Falling at the first post
Mary Midgley begins badly.
Science really isn’t connected to the rest of life half as straightforwardly as one might wish. For instance, Isaac Newton noted gladly that his theory of gravitation gave a scientific proof of God’s existence. Today’s anti-god warriors, by contrast, declare that Darwin’s evolutionary theory gives a scientific disproof of that existence and use this reasoning, quite as confidently as Newton used his, to convert the public.
No they don’t. So why should we pay any attention to the rest of what she says? If she can’t even get the first paragraph right, why trust her?
No reason, so I won’t bother discussing the rest of what she says, which is just sentimental gesturing. But it’s interesting that people keep cranking this kind of thing out, without even bothering to improve it. God is special, God is nice, today’s anti-god warriors are nasty. For this Comment is Free needs a philosopher?
Oh, Christ, not that again.
I have wondered, very often, how Mary Midgely ever rose to prominence in philosophy. Her response to Dawkins’ idea of the selfish gene should be enough to show that she is semantically challenged, and she has even recently repeated her original misunderstanding, so it wasn’t a mistake.
So, when she comes out with something that is completely irrelevant to the way contemporary atheists argue, it comes as little surprise. Had she read what Dawkins’ wrote in The Blind Watchmaker, that evolution, at last, allows an atheist to be a fulfilled atheist, she could not have blundered around like a high school kid reading Kant.
Actually, though, I have to disagree with Ken. There is reason to suppose that contemporary fundamentalist literalism, as Midgely says, is actually a product of the modern age. James Barr’s Fundamentalism makes a good case for this. Christian uses of scripture have been very various, and not all of them, by any means, were literalist, as Francisco Ayala recently reminded us. This does not, however, mean that the Bible was never used in a literalist way, but the literalism was more opportunistic that programmatic. Whenever reading the Bible in another way was useful, analogy and allegory were always close at hand. The magisterium is always subtle and unpredictable. The main purpose of biblical interpretation is to support doctrines believed for other reasons, so any way of reading scripture that gave the right answers was to be preferred. It is therefore not surprising that the church reserved reading and interpreting the Bible to clerics, and punished upstart laity who dared to trespass upon this prerogative. Once the Bible was open to free interpretation, however, it is not surprising that it should seek the same kind of definiteness and decidablity that characterised science. It also became clear how doubtful biblical support for many Christian doctrines was seen to be, and since there is no critical basis for reading the book one way rather than another, there is a ready explanation why contemporary Christian belief is so conflicted and confused.
Two questions for for Mary Midgley:
1. Where do you find so much straw?
2. How much are you paid by the Guardian to construct men of that straw?
Well, Hal, you can rest assured that The Guardian doesn’t pay a princely sum for these pieces. Having done a couple of them, I can reveal the ghastly truth that it’s more the chance to get ideas out there than an opportunity for riches.
‘Science really isn’t connected to the rest of life half as straightforwardly as one might wish’
Maybe not ‘straightforwardly’ but it does describe a world consistant with the one we can see and touch and which can be tested, rather than an entirely fictional one passed down through fairytales.
And can we please reserve the term ‘warriors’ for those who, you know, go to war?
It’s not like there’s a shortage of those – though I’m unaware of anyone, anywhere, currently killing in the name of atheism.
Eric, I think Midgley became an influential philosopher because of her views on animal rights and critique of (reductionist) sociobiology. She and Peter Singer deserve at least partial credit for making those into hot issues in philosophy in the mid to late 70s.
” Today’s anti-god warriors, by contrast, declare…”
So, I presume she could provide at least one direct quote to back this up; she makes it sound like there must be hundreds out there.
And what’s this with Newton not being a Christian? What narrow definition of Christian did she have in mind that would enable her to write that?
And what kind of professional thinker is this that can be caught out so easily by any layman?
It ends badly, too:
Except I’m pretty sure that when he said it’s a “scientific hypothesis like any other” Dawkins was talking about the existence of god, not belief in god. A sneaky little change, that, so she can talk about how damn complicated the whole thing is, and how those terrible new atheists just don’t get it.
Midgley is notorious for her review of ‘The Selfish Gene’ where she completely missed the point of the hypothesis and thought it was about selfishness. I’ve had to change my mind in the last couple of days about whether she was just uniquely silly in this regard after seeing a respected biologist – the primatology expert Frans de Waal – make the exact same accusation against it in his recent book ‘Our Inner Ape’ .
As for the above piece, whatever about her baseless assertions about “anti-God warriors” she manages to even get the bit about Newton completely the wrong way around. Newton used the idea of God to fill in the gaps of his theory (such as God starting the planets in their motion in the first place and correcting them in their orbits) rather than have his theory as a definitive proof of God.
Newton wasn’t an orthodox Christian – that much is certain, since he denied the divinity of Jesus. Heresy and heterodoxy was common amongst the “greats” of that time. (Which, in itself, should be suggestive.)
As for why Midgley is famous, well, my impression (of one of her works) was something that contains a lot of sense, and a lot of complete craziness. Unfortunately the referenced article here isn’t so divided …
“No they don’t. So why should we pay any attention to the rest of what she says? If she can’t even get the first paragraph right, why trust her?”
Exactly what I thought when I came across this piece of nonsense yesterday. I didn’t read the rest – life is too short, and I refuse to let idiots like her raise my blood-pressure.
Eric: have you read any books of Midgley’s? I have read two of them, and her criticisms in her books are much more accurate and on-point (whether or not you agree with her ultimate argument) than in these rather polemical columns of hers that sometimes appear in the Guardian. In the books of hers that I have read, she quotes extensively from those she criticizes (including Dawkins), gives context to her quotes, and doesn’t make sweeping statements about unspecified “anti-god warriors.” Perhaps the book format, with its greater space and more intensive editing process, can sometimes compel a greater level of evidentiary rigor. In any case, I have been impressed with her books, where her criticism of the “selfish gene” idea is more developed (and is accurate to what Dawkins said), but have not been impressed with her columns.
Ben:
I don’t get the distinction you’re making here. The hypothesis that god exists is (unlike the hypothesis that the Loch Ness monster exists) connected to a whole worldview, or several whole worldviews, actually. So it isn’t an isolated factual belief, and Midgley is correct about that, though that has no bearing on whether it’s true.
Jenavir, the point is that what Dawkins argued is that the existence of god is a scientific hypothesis like any other – either he/she/it exists or not, regardless of any connected belief system. I don’t think he was in thinking about people, or beliefs, or worldviews, it was just: God, real or not?
As you say, it’s often not an isolated factual belief, but that’s not what Dawkins was talking about – his specific concern was whether or not it’s true. Midgley’s talking about something else, so the Dawkins quote was inappropriate, I think.
No. Don’t let her (MM) get away with that pathetic excuse. Obviously there’s not space in a C is F piece for mountains of evidence, but that does not mean one can or should just make wild untrue accusations. In fact the lack of space to quote specifics means one should be all the more careful to be accurate and cautious. I’ve done several C is F pieces and with all due modesty I think I wrote them much more carefully and accurately than Midgley wrote here.
Jenavir
I’m sorry, even though I have not read her book, the numerous articles that I’ve read by her criticising the idea of the selfish gene, have shown no evidence of her actually understanding it at all.
If her understanding of it has increased since her riduculous review of The Selfish Gene, then she could at least give an indication of how it has changed. Yet even in fairly recent articles she has repeated the same howlers she originally made.
I don’t know Midgley’s books at all, and I am not, to tell the truth, particularly interested. I read her article on “Gene-juggling” many moons ago, and it was the most awful piece of philosophical tripe that I had read for a long long time, and so I have never taken an interest in anything else that she might have written. First impressions like this are hard to shed. Besides being mean spirited — much like her CiF piece — it showed a simple lack of understanding and ability to grasp some fairly simple concepts — again, much like her CiF piece. I take this to be characteristic of her style, and it leads me not to want to read any more. Life, as Jimbob said, is too short, and there are so many more fascinating things to read. Being polemical is all very well. I enjoy reading polemical works — such as F.R. Leavis’s classic put down of C.P. Snow – but it’s best if you have an argument to start with. Climbing out on slender branches is always risky. You liable to end up, as Midgley does, in a heap on the ground. Once that had happened, there wasn’t really anywhere for her to go, was there? She’s done it before.
Ophelia, you know Dawkins pretty much fits this description, right? He surely sees the question of the existence of God as a scientific one:
He has stated his atheism is a product of his understanding of evolution.
He has said evolution provides atheism with sound footing:
You simply cannot deny that Dawkins largely appeals to science and, more specifically, evolution when discussing the existence of God. The thing is, Dawkins often slips into philosophy. Indeed, he must, for the question of God’s existence requires that. But the fact that Dawkins states science and evolution can by themselves whittle down the probability of God’s existence is why you see idea-based battles between thinkers like Dawkins and philosophers like Massimo Pigliucci, who would prefer Dawkins be more open about the difference between science and philosophy. This doesn’t mean science is worthless; it just means God’s existence is best dealt with with science and philosophy.
Michael, no, I don’t know that Dawkins fits Midgley’s description; my point is precisely that he doesn’t. Of course I do know that there is a more detailed version of Midgley’s claim which would fit Dawkins – but that’s not the version she typed and sent to Comment is Free.
Michael makes a fair point, though it is a very limited one. The “god hypothesis” bit takes up only the first half of The God Delusion. It is very important to recognise that it is one argument among others.
In this post, Michael takes it for granted that there is a clear line between science and philosophy. This begs the question, since a lot of us are saying there isn’t a clear line there to begin with. For us, it is a simple mistake to say that Dawkins is “slipping into” philosophy. Religious claims are both bad science and bad philosophy.
Michael (continued),
There is a huge – and all-important, for this kind of discussion – difference between saying that “Darwin’s evolutionary theory gives a scientific disproof of [God’s] existence” (which is Midgley’s version) and saying that “science and evolution can by themselves whittle down the probability of God’s existence” (your version). You must in some sense know that yourself, or you wouldn’t have worded it that way (and well done – your wording is an excellent correction of Midgley’s), but maybe you haven’t fully noticed the difference. (Otherwise you wouldn’t have said Dawkins fits Midgley’s description).
Is “science and evolution can by themselves whittle down the probability of God’s existence” really such an over-reaching claim? It’s basically a matter of closing the gaps, and you must know that the god of the gaps is not a fiction of Dawkins’s.
Now about Massimo – is that really all he wants? For Dawkins to be more open about the difference between science and philosophy? His recent comments on Dawkins and on Jerry Coyne have claimed a good deal more than that, it seems to me, though without actually being precise about exactly what it is that he thinks Dawkins and Coyne should do differently. I’ve asked him questions about this that have gone unanswered, and I’m not the only one. It would be really useful if Massimo would answer such questions. (Like: what is it about religion that makes it immune to scientific examination when astrology and ghosts are not?)
It wasn’t an excuse, Ophelia. It was a possible explanation for the difference I see between the books and the columns, but no, there’s no excuse for that kind of misstatement.
As for Midgley’s books: I’d recommend them to anyone who’s interested in the relationship between animal biology and ethical schemas.
Regarding Dawkins, I’d say both Midgley and Pigliucci are to some extent reacting to him as an amalgamation of various science-supremacists they might have met in their intellectual careers. I.e. the kind of person who thinks the humanities are nonsense. Dawkins is not that person, but a lot of philosophers seem to react to him as if he is.
The thing that gets me with this, and it got me with Swinburne’s “Inductive (IE: Circular) reasoning” arguments is:
Do the religious realise how absolutely shitty their philosophers are? I mean so damn stupid that a basic understanding of fallacies at a layman’s level is enough to rip them to shreds?
Sure those wankers hide behind jargon like the IT guy who is randomly pressing buttons hoping something works, but once you pick up the lingo there is nothing more than utter bollocks to it.
For example bringing up Newton. Newton for all he believed in God also believed in alchemy. He believed in Magic for craps sakes. Sure, brilliant guy and all of that, but that Newton believed something adds no more credence to it than if Richard Dawkins told us the sky is made of fairies.
These people may be smarter than the rest of us and they can still be wrong. The personalities are irrelevent, their work is what matters.
And then there is the whole straw man that quite frankly I am sick of seeing “Evolution disproves God” well guess what? The only people saying that are theists who pretend to read atheist books. Dawkins, for example, makes it quite plain within the book the intellectual honesty impaired most love to slam that evolution doesn’t disprove God, it just renders God superflous to requirements.
And this is one of the best the religious can come up with, distinctly third rate and thoroughly stupid. When I became an atheist it was due to how crappy the arguments FOR God were, more than because of how great the arguments against were. Somehow I would have thought the sincerely religious would at least try to make some pretence in correcting that problem.
For further material on the science-philosophy debate over the existence of God, I thought Massimo’s talk at the recent American Atheist conference was very good. Though it lacks his speaking input, his slide show is on his Web site, under “Talks,” and it titled “Atheism, Science, and Politics.”
You don’t think the material I’ve quoted from Dawkins makes him seem to fit Midgley’s description pretty well? He states his atheism is a product of his understanding of the theory of evolution, and more generally that he believes evolution provides atheists good reasons to lack belief in a creator God.
No – because that’s not what she said – she said “anti-god warriors…declare that Darwin’s evolutionary theory gives a scientific disproof of that existence.” As I said, that is different – and not trivially different – from what you quote.
Saying one’s atheism is a product of one’s understanding of the theory of evolution is different from saying that Darwin’s evolutionary theory gives a scientific disproof of God’s existence. Seriously different; really different; different in ways that matter. Saying evolution provides atheists good reasons to lack belief in a creator God is different from saying that Darwin’s evolutionary theory gives a scientific disproof of God’s existence. Really really different.
This matters because the absolutist version makes us look stupid, and it’s intended to make us look stupid. We know perfectly well that we can’t give a scientific disproof of God’s existence! And we don’t go around saying we can, yet we’re charged with doing exactly that every hour on the hour by people who think we should go live in Antarctica.
Michael De Dora
No, it doesn’t. Dawkins quite specifically says that evolution doesn’t disprove God – it simply removes on of the primary bits of frequently used evidence FOR God by presenting a far more likely and evidenced alternate explanaition for the diversity of species and the appearance of design. Geology does much the same to flood mythology.It in other words closes a gap. What militates against God with evolution is it being another example of the long tendency for things to be chalked up to God and used as evidence for God, only to get shown to be nothing of the sort later on. This makes God look incredibly unlikely, considering how often things chalked up to him turn out to be due to perfectly natural causes.Which is to say it demonstrates that if we come across something where we don’t have an explanation, we shouldn’t just make shit up like “God-did-it.” We should alternatively say we simply don’t know.
Ophelia Benson
It also matters because the onus is on the religious to provide evidence for their God. Evolution dispatches the argument from design. It does not provide evidence against God, it shows that one of the major arguments for God is wrong.
Yes – mine wasn’t meant as a complete account of why it matters! :- ) Just one that’s relevant to this particular discussion. Midgley gave an inaccurate and highly tendentious version of what atheists like Dawkins (including Dawkins) claim. And she is after all a philosopher – the kind of person who is supposed to get these things right. It’s vanishingly unlikely that she doesn’t know her version is inaccurate. (But does she know it’s tendentious? Who knows…)
Clearly science can go further than one of its theories, and Dawkins would be correct to arm himself with all available scientific knowledge to refute God’s existence. However, considering Dawkins’ statements above regarding evolution and atheism, I think my point still stands about his reliance solely on the theory of evolution to doubt God’s existence.
There is a larger discussion to be had here about science, philosophy, and God. I don’t have the time this moment to get into it, but give me a day or two and I will try to type something up.
In the talk I reference above, Massimo discusses this is some depth. I won’t get into defending his views in full here, but this short piece on Eugenie Scott, epistemology, science, and philosophy might help.
But Michael, your point was that Midgley’s claim described Dawkins accurately; it wasn’t “about his reliance solely on the theory of evolution to doubt God’s existence.” Doubt is different from “scientific disproof,” just for one thing, and what I was disputing was your claim about Midgley, not a different claim (that you didn’t actually make) about Dawkins. The point I was disputing doesn’t stand.
Substantively – do you not see the difference between doubting God’s existence and “scientific disproof” of it?
I wonder if this is a matter of one word: disproof. Dawkins clearly thinks evolution further reduces the probability of God’s existence. This is not to say Dawkins thinks evolution fully disproves God’s existence. I wouldn’t charge Dawkins thinks that, and I would not defend someone who did charge that. I just didn’t get the sense the writer was stating the Dawkins thinks evolution fully disproves God’s existence. I thought she was stating, as Dawkins himself has, that understanding evolution further reduces the probability of God’s existence, in a sense providing some disproof of God’s existence.
Dawkins very clearly considers the existence of God a scientific hypothesis. He is very clearly wrong about that.
Michael, I don’t even know how to begin going about evaluating and assessing a collection of Powerpoint slides. Especially when it is just a grab-bag of quotes.
Especially especially the Venn diagram on page 23 — which, to the extent it conveys any information at all, just keeps begging the question. (But now in graph form!)
Yes, it is a matter of one word, and that word matters! And she said what she said.
No, it is not at all clear that Dawkins is wrong that the existence of the God that is usually meant by God – not a distant abstract unknowable one but an agent involved in nature and in human affairs – is a scientific hypothesis.
His position is indeed clear. His wrongness isn’t clear to me in the slightest.
I absolutely see the difference. I just read the author’s line as speaking more to doubt that full disproof. That could be my mistake. If she’s charging Dawkins thinks evolution fully disproves God’s existence, or that Dawkins thinks God can be fully disproved at all, she’s wrong.
Well my whole problem with what she said is that it is totally unambiguous in attributing total certainty to people she dislikes! :- )
This is a much broader conversation, but …
Scientific claims are probabilistic explanations based on observation and empirical evidence, and are subject to disconfirmation. The God claim is nothing of the sort. We can’t scientifically measure God or God’s interaction with the world, and the God claim is not falsifiable.
Do that I am an atheist, so I clearly do not think this prevents us from strongly doubting God’s existence.
*Do note that …
Well, I wouldn’t disagree with you there. I was disagreeing with you solely over the science-atheist bit.
What an astonishing discussion! Come on, Michael! Wake up and smell the coffee. You were wrong. It’s simple. Just say it after me: I …. WAS …. WRONG! See, it’s not that hard.
What was I wrong about, Eric?
De Dora wrote:
You give the appearance of not thinking your arguments through very carefully at all before you commit them to writing. You also give the impression that you give far more weight to your personal likes and dislikes of certain people when you write about them than you do to their actual arguments. Did you honestly mean to claim that evolution alone is the only thing that causes Dawkins to doubt god’s existence (really – read that claim again if the absurdity of it doesn’t immediately jump out)? Have you read The God Delusion? Have you read any of his other work? And no, I’m not asking that to be sarcastic, but because I honestly do not know how anyone who had read Dawkins could make the claim you made.
You are not careful at all in your writing (an ongoing problem in many of your posts), but you seem constantly surprised when it’s pointed out to you.
Michael, in your first post you said this. First you quoted Midgley:
And then you said:
The answer was: No. And you have given no reason for thinking otherwise. So: you …. were ….. wrong.
The simple fact is that Dawkins does not take evolution as a scientific disproof of religion. In fact, if you read carefully, you will see that he sticks pretty close to the point that he makes in The Blind Watchmaker. Evolution allows one to be a fulfilled atheist — for the first time. Why? Because it gives an alternative explanation for the appearance of design in nature. Hume, in his Dialogues, argues convincingly that the appearance of design is just that, apparent. In fact, he argues that there seems to be evidence of faulty design, and that, for all we know, the universe may have been created by a superannuated deity. But he had to admit, in the end, that he was flummoxed, because he did not have an explanation for what apparent design, however faulty, there was. Now, says Dawkins, there is no reason to think that living things were intelligently designed at all, and that the defects in design can be explained by the way that natural selection works on available material. What this does is give us one more excuse, if you like, not to believe in god, and to reduce the believer’s armamentarium by one. But there is nowhere where Dawkins suggests that this is a scientific disproof of god’s existence.
In any event, how could it be? To assume that we have a scientific disproof of god’s existence means that we must have an adequate description of god, and we don’t. We have a whole panoply of gods, but not satisfactory account of what god is like. How could we? If god does not exist, this is not possible. So, it is not, in any event, possible to disprove god’s existence. We can give reasons for doubting, for any particular description of god, that such a being exists. But a disproof of god’s existence, as Anselm saw, so presciently, assumes god’s existence, and such a disproof must fail. (Thus the significance of the ontological ‘proof’.)
For a satisfyingly complete explanation, and quite a devastating one, for thinking that Midgley is very confused, visit Pharyngula.
” Today’s anti-god warriors”
Onward, godless soldiers, marching as to war, with the meme of Dawkins going on before. Hume, the royal Master, leads against the foe; forward into battle see his banners go!
with apologies to the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould.
The new version isn’t as,,,impressive…as the original.
I think what bothers me about the approach (in Michael’s discussion) is that if one is prepared to self-define as an atheist, it’s pretty cut and dried that one’s opinion (a considered one, it is to be hoped) is that for whatever reasons, the theists are in error. I mean, who goes around holding an opinion he or she doesn’t think is the correct one to hold? And yet, what we hear is no stronger than there being nothing that “prevents us from strongly doubting God’s existence.”
Is this all about “tone” again? Why such a strong urge to be charitable to those (MM, in this case) who are so hell-bent on being anything but charitable to those with whom they disagree that they will misrepresent them to make them look far worse than could be justified?
As a way of shedding more light on Mary Midgley’s rhetorical technique, it is perhaps worth quoting from Dawkins’ response to her original attack on his idea of the selfish gene (M. Midgley, ‘Gene-juggling’, Philosophy 54 (October 1979):
The response has a rather delightful frisson, I think, but it makes a shrewd point. Midgley’s stock in trade — I have been dipping into her books on amazon.com — is the rather bold, and not always polite, assertion. It is almost as though the manner of saying it might simply make it true. It strikes me that it might be better, on the whole, to provide evidence. Perhaps her dislike of science — and this can be read on practically every page she writes — makes her averse to providing evidence, lest she be thought to be giving in to the cultural dominance of science which she so much laments.
I apologise. I should have given the reference for the quote from Dawkins. Here it is:
Eric, you have it bang on right there. As if “the manner of saying it makes it true.” In life, politics, and the rest of it, people lie to others and delude themselves because there is often a chance that, in making the bold assertion, the lie can become true just by convincing others. They are effective delusions. So when the President says “Americans are good Christians” even when he full knows that they are not, it’s because he’s betting that if he fools enough Americans into believing it, then they’ll become good Christians.
Not all statements get a free pass on this rhetorical technique. You can’t make global warming go away through wishful thinking. But it is the stock and trade of religious apologists, and it works pretty well for a great many instances. In fact, it works well enough to completely decorate the entire inner life of some of these people. Take Sholto Byrnes — he accuses those who condemn sharia law as fostering a clash of civilizations, despite the fact that people have substantive empirical objections to his little survey. Why does he say such a monstrously stupid thing? Because his gambit is that when we believe it, sharia law will not be a thing worth conquering. The manner of saying it is supposed to make it true.
And if Eric is, indeed, right, it would be churlish not to grant that she has some kind of internal logic. That is, an anti-evidence stance surely ought not to rely on the very thing it opposes to make its point. It’s those who insist on evidence being worth something that have to muster it to back up their claim. She is, at least, being consistent in her attitude, even if there is finally nothing there but assertion.
Michael De Dora, I think you owe me a response. You asked me what I think you got wrong. I told you. You could have told me to fuck off, since I was being deliberately provocative, but you didn’t. You asked. I responded. It is inappropriate for you not to respond.
I second that, Eric. I’d like a response to my question, too, but I recognize your priority claim. :)
And while we’re at it, I would like something better than this:
Just for one thing, why can’t we measure God’s interaction with the world? That is, in principle. Why can’t we investigate it, find there is nothing to measure, and conclude that there is no reason to believe there is such a god, and therefore there are good reasons to believe there is not such a god?
Two points, in addition to Oph’s point about characterizing science.
– If probabilistic explanations were all scientists could make, then Galileo would have been wrong to write the sorts of pamphlets he did.
– Also, the emphasis upon probabilistic explanation is mooted by a simple, elegant phrase: “inference to the best explanation”. The most probable explanation is the best, and we proceed with cautious optimism on that basis.
Ah yes – I always forget about inference to the best explanation. Highly useful, yet I always forget to use it. Comes of not being a philosopher.
By the way, Ben, I keep meaning to ask – do you object to ‘Ben’? I won’t use it if you do. Having begun, I always figure ‘Benjamin’ would look cross.
I don’t in the least object to ‘Oph’; it was always me family name.
Eric,
I’ll get to responding in the next day or two. Work schedule is pretty tight right now.
When you’re able, Michael, I’d also appreciate knowing your reponse to my query.
Oph, I’m pretty flexible. Just not “Benny”. That one’s reserved for Mr. Hill.
It used to annoy me, being called “Benjamin”. I once told my TA that if she kept calling me “Benjamin” then I would start calling her “ma’am”. Her office partner snickered, then felt guilty about it and chastized me for being impudent. It was a good day.
But those were in my teenage years. These days I don’t mind Benjamin, it makes me sound very mild instead of being the kind of angry cartoon with six arms flailing around.
I think this is a little (read: “way”) too reductionist. Read some Kuhn. What observations and empirical evidence led to the disconfirmation of, say, the phlogiston theory of heat? You’d be hard-pressed to give me an answer in less than a page or so, since it wasn’t any one experiment (and it’s never one experiment), it was the accumulation of decades of experimental results, initially dismissed as in error or otherwise aberrant, along with a younger generation of chemists who had not internalized the phlogiston theory so completely.
Also note, many incorrect theories cannot ever be disconfirmed because they are simplifications of other theories. You will have trouble disconfirming Newton’s laws, because they emerge quite readily from QED operating in large, complicated systems. In fact, the only problems with Newton’s laws could quite fairly be termed “philosophical.” I’d go further and argue that science is “applied metaphysics” and that the wall you keep trying to throw up between science and philosophy is more or less entirely synthetic, but that would be a long conversation.
Are you defining God as something that can’t be measured, and whose interactions with the world can’t be measured? Is this a premise of your argument, or is there some a priori reason to believe it’s true? I can certainly imagine certain Gods whose properties would imply properties of our universe that COULD in fact be measured.
Here’s what the question of falsifiability comes down to: does a world with God look any different from a world without God?
Your problem here is this: “God” is very loosely defined. At one end of the spectrum, we have deism in which “God”s existence would indeed be impossible to measure or falsify. At the other end, we have primitive animism in which matter itself is anthropomorphized and given agency. So can we falsify all these gods in one go? Of course not. We’d need to falsify them one at a time based on the particulars of each separate, individual claim, since any individual claim could imply a world different from those of other claims.
And that’s the point behind the “God hypothesis” argument. You tell me what God is and why he’s important to the world looking the way it does now, and I’ll give you an experiment to try to falsify that particular God’s existence. That the question of whether “God exists” is meaningless unless you specify what “God” means, at which point you must either specify something that can in principle be falsified or can’t in principle be falsified. If you do the former, then you run the risk of someone doing the experiment and proving you wrong. And if you do the latter, you’re just describing Russell’s Teapot.
Dunno what’s so hard about this. “God exists” only fails to be a scientific hypothesis if you’re purposefully obscuring what you mean by “God” or if you purposefully specify the nature of “God” such that it can’t be falsified. The first is sophistry and the second is begging the question.
Man, you guys accuse atheists of a lack of philosophical sophistication, but I feel pretty justified in turning the accusation right back at you.
Dan,
what you just wrote is so beautifully and succinctly put that it just made my day. Congrats.
I thought “Benny” was reserved for Mr. Ratzinger.
Additional vote of thanks to Dan L. Of course, Michael’s claim about the unmeasurability of the properties of a god (which one?) is immensely problematic, but didn’t lend itself to the snappy one-liner riposte, so Dan has done us a favour by spelling out what most of us here probably would have said if we’d made the effort.
Just to add, the “god claim” in some cases also includes authorship of books, which of course is completely at odds with a claim that the interaction of such a god with the world is something beyond our efforts to measure.
Is it possible to respect a belief you don’t share so much that you privilege it above your own opinions? I grew up with my non-belief stamped “tolerated but wrong” within the part of the family circle that counted and it took me a long time to turn that around 180 degrees (for myself, that is; I’ve had no success in modifying any family attitudes). I don’t know whether Michael is hamstrung in a similar way, but I’m not hearing any assertiveness about non-belief’s right to announce itself proudly and openly. Are the reasons for his being an atheist not good ones, or not good enough ones to employ in reaction to those making claims about gods?
Well, perhaps I am not a good thinker.
Or perhaps I am a bad writer.
Yes, I’ve read The God Delusion (it was OK), yes, I have read some of his other work (The Blind Watchmaker), and yes, I know Dawkins doubts God’s existence based on more than just the theory of evolution (he wouldn’t be very bright otherwise). But considering Midgley’s remark that Dawkins and others rely on evolutionary theory to doubt God’s existence, this was my point
Dawkins: “Understanding evolution led me to atheism.”
Did you read Dawkins’ comments above? He literally said he’s an atheist because of the theory of evolution.
If I am reading your thoughts correctly, I think Dawkins would disagree with you. He clearly has written the existence of God is a scientific matter subject to scientific doubt.
Dawkins on page 2, TGD: “The God hypothesis is a scientific hypothesis about the universe.”
Dawkins on Page 31, TGD: “I shall define the God Hypothesis [as]: There exists a super-human, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us.”
To consider another author, Stenger wrote an entire book considering God as a scientific hypothesis. Of course, I think we can reasonably apply the scientific outlook to the question of God. But considering it a scientific hypothesis is another matter.
Yes, whenever someone becomes an atheist, there is usually a last straw, right? If there’s a moment at which you realize you’re an atheist, then there’s some particular thing that pushed you over the edge. However, it’s rare that the one thing is the only thing…like I said, it’s just the last straw. So when you say “because,” you seem to be implying that evolutionary arguments are the only reasons whatsoever that Dawkins is an atheist. Which is utterly absurd, not too mention pretty arrogant on your part (to speak for Dawkins’ subjective state of mind).
I’ve already pointed out your view of science is way too reductionist. For starters, tell me where “scientific outlook” stops and “science” starts.
Oh god, Michael – if you’re going to argue, could you please take the minimal trouble to be accurate? I told you four times, in four separate comments (because you got it wrong four times), exactly what Midgley said – she did not “remark” that “Dawkins and others rely on evolutionary theory to doubt God’s existence” – she flatly asserted that
That’s a direct quote. That is what she said. Please stop modifying it into something milder, more polite, and more defensible. She said what she said; it is there in the article for all to read; it’s not up to you to keep re-writing it.
She never said “Dawkins,” by the way – that’s your contribution. She probably did mean Dawkins, but she didn’t name any names.
Make an effort, will you? It can’t be that hard just to get the basic terms of the disagreement right!
You’re not reading Eric’s thoughts correctly. We’ve already been through this. Eric is correcting you about disproof – not doubt. That was the issue from the outset. Midgley wrote (to quote it yet again) “anti-god warriors, by contrast, declare that Darwin’s evolutionary theory gives a scientific disproof” of god’s existence. Disproof, disproof, disproof – not doubt. Remember my question in comment 31?
Which you answered! You said yes, you absolutely do see the difference!
Well if you see the difference why do you keep changing “disproof” to “doubt” when you reply?!
Please. make. an. effort.
De Dora:
Well, have you ever considered stating your point, instead of writing something else entirely:
You wrote what you wrote. If you didn’t mean what you wrote, don’t keep trying to defend it by acting as if the reader got it all wrong. You can’t say “This sofa is green,” and then get upset when the reader doesn’t read “This sofa is brown.”
And please stop being so petulant about it. The problem is yours, not the readers whose questions you consistently dodge and whose criticisms you refuse to take on board.
Me, petulant? Really? When have I ever gotten rude? I literally have considered that I am a bad thinker and/or writer. If it were not for some rather smart people I know that have intimated otherwise, I may have packed it in already.
Dawkins said he’s an atheist because of evolution. I don’t know how much clearer I have to be about that. The author is wrong is she means that atheists like Dawkins think evolution provides absolute assurance God does not exist. I do not know the author but I find it hard to believe a philosopher would think that (perhaps knowing the author would suggest otherwise). But she is correct if she believes Dawkins thinks evolution provides great scientific reasons to doubt the existence of God.
I don’t know where else this conversation can go at this point, so I’m going to head back to the science-God thread, which seems more fruitful.
But to add one quick thought here: I started posting on this blog because, in surveying all the blogs out there that discuss these issues, this one seemed to have the highest level of discourse. I didn’t come here to attack anyone or get in Internet battles. I’m just looking to have some quality conversation on religion, science, politics, philosophy, etc. Please don’t mistake me for some troll.
When you misrepresent what people have said. You have been given a number of examples.
Or do you not regard either dishonesty or sloppiness as being rude ? Do you think anything you say cannot be rude as long as you do not say fuck ?
I appreciate the compliment to the discourse here, Michael! I agree – I think the commenters here are outstanding.
Sorry for getting irritable, it’s just that Midgley did say what she said, and you keep re-writing it.
I don’t know Midgley either but there’s no need for interpretation or guessing, much less biography – because she said what she said. Maybe she didn’t mean it; I have no idea; but she did say it, and I was disputing what she said. I really don’t understand why you’re expressing incredulity about it when it’s right there in the post. She said what she said.
Michael, I wouldn’t want to say that you don’t have a skill for thinking about things. You certainly are skillful in rephrasing things so they turn out to say the things you want them to say, and you are doggedly persistent in repeating your point of view once you have rephrased it. But, in order to engage in a discussion, you have to prepared to accept that, if someone says that A is p, s/he hasn’t said that A is f. You just have to take what people say, and go from there, no matter how much you want to be fair to them and read them in a way that makes what they have said coming out as the most serene reason. (Of course, you might like to write to Professor Midgley and ask her if that is what she really meant, even though it isn’t what she said.)
Midgley, you might say, is deliberately provocative. But if you set out to provoke, you usually think you’ve got a handle on the convesation, and can do so to some effect. That’s what Midgley thinks, and she’s wrong. By accepting what she said, you’re wrong too. Dawkins never says that evolution is a scientific disproof of god’s existence. He has said that evolution gives one plenty of reasons for doubting god’s existence. Darwin said the same thing, and he never said evolution was a disproof either.
However, it is very important if you are going to do further philosophical thinking and writing, that you are precise in your language. Proof that something is untrue because of x is not the same thing as saying that x gives us a reason to doubt that it is true. It gives us a reason to believe it to be untrue, and to state with conviction that it is untrue. This is different to doubt. These are importantly different remarks, and must be kept clearly distinct, otherwise you will go off the rails and make claims you have no right to make, which you did.
I disagree, by the way, with Matt Penfold, when he called you rude because you misrepresented things. I suspect that you do not know exactly how careful argument takes place, and you have an idea that we can all be part of one great big happy family as long as we are prepared to read what other people say in ways that seem true and reasonable to us. In thinking, this may be a recipe for peace, but it is not one that is liable to get you to the truth, and truth, other things being equal, is better than peace, at least in discussion. It’s disagreement and precision that drives discussion, not framing.
And, one more thing. Thank you for your response!
I’ll take all that in, thanks Eric.