Author: Ophelia Benson

There’s this post on Talking Philosophy about religious experience and the fact that it can be or seem to be veridical, and the questions that fact raises.

The religious experience as veridical thing is interesting. If the experience genuinely has that quality – is it rational to take it at face value? Okay, I guess most people reading this will answer ‘no’ (and tell me off for suggesting such a thing). But I wonder…

I would say it isn’t entirely rational to take religious experience at face value as veridical, for reasons that don’t seem to appear in comments on that post; not exactly, anyway. I would say it isn’t rational because we know that experience can be misleading. That’s all. It’s pretty simple. That’s why (isn’t it?) experience on its own (internal, private, unsharable, unduplicatable) experience is not considered scientific evidence (or legal evidence either). We know our minds can play tricks on us; we know human beings can hallucinate; therefore we know, or ought to know if we want to claim the title ‘rational,’ that any purely internal experience may be overwhelmingly convincing to us but that it doesn’t follow that it can or should be convincing to anyone else.

I think the claim is that the experience is so convincing (so powerful, overwhelming, veridical) to the person who has it that that person can’t believe it’s not veridical – is literally unable to believe that.

But…I’m not sure that works – not in the sense of deserving the term ‘rational.’ If one really is rational, one ought to be able to have an intense internal experience and still remain aware that that is what it is and that it cannot of its nature be legitimately convincing to anyone else – and that therefore it is not genuine evidence, and should not be taken to be genuine evidence, even by the person inside whose head it played itself out. Not even if that person is a brilliant philosopher or physicist.

That’s not to say that it’s not understandable that the experiencers would find the experience convincing, just that the label ‘rational’ is – not really earned. I think there are good reasons why it is not rational for people to be convinced by their own purely internal experiences, and that therefore it’s understandable but not rational to be convinced by them.

From The Improbability of God again. Page 383.

If there were an all-good and all-powerful God who could act in time, then we would have better evidence than we have…Why would such a God hide? Some theists answer that, if the evidence for God were stronger, believers would not need faith.

But why is that an answer? Why is that an objection? Why is faith taken to be a good thing? Why is it supposed to be a loss if we don’t need it? Apart from the obvious protective reasons – the obvious contorted explanations that theists offer to explain inconvenient realities such as God’s strange failure ever to drop by and say hello.

Is the idea that faith is – what – generous, gratuitous, loving? But anything can follow from that. You get epistemic chaos from thinking that way, and from epistemic chaos you get disaster. You could have ‘faith’ that a loving god wouldn’t let anything bad ever happen, and so do nothing.

It’s the same as the problem with claiming that we can’t know what all possible goods are but God can, so we aren’t in a position to know God is not good. Both of them are disastrous because both of them amount to saying that our best tools are not just fallible, not just incomplete, but fundamentally wrong. That’s a desperately bad, reckless, irresponsible idea, because we have to do our best. We have to. It doesn’t matter to us if there are infinitely wise benevolent powerful beings in some other part of the cosmos if we can’t get at them; we have to do what we can do, and if we don’t, we just make things worse. ‘Faith’ is dangerous, the idea that ‘faith’ is a good is dangerous, and the idea that what looks like pain and suffering is actually beneficial in some deeply hidden secret way is extremely dangerous. Some of the twisted things that philosophers of religion say are not just wrong but – anti-human.

You’ll have seen this bit of wisdom before – possibly more than once.

In his conclusion, McGrath spoke of the limitations of science. Issues such as the meaning of life, he said, remain outside the scope of science.

In some senses, yes – but does it follow that religion is inside the scope of science? Is that what we’re meant to conclude? Probably, although the Baptist Press doesn’t say so (it’s not clear whether McGrath did or not). At any rate, let’s ponder what may be meant by that familiar trope.

I think what is meant by it is that science interferes with denial and therefore it interferes with certain ways of deriving meaning. I think that’s probably true – but that’s because reality interferes with certain ways of deriving meaning; science in this context is just a source of information about reality. There are others, which are just as likely to interfere with certain ways of deriving meaning. Life, the passage of time, experience, observation can all do that; can and are quite likely to. That’s how it is. We’re weak mortal entities with short lives who tend to love other weak mortal entities with short lives. That brutal set of facts always does tend to interfere with our efforts to derive meaning; it always does mess up ‘issues such as the meaning of life.’ So I would say that what is meant here is not so much that religion helps us to derive meaning, as that religion helps us to deny intrusive bits of reality that would otherwise smash our derived meanings.

Now, I think that’s true – religion does help us do do that. Religion does, and science doesn’t (mostly). But it’s interesting that that’s not the way apologists for religion usually put the matter. They don’t usually even say that religion helps us to protect some illusions and science doesn’t. I suppose that’s because it would be much like a doctor saying ‘I’ll give you a placebo for that.’ But still – it would be more honest.

There are a couple of posts at Talking Philosophy about Dawkins and theology and the former’s lack of interest in the latter. The basic issue is this comment of Dawkins’s in an interview:

Look, somebody who thinks the way I do doesn’t think theology is a subject at all. So to me it is like someone saying they don’t believe in fairies and then being asked how they know if they haven’t studied fairy-ology.

Which Talking Philosophy disputes:

So what about this claim? Is it necessary to know a fair bit about fairy-ology to show that belief in fairies is irrational? The answer is that it is certainly arguable that in some circumstances at least it is necessary.

I think it is true that it is necessary to know a fair bit about arguments about God to show that belief in God is irrational; but I’m not sure that means it is necessary to know a fair bit about theology. It has occurred to me that people may be talking about different things in that discussion (it’s a long discussion, with lots of comments). It depends what is meant by theology, perhaps, and what Dawkins understood to be meant by theology when he answered the question.

I’m thinking for instance of that Eagleton review in which Eagleton rebuked Dawkins for ignorance of theology:

Has he read Eriugena on subjectivity, Rahner on grace or Moltmann on hope? Has he even heard of them?…As far as theology goes, Dawkins has an enormous amount in common with Ian Paisley and American TV evangelists. Both parties agree pretty much on what religion is; it’s just that Dawkins rejects it while Oral Roberts and his unctuous tribe grow fat on it.

But Eagleton is going back and forth between religion and theology there, and they’re not identical. Grace and hope are interesting subjects, no doubt, but are they arguments for the existence of God? Is Eagleton in fact talking about arguments for the existence of God, or is he talking much much more broadly about just talk about God? And more to the point, what did Dawkins have in mind when he answered that question?

It seems to me at least possible (and in fact likely) that he was distinguishing between philosophy of religion (and arguments for the existence of God) on the one hand, and theology on the other, and taking theology to be discussion of God. If that’s right – I don’t think he does need to know about that in order to show that belief in God is irrational. He needs to know about the arguments for the existence of God, but he doesn’t need to know (I would say) about claims about what God is like (unless they’re part of the arguments for the existence of God). There’s not much point in deep knowledge of claims about what God is like if you see no reason to believe God exists in the first place – is there? In that sense the fairyology simile is a serious comparison, isn’t it?

In short, I don’t think Dawkins was saying he had no need to know about the arguments, but rather that he had no need to know about detailed claims about God’s nature. That seems to me to be a reasonable claim. I could of course be wrong about what he meant though; it’s only a guess.

History, truth, myths, nationalism, violence, what to teach the children. It comes up a lot, that set of issues.

These days, Irish history lessons are more sophisticated. They deal happily with facts that have no place in a plain tale of heroes and tyrants…Why the change? First because in the 1980s, some people in Ireland became uneasy about the fact that a crude view of their national history was fuelling a conflict in the north of the island. Then came a fall in the influence of the Catholic church, whose authority had rested on a deft fusion between religion and patriotism. Also at work was an even broader shift: a state that was rich, confident and cosmopolitan saw less need to drum simple ideas into its youth, especially if those ideas risked encouraging violence.

A shift from nationalist religio-patriotic simple ideas to something better; excellent; here’s hoping the rest of the world can make the same trip.

In modern Turkey, classrooms have always been seen as a battleground for young hearts. Every day, children start the day by chanting: “I am a Turk, I am honest, I am industrious”…In such a climate, it is inevitable that “history is considered a sensitive matter, to be managed by the state,” says Taner Akcam, a Turkish-born historian, whose frank views on the fate of Ottoman Armenians in 1915 have exposed him to harassment by Turkish nationalists…

And Hrant Dink’s frank views on the fate of Ottoman Armenians in 1915 exposed him to being murdered.

Greece’s Orthodox leaders, like Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens, are putting up a harder fight to preserve the nationalist spirit…Meanwhile some Greeks retort that 11 or 12 is too young to go looking for facts. In a web-discussion of the new Greek textbook, one participant thunders: “At university, the goal of historical research is the discovery of truth. But in primary schools history teaching has an entirely different aim—to form historical consciousness and social identity!”

Oh right! Good thinking! The discovery of truth is reserved for people who go to university, and has to be postponed; what the people as a whole must have as children is identity-shaping mythology. Great. That’s been doing great things for Japan and India lately…

I’m reading an interesting book, The Improbability of God, edited by Michael Martin and Ricki Monnier. A collection of arguments on the subject. There’s a whole section on inductive evil arguments against the existence of God. In one, ‘An Argument from Non-gratuitous Evil’ by Thomas Metcalf, a half-sentence on page 330 started a train of thought: ‘If God exists, all the evil that befalls us is justified…’

The train of thought was about the subject matter of this whole section of the book, which is theodicy in general. It’s one that’s puzzled me for ages, but it took a perhaps slightly new form this time. The traditional idea or definition of ‘God’ is that it is omnipotent omniscient and omnibenevolent (also eternal). But – that’s strange. That’s stranger than we generally notice, it seems to me (unless I’m missing something). The third item doesn’t fit.

It makes sense, within the terms of reference of talking about ‘God’ at all, to define ‘God’ as omnipotent and omniscient. It has to be those in order to create the universe (though I suppose you could substitute veryvery for omni), and it is generally considered to have done that thing. We could think of God as the boss of just one corner of the universe, but theists generally don’t, so that’s a separate subject. Omnipotent and omniscient fit into the usual understandings and definitions; they make sense there; but what is omnibenevolent doing there? One, benevolence is hardly necessary in order to create the universe, and two, what does the universe have to do with benevolence? If you look at the universe and then think someone created it, you have to think of that someone as having a large quantity of power and knowledge; but benevolence? I don’t see why that’s even relevant.

The problem of evil, of course, has to do with reconciling a benevolent or Perfectly Good God with the existence of suffering (aka evil). But there again – why is it assumed that God is Perfectly Good? Or Good at all? Because that’s part of the definition; yes, but why? We can see why power and knowledge are, but I have to say, I have a hard time seeing why goodness is.

Goodness (or benevolence) seems like a different kind of thing – like the perfect island that is actually not perfect if you prefer a different kind of island. Power and knowledge are somewhat objective, universalizable qualities, but goodness isn’t. It is possible to make arguments for objective universalizable human goods, but they are human goods; it is possible to make arguments for extending some of them to all sentient beings on this planet; but that’s still a very local version of good. That’s what the word is – a word that describes what finite contingent mortal sentient beings prefer; it doesn’t describe anything cosmic, or if it does we have no idea how.

This matters because theists reply to atheist arguments from evil that humans can’t know what all possible goods are, and that suffering may be (or just is) necessary in order that other greater goods may exist, and that therefore the existence of horrible pointless (apparently, as far as we can tell pointless) suffering is not a reason to think God does not exist. In other words, ‘God’ is still perfectly good, still omnibenevolent, it’s just that it is those things in ways that are hidden to us but that make our sufferings (our=all sentient beings) justifiable all the same.

Well – it’s perfectly possible to suppose that, of course – but by exactly the same token, it’s also perfectly possible to suppose that, for instance, what ‘God’ means by ‘good’ is the enjoyment derived from watching sentient beings suffer. How the hell do we know? That’s not our definition of good, but the theists’ whole point there is that our definition isn’t the only possible definition and that it’s limited and inadequate. Maybe it is, but why do the theists get to suppose that the real, hidden, secret, theist definition is ‘good’ in any sense at all? Why do they assume that? Why isn’t it at least as likely that the secret hidden reasons that we don’t know about are indifferent or malevolent? If it’s unknown, it’s unknown, and there’s no more reason to assume it’s benevolent and good than there is to assume it’s sadistic and bad, or to assume it has no moral content whatever.

I’ve been thinking (on and off) about something slightly puzzling. The people who rebuke militant atheists or Enlightenment fundamentalists or secular dogmatists or deaf scientistic positivists or some other combination of those and similar terms, often murmur something about the importance of religion for art and literature and music. After bumping into one of those murmurs a few days ago, I suddenly noticed a puzzle. It’s this: the one about literature isn’t true. That’s very odd, isn’t it; why isn’t it true?

Of course, there are exceptions; there are some bits of literature that are very goddy; I’m not ignoring Dante and Milton. But – most literature actually isn’t all that goddy – even literature written at times when atheism was a capital crime; even literature written by believers, or at least people who went to church. Literature on the whole seems to be a very, very secular and above all worldly undertaking. That’s very odd, isn’t it?

I’ve noticed this before, actually, but in different contexts and so from different angles. I remember being astonished a couple of decades ago when I first read The Decameron – I was astonished that any medieval book could be so very worldly and so cheerfully lewd. But I should have been more astonished by later people too – I should have wondered about it more.

Think about it. Think about Shakespeare, or Austen, or anyone else you like. They just don’t talk about God and goddy things the way you would think they would if they took the whole thing seriously. Yet Austen, at least, did take it seriously (and Shakespeare may have; no one knows).

Why is that? Why is God tacitly left out? Why is the whole subject mostly bracketed? Why isn’t it central? Why, when they write about human lives and characters and morality and experience, do they mostly talk about all of them in purely human worldly quotidian terms? Why do they have plenty of clergymen and clergymen’s wives and daughters, with so very little searching talk about what the clergymen are actually there for?

I’m really curious about it. I think it’s strange. It’s strange because if the god hypothesis is true, it ought to loom immensely large; if you believe it’s true, it (surely) must loom immensely large in everything you think about life and the world; many producers of literature have believed it’s true; yet they write on the whole as if human life were just what I think it is: human life, period. It’s odd that there isn’t a radical split in poetry and plays and novels written by believers and those written by non-believers – but there isn’t. They ought to inhabit and describe completely different worlds, and yet they don’t. Why is that?

It’s not true of painting, or of music; why is it true of literature?

I have one guess: it’s only a guess. I’ll be interested to know if anyone has others. My guess is that it doesn’t work, and that the reason it doesn’t work is that the God character isn’t around. It’s hidden. We’re supposed to believe it’s there (we’re especially ‘supposed to’ in literature of earlier periods) but we also all know it’s hidden – and because it’s hidden, it’s peculiar and creepy to talk about it – apparently even for believers. That’s interesting. Gravity is hidden too, of course; so are atoms; but it’s not creepy or peculiar to talk about them; but it is creepy and peculiar to talk about God much – much or even at all. I don’t think Austen ever so much as mentions God.

If that’s right, it means that even believers (many, most) don’t really believe God is there in the same natural easy way we all believe in what’s around us. It may even mean that they (or many or some of them) think they do but really don’t.

Strange, isn’t it. Fantasy is fine; magic realism is fine; Harry Potter okay, Wizard of Oz okay, ghosts and witches okay; but God…hmm…not really. Except of course for evangelicals and the Rapture books, but those don’t count, being a recent local product of the Third Great Awakening; the question is why more literature hasn’t been like the Rapture books all along.