Author: Ophelia Benson

I mentioned that interview with Swinburne in What Philosophers Think.

It’s based on a discussion of a paper he gave at a Congress, about God and evil. He says the usual sort of thing –

…it’s a good thing that humans should have free will, not just free will to choose between alternative television channels, but free will to choose significantly between good and bad – good and evil in the terms of the paper. But, they can’t have that unless there is the actual possibility of them bringing about evil The possibility of evil occurring unprevented is the necessary condition for them having a free choice between good and evil.

That’s the same problem we had with his discussion with Dennett. Why is it a good thing that humans should have free will? We don’t even agree that it’s a good thing (for the universe, or the planet, or other biological systems, or anyone or anything other than humans themselves, which doesn’t seem to be what he means, or surely he would have said that, instead of saying ‘objectively’) that humans exist, so why would it be a good thing that, existing, humans should have free will? Why should that be any more of a good thing than that humans should have moles, or teeth, or calf muscles? Never mind – it gets more interesting, when the discussion turns to ‘natural evil’.

Human suffering as the result of disease – very frequent, not the result of free choice, or at any rate not the result of free choice unless there are bad angels at work causing it. That is possible, but it’s not something I would wish to promote very strongly. That sort of suffering is necessary because it gives the sufferer the opportunity to either be sorry for himself or to deal with it courageously. If he didn’t suffer he wouldn’t have the opportunity to deal with his suffering in either a courageous way or in a self-pitying way. It also gives other people – friends, spouse, children etc. – the opportunity to be sympathetic, to try and help him, for showing sympathy, feeling sympathy and doing something about it or not to bother. That is to say this is the grit that makes possible the pearl of different kinds of reaction. If the world was without any natural evil and suffering we wouldn’t have the opportunity, or nearly as much opportunity, to show courage, patience and sympathy. Of course I’m not suggesting that God ought to multiply suffering ad infinitum in order to give us endless opportunity, but I do think the world would be a poorer place if we didn’t have some opportunity to show ourselves at our best in this kind of way.

Actually, that is exactly what you’re suggesting, you simp. You can’t help suggesting that, because of what you’re saying. Because look – if the suffering as a result of disease is not real suffering, if it’s trivial, if it’s a mere mild lassitude or a slight ache in the calf muscle, then courage is beside the point, it’s not needed. For the courage to be actual courage, as opposed to just dramatizing, or downright joking (like howling the place down when you bump your elbow slightly, to make the dog look puzzled), it has to be real suffering. Right? So – the worse the suffering is, the more courage is needed, and the more courageous the courage is. So, if you’re fool enough to think the courage is worth the price of the suffering, then you do indeed think the more the merrier, or ‘that God ought to multiply suffering ad infinitum‘. That’s exactly what you are saying in that revolting passage. You might as well say people should whip their children every few hours so that the children can bear it courageously and the parents can show them sympathy. It makes just that much sense.

We’ve seen this argument before. Some rabbi on Thought for the Day – I think arguing against the legal right to die, on the grounds that he wouldn’t have wanted his father to have had that option, because then he would have missed the opportunity to show his father compassion – during his suffering. So he wanted his father to suffer so that he could show him compassion – badly enough that he was glad his father wasn’t able to choose whether to suffer (and get the compassion) or not. Excuse me, but I think that’s disgusting.

Then there’s a really dreadful passage about being of use to others. ‘I brought out several examples of that, of which, of course, the most striking would be the person who dies for his country in a just war.’ Julian asks about suffering that seems to be of no use to anyone, and cites the Battle of the Somme as an example.

Well, that particular soldier’s life is also of use…someone sent him there, some general high up has taken a decision about this matter…Innumerable people, through negligence, through stirring up hatred, through not bothering, have contributed to war. It’s a great good for them that they are allowed to make big differences to things, and they can only make big differences to things if there are going to be possible victims.

That’s – beyond disgusting. That’s blood-curdling. That’s enough to make you run screaming from the room. As Julian (more politely) notes.

Swinburne had already said that his argument wouldn’t convince the committed atheist and wouldn’t make much difference to the committed believer. Reconciling God and evil is of most value to the undecided or unsure. Leaving the interview, I was unsure as to whether the very precise reconciliation Swinburne describes will have the effect of clearing the way for belief in God or making the very idea of God a more chilling one.

More chilling!

And André Glucksmann says what badly needs saying.

Offence for offence? Infringement for infringement? Can the negation of Auschwitz be put on a par with the desecration of Muhammad? This is where two philosophies clash. The one says yes, these are equivalent “beliefs” which have been equally scorned. There is no difference between factual truth and professed faith; the conviction that the genocide took place and the certitude that Muhammad was illuminated by Archangel Gabriel are on a par. The others say no, the reality of the death camps is a matter of historical fact, whereas the sacredness of the prophets is a matter of personal belief.

Thank you. Finally! No, evidence-based facts are not the same kind of thing as religious beliefs. They are, in fact, in crucial ways opposites, diametrically opposed, incompatible. It’s about time we got that straight.

This distinction between fact and belief is at the heart of Western thought…Civilised discourse analyses and defines scientific truths, historic truths and matters of fact relating to knowledge, not to faith. And it does this irrespective of race or confession. We may believe these facts are profane or undignified, yet they remain distinct from religious truths. Our planet is not in the grips of a clash of civilisations or cultures. It is the battleground of a decisive struggle between two ways of thinking. There are those who declare that there are no facts, but only interpretations – so many acts of faith. These either tend toward fanaticism (“I am the truth”) or they fall into nihilism (“nothing is true, nothing is false”). Opposing them are those who advocate free discussion with a view to distinguishing between true and false, those for whom political and scientific matters – or simple judgement – can be settled on the basis of worldly facts, independently of arbitrary pre-established opinions.

And not only can be, but have to be, on pain of being consigned to the horrible mental prison where intensity of belief determines what is true.

A totalitarian way of thinking loathes to be gainsaid. It affirms dogmatically, and waves the little red, or black, or green book. It is obscurantist, blending politics and religion…It is high time that the democrats regained their spirit, and that the constitutional states remembered their principles. With solemnity and solidarity they must recall that one, two or three religions, four or five ideologies may in no way decide what citizens can do or think.

Damn right.

Julian has a good thing in the Guardian. Makes a change from Andrew Brown.

In order to be a distinct belief system, a religion has to have specific doctrines. That automatically creates two types of dissenters. Heretics are those who claim to be of the same conviction, but who disagree on some fundamentals…Apostates reject the religion altogether…In public life, we allow heretics and apostates their sinful ways. But within religious institutions, to grant the same liberty would be absurd. For example, you can’t have a Pope who thinks the Bible is a good book, but is no more the product of divine authorship than The Da Vinci Code.

Just so. That’s similar to the point Edmund Standing makes in ‘Misdirected Outrage’: that if a religion teaches something, then that is what the religion teaches, and it’s no good pretending it doesn’t.

Either choose the human rights culture born of the rejection of the old discriminatory approaches of religion, or choose the moral order of Allah, the divine dictator. Allah is not a proponent of human rights. Allah does not believe in the right of the individual to choose how to live. Anyone who thinks that Islam and homosexuality can be reconciled is living in a fantasy world. Take a look at what the Qur’an has to say about homosexuality. This is what Islam teaches. Don’t like it? Then get out.

This confusion is behind (or at least enables) a lot of the soft squashy but relentless pressure to ‘respect’ religion at the moment: the mistaken idea that religion is compatible with human rights. But it isn’t. That’s why we hate it, that’s why it’s coercive, that’s why it can’t be argued with or reasoned with, that’s why it has to be kept out of public policy: because it rests on divine dictatorship. It’s really really important to keep that in mind, especially when the ‘let’s be nice to religion because that’s where the votes are’ crowd is writing its wrong-headed polemics.

Back to Julian’s piece:

This matters to more than just believers. The idea of a secular state is currently under fire as people call to bring religion into more areas of public life, such as education. But if more institutions become the domain of religion, questions of heresy and apostasy will become relevant to all who use those institutions, and work for or with them.

And what a nightmare world that would be. Wouldn’t you say? Questions of heresy and apostasy muddying things up in what should be secular institutions? Let’s not go that way.

A little more on Swinburne, just for drill.

Why do all particles behave in exactly the same way as each other, so as together ultimately to produce human life? This enormous coincidence in particle behaviour requires explaining. I’ve got a good theory which explains it; you haven’t. And if you are really telling me that the production of humans is not, objectively, a good thing, I find myself wondering if you really mean something so implausible.

He’s got a good theory to explain it. His good theory to explain it is a big person (where? where is this big person? outside the universe? on one side of it? or all sides, going all the way around? a big round person with the universe at the middle of it?) who is perfectly this that and the other, that no one can see or smell or talk to, that doesn’t take phone calls or answer letters, but does answer prayers, sometimes, maybe. That’s a good theory? It’s not just a tiny bit, erm, implausible, on the face of it? I have to be honest: it seems very implausible to me. Not just mildly implausible, but very implausible. A big person, wot made the universe, in order to make yooman beings. Nope – don’t buy it.

Okay, next bit. (And what’s that we’re always being told about how uncertain and modest religious believers are? Not if Swinburne is anything to go on they’re not.) It’s implausible to say that the production of humans is not objectively a good thing. But why are they a good thing to anyone but themselves? Well, maybe not quite only themselves. I can see why rats would be pleased, and pigeons, and flies, and various types of virus and bacteria. And of course wheat and soybeans and potatoes are delighted – it’s worked out terrifically well for them. I do quite see that. But that’s not objectively – that’s just to a few species (and who knows how many naysayers there are even there, eh? maybe lots of pigeons and rats would really have preferred to go it on their own and let things fall out as they would), it’s not objectively. How can the production of humans be objectively a good thing? What ultimate, general, non-personal, non-local good does our existence do? How is Jupiter, or Alpha Centauri, or the next galaxy over, better off for the existence of humans?

Is this the best theists can do? I suppose it must be. Since I don’t think they have any good arguments, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that the arguments they do give seem awfully thin. But – then why do they get to be Topp, and publish books, and so on? It seems a little strange.

I don’t like Andrew Brown’s tone. I’ve said so before and I say it again. It’s an unpleasant tone – sneering, nose downlooking, insinuating, and sloppy about the facts (or interpretations of the facts). It’s the kind of tone that failure to grovel to religion seems to bring out in a lot of people at this particular historical moment.

The faults are visible right from the beginning.

Hell hath no fury like a philosopher scorned – even one who doesn’t believe in hell. Two of the leading philosophers of evolution have been caught in an email slanging match that has been printed on the blog of their mutual enemy William Dembski, a supporter of the rebranded creationism known as intelligent design.

That’s a snide and not very accurate way of putting it. It’s not a slanging match, it’s Ruse being unaccountably rude to Dennett; ‘caught’ is an odd word to use of both since the bad behavior is all Ruse’s; the email exhange didn’t just happen to be posted on Dembski’s blog, Ruse sent it to Dembski, apparently without permission.

There is a poetic justice to this, since the row started with an argument over how to combat creationism.

No, there is not a poetic justice to this, there is a breach of manners at the least, and the ‘row’ isn’t so much a row as an ambush.

When a long piece about the struggle against creationism in the New York Times Book Review suggested there was some truth to Ruse’s belief that “evolutionism” is being pushed by people like Dennett as a substitute for religion, Dennett was aggrieved, denouncing Ruse’s ideas as “a transparent example of a well-known cheap trick”.

That’s a misleadingly evasive account. Very. This ‘denouncing’ of Ruse’s ideas was in a letter to the Times that the Times did not in fact publish, and at the time Ruse sent the first (according to Brown, ‘teasing’) email to Dennett, it hadn’t been published anywhere. That ought to be relevant in a statement that makes it sound as if Dennett’s ‘denunciation’ of Ruse were public knowledge before the email exchange. (As a matter of fact, the only place Dennett’s letter to the Times has been published is right here at B&W, so that’s where Brown saw it, but he doesn’t mention the fact. Sloppy. The date on it is after Ruse sent the email exchange to Dembski. Sloppy to glide over that.)

Dennett had more cause for complaint when, three weeks later, the NYT Book Review printed a rude review of his book Breaking the Spell. After reading the review, Ruse, sitting in Florida, could not resist sending a jeering email to Dennett. This was not, he now says, a very Christian thing to do. “But it was funny.”

A review so rude, so downright vulgar, as to be somewhat shocking. And – Ruse thinks a jeering email on the subject is funny? He really is more daft than I had realized.

What Dennett thinks of all this I do not know, since he has not replied to my email. Ruse is unrepentant. “Let’s face up to it: all Dan was doing was slagging me off.”

All Dan was doing where? In a letter that the Times declined to publish? In their email exchange? If the latter, so what? If the former, again so what, since it hadn’t been published? In short, what is Ruse’s grievance? That Dennett disagreed with him 1) in a then unpublished letter to the Times and 2) in an email exchange that Ruse instigated? And therefore it’s fine that Ruse sent the exchange to Dembski? Notice that Brown never even mentions how ethically dubious that is, in fact he doesn’t even mention the matter of permission. Notice also the vulgar abuse that Ruse descends to in the rest of Brown’s quotation from his email, drawing level with and then passing Wieseltier.

Not an edifying spectacle.