleton and Armstrong may be trying to abstract religion to the point that it approaches philosophy, but by then it no longer represents a religion or a philosophy.
Cheers,
Phil
G.Felis is right. The link is wrong. And there’s another Norman piece as well. You can read them here: Beyond Belief/a>; and here: Holy Communion.
Quite frankly, I’m not altogether clear what Norman intends. He writes well, so it should be clear, but it isn’t. For example, he wants to say that some religious people, while putting emphasis on faith, nevertheless provide reasons, so it’s not blind faith that they are extolling. However, he also says both that the reasons given are failures – and, he implies, must be – but also that in some cases, the reasons given are unstable, and do not really support faith.
So one has to ask: Are these really reasons at all? Has Norman provided the religious with something which can change their blind faith into something else? I think the answer is no, and this raises all the difficulties about religious faith that are raised by Dawkins and Hitchens, the two atheists that Norman is chiefly concerned to rebut.
This doesn’t mean – and neither do either Hitchens or Dawkins – that atheists should be unwilling either to speak with the faithful or to cooperate with them when cooperation seems necessary. But if religious reasons are as inadequate as Norman points out – and they are – then that’s really all that non-believers can do. They certainly cannot make common cause with them insofar as they are carrying out religious projects. And, indeed, Hitchens and Dawkins may still be right – I think they are – that moderate religion simply provides, for all the good that religious people may do, cover for the less desirable aspects of religion. Norman treats religion with a kind of engaging respect. But this is a strange way to treat something which, for all its attempts at justification, fails, as Norman points out, to provide any. Surely a warning label is appropiate, a warning that, for all its appearance of providing rational grounds for belief, religion fails, in every case, to do so, and this, sadly, leads some religious people to do seriously evil things on the basis of beliefs that are very insecure.
Do Hitchens and Dawkins really say more than this, though admittedly in a much more direct and trenchant manner? It may seem as though Hitchens is arguing in a circle when he blames religion for its excesses, and then says that secular ideologies are also open to the same kinds of abuse. Perhaps this is a salutary reminder – a reminder that Norman does not consider – that faiths, whether religious or faux religious (like Bolshevism) no matter how apparently grounded in reasons, are so easily put to reprehensible uses, and people will be reluctant to criticise them, precisely because the reasons they give provide meaning and purpose to those who hold them.
Thanks to G Felis for a clear description of the theistic meaning of “doubt”. It is nice to see it put into words.
In one sense, G Felis, I agree, the use of ‘doubt’ in religious contexts is ‘unmitigated bullshit’. It is, however, an aspect of religious practice. I think that’s an implication of what you say, but perhaps not so clearly pointed out as it might be. I have a book in my possession by an OT scholar, entitled The Faith to Doubt. The point is quite simply that, if one has real faith, then the exploration suggested by the word ‘doubt’ will not be able to subvert it. So the word ‘doubt’ is being used, in this context, with a peculiarly bracketed meaning, almost, in a sense, like Cartesian doubt in relation to the common sense belief in the ‘external world’. But certainly, whatever else doubt is in this context, it cannot be an open question as to the existence and goodness of God, for this is presupposed throughout, and is the foundation and security upon which such ‘doubt’ is practiced.
I’m not sure in what sense you disagree, Eric, since I didn’t deny that such pseudo-doubt was an actual element of religious practice. I called bullshit on the idea that this religious practice bears any resemblance to what critics mean by the word “doubt.” On your description, as on mine, the believers’ variety of exploratory “doubt” is premised on the outright rejection of real epistemological doubt – that is, the refusal to accept and assent to beliefs unsupported by adequate evidence and reasoning. So what is left in this peculiar bracketed meaning of ‘doubt’? I suggested that what remains is really just emotion, but I didn’t elaborate on what I meant – so now I will.
For the believer, “doubt” means the sheer feeling of doubting, a purely internal shift in qualia rather an actual alteration in the faithful person’s beliefs about the external world. Supernatural faith beliefs are not simply claims about the world, after all – they are also a source of great emotional security and self-confidence for the believer. Purely emotional doubt doesn’t alter the beliefs themselves, but (very temporarily) replaces the feeling of comfort and confidence attached to those beliefs with insecurity and angst: Such doubt does raise the question “But what if I’m wrong?” – but not with any intent of honestly evaluating whether or not one’s belief is or can be supported by reason and evidence. Instead, the believer raises the question in order to dwell (for the moment) on the feeling of anxiousness and worry it provokes. Overcoming that insecurity and angst with feelings of comfort and confidence – usually inspired by emotionally resonant group activities and rituals – powerfully reinforces the faith belief and, not coincidentally, pushes real epistemological doubt even further out of reach.
My intention was not to dismiss the psychological or institutional importance of such mechanisms for religious practices and persons: In fact, I think that emotional pseudo-doubt might be a necessary component of faith, a preservation mechanism that protects faith from the corrosive effects of evidence and reason. That’s why using the word “doubt” in such a subtly equivocal way is so insidious and misleading. The hollow, uncertain feeling that the believer has when contemplating the possibility that their faith beliefs are false is not in the slightest bit relevant to the substantial epistemological doubts about the truth of those faith beliefs; using the word “doubt” for the feeling without the epistemology is just a rhetorical ploy whereby believers to give themselves a wholly undeserved veneer of epistemological legitimacy.
Sorry about the dud link…I keep doing that lately.
I guess where I disagree, G, is over the charaterisation of religious doubt as unmitigated bullshit, or as a matter of creating straw man questions which are easily answered. As I have experienced it in religious contexts, the doubts are real, and the questions that are asked are often devastating to the persons concerned. It’s the way that doubt is handled in religious contexts as an aspect of religious practice that is unique, but often the doubts are real enough, and the practice not satisfying, and in such cases the doubting person will move away from faith.
But for the religious professional, there is a way of calming the repercussions of doubt, and, while not actually answering the doubting questions, encourage the doubter to recognise that this is a natural step along the spiritual path. Doubts will come. There will be dark nights of the soul. That sort of thing. And so the person, instead of dealing with the real questions being raised by doubt, elides the questions in favour of spiritual reassurance. But the doubts are very real, and the men are not just made of straw.
This, to my mind, is one of the most serious faults of religion, that it so effectively subverts reason. But the struggles with doubt and the questions it raises for the believer are very real ones, and thinking about them as unmitigated bullshit actually makes it far more likely that the religious doubter will return to faith.
Of course, there is the whole ‘discipline’ of religious apologetics, but this is addressed much more to outsiders than to insiders. It gives superficial believers a convenient armamentarium for their contests with unbelievers. But real religious doubt is real doubt, even though it is a familiar feature of religious practice.
I don’t see why metaphors/stories would be any more unstable a basis for identities than beliefs. Especially if the stories and metaphors were tied to a particular cultural heritage and sense of ethnic identity, as they often are.
That’s neither here nor there when it comes to the main issue: most religious identities *are* based on beliefs, Karen Armstrong notwithstanding.
I agree with G and Eric here, except I would add that doubt in my experience is seen in religious circles as something to be combatted. Scepticism may be seen to be healthy in science and disciplines founded on rationality, but is only so in religion if seen as a challenge to be overcome. Sceptical Thomas is seen as one whose example should be avoided rather than followed.
Believing is a means, not an end. The ostensible goal is to belonging to God in Heaven; the real one belonging to an extended family: the congregation or community of believers. Schisms are generally not settled by finding some middle ground, and are never settled by one side prevailing over the other in rational argument; because the argument is inevitably faith-based. If schismatics cannot be liquidated in a purge then they are expelled or encouraged to leave, so that the community of the faithful can continue, untroubled by internal dissension.
It is far easier to base belonging on shared belief than it is to base it on shared commitment to reason. If it were not so, rationalist and science-based churches would be springing up all over the planet. Those that purport to be so, at least in part – such as Scientology and Christian Science, do not bear close scrutiny or sceptical analysis.
Hmm. I guess I see your point, Eric. But from outside it’s awfully hard to distinguish between purely emotional pseudo-doubt and real epistemological doubt accompanied by emotional pain, when the religious response to *both* is to ameliorate the pain with emotional manipulation (from others or self-induced) and to ignore the substance of real epistemological doubt (where it is present at all). I am not denying the emotional pain in either case, but I remain convinced that it is crucial to make the distinction between the emotional discomfort of doubt and the epistemological nature of real, substantial doubt.
I’ve defined doubt here – multiple times – as the refusal to assent to or accept claims which are not adequately supported. When you say that the doubts of the faithful are real doubts, are you saying that the religious doubter is genuinely withholding assent from their faith beliefs? I don’t think they really are, and I don’t think that’s what you meant. I think you mean that they feel the pain of even approaching the point of rejecting their faith beliefs for lack of evidence (or presence of what they have come to see as counter-evidence) very intensely – you even use the word “devastating.” It is precisely this emphasis on the emotional components of doubt and refusal to address the substance of epistemological doubt WHILE AT THE SAME TIME CLAIMING TO WRESTLE WITH DOUBT which inspires me to call “bullshit.” A person of faith coping with the negative emotional impact of questioning their faith beliefs (e.g. the existence or benevolence of God) is not at all the same thing as a person choosing to subject beliefs once accepted as a matter of faith to serious questioning based on evidence and reason. However, switching between these two very different things as if they meant exactly the same thing is an oft-used rhetorical ploy of those who defend and valorize faith.
I am not belittling the emotional impact of questioning faith on believers, which as you point out can be devastating. My focus is on the fundamental dishonesty of portraying emotional doubt and epistemological doubt as the same thing. I’ve heard/read believers responding to any and every argument against faith with a thousand variations on the same basic, tricksy, dishonest rhetorical response: “Every believer wrestles with doubt. I’ve doubted – really, truly doubted – and yet in the end I still have faith; so faith and doubt are perfectly compatible.” No. Sorry. You’ve wrestled with the emotional ramifications of questioning your faith beliefs, which is not the same thing as subjecting those beliefs to critical thought and rational inquiry – that is to say, actual doubt. When someone responds to an argument based on evidence and reasoning with the dishonest claim that their faith belief *is* based on evidence and reasoning because they’ve “wrestled with doubt,” they are willfully eliding the difference between the two – and that’s what I say is unmitigated bullshit.
G, while I agree with most of what you say, and acknowledge the important distinction that you make between emotional doubt and epistemological doubt, the fact that doubting actually leads people out of faith indicates that, while doubt can be, in fact, because of the structure of religious believing, and the role that religion plays in personal integration for the religious believer, emotionally disorienting, it also plays an epistemological role, and does lead more and more people away from faith year after year.
Within religion doubt is dealt with as an emotional hurdle on the spiritual path, and not as a real form of questioning. As I say, that’s one of the most damning aspects of the practice of religion, that it elides the questioning, and replaces it with the far less threatening idea of a spiritual struggle. This is not done by providing answers, but by what might be termed forms of spiritual therapy.
All religions are faced with the fact that religious beliefs do not square with what we know about the world, a cognitive dissonance which has only been exacerbated by the scientific revolution of the last tour or five centuries. The Bible is simply crammed with this kind of thing. Job and Ecclesiastes are not the only ones who had questions, unanswerable questions, about the reasonableness of faith. The Psalms are full of them, and so, in fact, are the prophets. That’s probably why Judaism allows for such an elastic definition of what constitutes Judaism, and even allows for, though the orthodox do not countenance such things, a purely humanistic Judaism. Christianity is much less able to accommodate real questions, because at the heart of it is belief in the resurrection, and seems absolutely to demand a sacrifice of reason.
However, I agree that anyone who says that they have wrestled with doubt, and for that reason alone their faith can be taken to be held in a rational way, does not understand the epistemological function of doubt. Alister McGrath, for example, does this all the time, as though his brief period of adolescent unbelief gives some special support to his return to faith. It doesn’t. He does misunderstand the epistemological function of doubt, and uses his youthful indiscretions (from the point of view of faith) as a bullshit reply to those who ask questions about faith in earnest.
In other words, I do not think we are far apart on this, but experience of the struggles of people in trying to square their religious beliefs with what they have come to know, are sometimes very real, and very often lead people out of faith altogether. This is why people like Dawkins are so important, because, while he mocks faith-heads and other fundamentalists, he lets people know that their doubts – and all religious people have them – are widely shared, and can lead to a more healthily reasonable attitude to reason and to life.
I didn’t think our disagreement was particularly profound – and in fact I am unsurprised to find that we really don’t disagree at all – but it was fun and worthwhile digging to the bottom of it! My particular concern in my post/rant was the frequency and dishonesty of maneuvers like Alister McGrath’s, but of course I am always glad when believers actually do confront their epistemological doubts instead of responding to them with emotional self-manipulation. Maybe I should go re-read Greta Christina’s recent post about patience again, though. You seem to already have the trick of it.
:-)
Well, G, if I have patience, it is only in some things, and it has taken a long time to learn … 68 years just a few days ago! It’s easier, though, when you’re having fun, and it was fun to dig around the roots of doubt for a bit. I had never really given it much thought before. Thanks for the opportunity. Having thought about it a bit, I tend to think it’s an issue of some importance.
Belated happy birthday, Eric!
Well, they get less happy as the years go by. Growing old is he pits. But, thanks!
I know. But it’s a subjunctive – a hortatory – a wish. You don’t want me wishing you a miserable birthday, now do you!
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