Christian Delusions

I’m reading a book called Atheist Delusions, by theology professor David Bentley Hart.  Ostensibly his main point is that Christianity has had a much more profound effect on Western culture, science, and morality than its uber-critics (such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris) like to admit.

The main problem arises when Mr. Hart asserts that faith and reason are not inherently opposed: “All reasoning presumes premises or intuitions or ultimate convictions that cannot be proved by any foundations or facts more basic than themselves, and hence they are irreducible convictions present whenever one attempts to apply logic to experience.”

So far, so good.  All reasoning does indeed presume irreducible convictions (though certainly not “intuitions”).  But Mr. Hart seems to be making the point that materialism (i.e., the conviction of an objective reality untouched by supernatural whim) is equal to his own conviction of supernaturalism.  Apparently those who assume a materialistic foundation simply have a different set of beliefs “that may, for all we know, blind us to entire dimensions of reality.”

Indeed, we could be completely blinding ourselves to the dimension of fairies and elf magic.  We “materalists” are just so narrow-minded.

He goes on: “Certainly we moderns should not be too quick to congratulate ourselves, or to imagine ourselves as having embraced a more rational approach to the world … We have no real rational warrant for deploring the ‘credulity’ of the peoples in previous centuries toward the common basic assumptions of their times while implicitly celebrating ourselves for our own largely uncritical obedience to the common basic assumptions of our own.” [Emphasis mine]

Our own largely uncritical obedience?  Does Mr. Hart understand the most basic tenets of reason or science?  Science is inherently critical of itself.  The very concept of a rational idea that also consists of “largely uncritical obedience to an assumption” is an oxymoron.  Furthermore, the foundation of science is its provisional nature; it strictly rejects dogmatism to any ultimate conviction – yes, even materialism.  One can witness this by the many and varied scientific tests to search for the evidence of ESP, the efficacy of prayer, prophecy, spirits, and so forth.

Mr. Hart seems very close to saying that no philosophy is right or wrong because they’re all based on different “common basic assumptions” of our culture and experiences.  By this line of reasoning, a man whose irreducible conviction is that a giant reptilian monster that regulates the laws of nature with magic eye rays is as equally viable as anything else.

Hart goes on to tell the reader of three African priests with modern educations who also believe that miracles, magic and spiritual warfare are real aspects of their everyday lives.  That’s very heartwarming, and I’m sure it will endear Mr. hart to the multi-culti crowd, but I’m curious as to whether these priests wrote a thesis and passed the exams for that modern education by using miracles, magic, and spiritual warfare.  Try fixing a computer, building a house, or planning birth control with magic.  Try feeding a nation or curing a disease with miracles.  Try it, and let me know how it turns out.

Some metaphysical convictions are clearly more useful than others.  Some are useless.  Assuming supernatural fiat in the natural world destroys science and makes all experimental data useless.  We “moderns” don’t cling to materialism out of blind devotion; we simply use methodological materialism because it’s not only unfailingly useful, but also necessary to a functional human mind.  One can’t even argue against it without first assuming it.

Required Reading for Convicts

If you think it’s hard to get kids to read, imagine how it is when it’s convicts we’re talking about.  Even when they do actually read, it’s generally chaff like a John Grisham novel, which in my view is exactly the same as watching Boston Legal or a random sitcom.  Don’t get me wrong; I watch my own share of mindless entertainment on television – and that’s why pretty much every book I read is either nonfiction or at least a bit more substantive than the latest Dean Koontz thriller.

In prison, though, there’s one sure way to get an inmate to consume books like crazy: Throw him in the Hole.  In segregation, there’s literally nothing to do.  If you want to experience what it’s like to have your leg muscles atrophy without getting paralyzed or going into a coma, spend some time in the Hole.  But you can get books eventually, and further, every cell comes equipped with a Bible.  You’d be surprised how even all the “begats” and other mind-numbing nonsense in the Old Testament becomes an interesting read in this situation.

But honestly, is this really the best we can do to help inmates?  The Bible is long on fortune-cookie platitudes, but it doesn’t teach you how to think for yourself, how to reason, or how to look at a situation critically.  Every single one of us in here knows the difference between good behavior and bad behavior.  We don’t need the Bible to tell us what’s right and wrong; we already know.  The problem is that most of us can’t think about ourselves and our actions rationally.  The Bible – and reliance on any faith-based morality – is part of the problem in this case.

Not only that, but most inmates simply don’t give a shit about the Bible, Jesus, or Christianity.  They think it’s weak.  They think the Christian services are a haven for sissies and child molesters.  I’m not saying this to be spiteful; it’s the truth.  Do you think inmates really join Wicca and Asatru groups because they find spiritual fulfillment?  On the same token, why do you think a radical form of Islam has such popularity in prison?

So here’s what we need.  Give inmates some serious reading that’s three things: entertaining, not sissified, and exceedingly instructive in morality and reason.  Give them Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.  Seriously, put a copy in every cell in the Hole, and I swear you’ll have guys coming out of seg saying, “That book changed my lie.”  I’m told there’s an Ayn Rand Foundation, or a Center for the Advancement of Objectivism…I wonder if they could fund something like this?  Try it out in the prisons of one state.  Advance objectivism in the prison population – we need help more than anyone.

I’m not going to get mushy about how much reading that book meant to me, how much it helped this convicted murderer.  I suppose the best I can say is that Atlas Shruggedis necessary.  That’s the most descriptive word for it.  Everyone must experience this book for themselves, period.  And that way, rather than inmates walking around asking what Jesus would do, they’d be asking, “Who is John Galt?”

Mr. Incredible and God, Part V

Another challenge in Mr. Incredible’s position that God is immune to all the normal rules of “proof” that us crude scientific thinkers are bound by was this: “Prove that you exist.  I would love to hear you try.”

No problem.  First, I’ll prove it logically.  Here goes: I exist.

The fact that I’ve said “I” means that I’m acknowledging a sense of self.  I couldn’t use that personal pronoun without confirming that I, indeed, exist to be able to claim that I exist.  Think about the converse: If I say “I don’t exist” (as some confused post-relativists and goth teenagers like to claim), I make a fool out of myself.  You can’t deny that you exist without affirming it, because you have to say “I” before you can claim some nonsense about not existing!

Now as to my empirical existence in the real world.  How about this experiment: Someone asks me to prove that I exist, and in response, I punch them in the nose.  Then I say, “Okay, prove that your nose isn’t bleeding.”  Or how about this:  Someone asks me to prove that I exist, so I go out and contract the rabies virus, then see if the challenger will let me drool on them.  If I don’t exist, they wouldn’t be in any danger, right?

This is absurd.  It’s simply a hope that someone won’t be able to come up with an adequate answer, and the challenger can then smile and wave his finger and say, “See?  It’s just like God.  You can’t prove He exists, but we just know He’s real anyway.”

The thing is, I can prove that I exist, and it doesn’t require any faith, any revealed knowledge, or any leap to “just knowing” something.  I have a physical existence that can be measured against an objective background.  Gravity, for instance.  Because I have mass, I exert a relatively small amount of gravitational attraction on everything else in the universe with mass.  This influence can be discerned precisely – with astounding accuracy – simply by calculating my mass and plugging it into the inverse square law.

And guess what?  My mass is the same no matter who measures it, no matter if they use the standard system, the metric system, or some alien system from Mars.  No matter where I go in the universe, no matter who’s observing me, no matter what I believe or what anyone else believes, it doesn’t change my mass.  (Of course, the body is in a constant state of flux, so I lose and gain mass continuously like everyone else due to perspiration, cellular change, eating, etc.)  This is called objective reality.

As usual, people who retreat behind the wall of “My deity can’t be proven by science and therefore you just have to accept that He’s real without any evidence” can’t seem to accept the notion of an objective reality.  It’s like they revel in the idea that their subjective thoughts should count as some sort of evidence.  And why shouldn’t they revel?  No one can prove them wrong, so they’re sitting pretty.  They’re position is unassailable.  Well, at least according to them.

Mr. Incredible and God, Part IV

In Mr. Incredible’s presentation of the “fact” that the rules of evidence don’t apply to his belief that God is real (but they do apply to all of my positions, unsurprisingly), I was given several challenges.  Prove that love is real, I was dared.  Prove that something is beautiful.  Prove with logic that the Fifth Symphony is sheer beauty.  Describe scientifically the fragrance of violets.  (The idea being that I can’t, and that God is like these things.)

As usual, creationists like Mr. Incredible confuse their perceptions with objective reality.  Prove that a symphony – or anything else – is beautiful.  Okay, first you have to define what “beautiful” means, Mr. Incredible.  It’s not objective, so that’s a problem.  If you had asked me to prove that something weighs about 150 pounds on the normal gravity of earth, as measured by an ordinary American bathroom scale, that would be easy, because that’s something we can objectively observe.  No matter who’s doing the weighing – me, you, a Tibetan monk, or an alien from Andromeda – the result would be the same.

But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, to use an appropriate cliche.  I can’t prove that something is beautiful because “beautiful” is simply a term Homo sapiens use to describe something they find pleasing to the senses.  I’m sure guinea pigs find their high-pitched squeals agreeable, but to many of us, they’re grating.  We can’t even agree on a particular singing voice of our fellow humans as beautiful.  I’m sorry, but the Fifth Symphony, a sunset, the Sistine Chapel, and Angelina Jolie are not objectively beautiful.  It’s simply that in a log of people’s subjective opinions, they are.

The same goes for the smell of violets.  Science is quite capable of describing the biological mechanisms that cause a violet to emit odor-causing particles.  As far as anything more … some people describe the fragrance of a violet as “wistful” and “haunting.”  Science can’t do that because, again, this is just the opinion of some random people.  Not everyone likes the smell of violets.  It would be as futile as asking me to describe scientifically why I might enjoy one TV show over another. 

I hate to crudely break down something like love (being a rationalist doesn’t make me heartless, you know), but in this case, it’s more of the same.  You’d have to define what love is before proving that it’s real.  Many people have very different ideas about what constitutes love.  Many people also have very different ideas about what constitutes loving behavior.  Many people also claim to love people and pretty clearly do not (as evidenced by repeated harmful actions or abuse).  Even if it were possible for every human being on the planet to all agree on an indisputable definition of love, this is still a subjective opinion.  It says nothing about objective reality.

Now, in the case of love, this doesn’t matter.  It’s as real to me as it is to many others.  The fact that I call it subjective opinion doesn’t change the reality that I love my mother, for example, nor does it lessen the strength of that love.  But when we’re talking about applying a subjective opinion to objective reality – like the charge of an electron, say – it does matter.  Because the charge of an electron is always negative.  The electron doesn’t care what you name it, how you describe its charge, or whether you look at it or refuse to admit it exists.  It has a quality that we describe as a negative charge no matter what.  If it doesn’t, it’s not an electron.

The same goes for God.  He either exists or He doesn’t. Maybe there’s evidence for His existence, maybe there’s not.  But one thing is for certain:  The way you or I or anyone feels about God doesn’t change the nature of His existence or non-existence.

Why Faith is Just an Opinion II

I don’t understand why anyone who’s critical of faith is automatically seen as some rude, crude asshole who’s attacking the sacred beliefs of others and being heedless of their feelings.  I don’t want to insult anyone; I want to have an honest discussion about the difference between opinion and reality.  So often I talk to faithful people who want to state, “You have your belief and I have mine,” and leave it at that.

No, I’m sorry.  If you have a position, defend it.  Don’t ask the rest of us to turn off the rules of logic for your special belief simply because it’s sacred to you.  I don’t consider it disrespectful to ask tough questions of someone who’s making an assertion without any evidence.  Disrespectful would be ad hominem attacks, nasty attitudes, and hurled insults.  Disrespectful would be casual disdain or intellectual arrogance.  I’ve come to the conclusion that when people say “You’re being disrespectful my faith,” what they really mean is, “You’re asking tough, direct questions about my faith.”

Some people have faith that God is real.  Others have faith that He is not.  Some people have faith that cutting off a little girl’s clitoris pleases God.  Others have faith that it doesn’t.  Some people have faith that homosexuality is a sin.  Others have faith that it is not.

All of these people can’t be right, because there are contradictions there.  So obviously, reality is not determined by someone’s faith.  Either God exists or He doesn’t.  Your faithe in the matter doesn’t change this.  No matter how strongly you feel about God’s presence, you’re not going to alter objective reality.  If it is a fact that your child committed a horrible crime, then no matter howmuch you love them, no matter how much you want to believe them, no matter how much you just know with all your heart that they’re innocent – it’s not going to change anything, is it?

This is why evidence works.  This is why the method of reason is the best one we have for arriving at the truth.  Faith is manifestly and demonstrably useless for discovering the truth.  Faith is a subjective opinion that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the objective truth.

Then, of course, there are people who say, “Well, maybe everything is subjective.  How do you know that using reason is a way to the truth?  It’s just one version of the truth, and my faith gives me another.  Truth is dependent on how each person sess it.”

When people say things like that, I refer them to Ayn Rand: “Those who tell you that a man is unable to perceive a reality undistorted by his senses, mean that they are unwilling to perceive a reality undistorted by their feelings.”

Again, feelings do not change reality.  Just because you click your heels and hope with all your heart that your opinion is the truth does not make it so.  Personally, I find the idea of an existential universe inspiring – but that’s simply my opinion.  My yearning for such a universe says absolutely nothing about whether it is truly that way or not.

So, how do we know that using reason is a way to the truth?  If you can’t answer that, then try stating a contradiction such as “My empty bank account actually contains a million dollars” and attempt to spend it.  Try saying, “I don’t exist” without admitting that you do simply because you used that personal pronoun.  Try believing that gravity is just the subjective opinion of some scientists, and jump off a building.  Try doing anything without using the method of reason and see how far you get out of bed in the morning.

My Views

I never thought that posting a blog to say a few positive, nonpartisan things about Kirsten Powers would result in such an insight into how people think.  It’s amazing.  I was accused of being both a far-right conservative nut and a far-left America-hating liberal - by two people who read the exact same post!

Th point, however, is taht I never said one word applauding Kirsten Powers for her viewpoints; I don’t even agree with some of them.  So to make assumptions about my own views simply because I complimented her rationality – or because I watch Fox News – is unreasonable.  Do people even listen to what others say anymore, or do they just look for ways to validate their own preconceived notions?  Do they realize that not everyone falls into a neat little black-and-white category of either left or right?

I consider myself to be outside those categories.  First of all, I’m a fiscal conservative – more conservative than our current president, if I may say so (considering the glut of spending and pork currently plaguing Washington).  I don’t mind being called a greedy capitalist.  To call Atlas Shrugged my favorite book of all time is a vast understatement.  I think a social welfare state is repulsive.  I believe in the power of the free market, I want a tiny government, I want a flat tax and free trade, I want school vouchers, and I’m proud of the rich who are making themselves richer.  I don’t want nationalized health care.  I also think Americans have a right to own guns.

I’m a conservative on national defense.  I am utterly unconvinced that pulling out of Iraq is the right thing to do.  I think that everyone in the world who is free or would be free is at war with fundamentalist Islam.  We’re fighting scumbags who moralize the murder of babies, riot and kill people when someone prints a cartoon about their prophet, and cheer in the streets when three thousand innocent civilians are murdered.  We battle injustice while they try to legitimize it.

I’m a patriot.  I think America is the greatest country on earth – not for any sentimental reason, but because of the facts:  America is the nation that offers the most freedom and opportunity, the nation that helps the most people worldwide, the nation that defeated Nazism and totalitarianism and freed tens of millions of people.

Other than that, I’m socially liberal.  I think it’s simply immoral to turn people into criminals and throw them in jail for “crimes” like prostitution, personal drug use, polygamy, and gambling.  I think anyone who’s against gay marriage should mind their own business.  I’m pro-choice.  I think kids should be educated about sex rather than taught to ignore it.

I’m a secularist who thinks that creationsim being disguised as science in public schools is a travesty of rational thought.  But I also think the hyper-secularists who want to remove all signs of religion from the public square are being foolish.  “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”  We’d all do well to remember both clauses of that statement.

I don’t care about political parties or social movements.  I can spend as much time criticizing a Democrat as I can a Republican.  I see absolutely no reason to follow any dogma or listen to any authority figure – at least without examining them first and deciding for myself whether they’re worthwhile.  The only “side” I take is the side of reason.  I think we should be ruled by reason, not rules.