Knowledge, evidence and reality
Found this on another blog, that of a Princeton philosophy grad student (http://toegodspot.blogspot.com/) and posted the response below.
God, you say?
I have become convinced that the intellectual deadlock between atheism and theism stems in part from an inadequate theory of knowledge. Ditto for the surprising resiliency of the absurd claims of some atheists that there is no 'evidence' for the existence of God, or that believers must 'prove' that God exists in order to be taken seriously. Of course the answer to the first claim is that intelligent, educated believers are more than happy to supply cartloads of 'evidence'. What's really going on is that unbelievers reject the evidence as inadequate. As for the second claim, the standards of proof which are usually required to prove the existence of God would result in radical skepticism not just about the existence of God, but the existence of other minds or even an external world. Here John Oman's remark, which I mentioned in an earlier post, bears repeating:"
Rationalism proceeded on the assumption that the world with which religion was concerned needed to be proved, and this by evidence not depending on itself. Religion came so badly through the test that the supernatural seemed reduced to the shadow of a shade, leaving naturalism triumphant through pure lack of a rival...Yet the theory was plausible only to those who overlooked the fact that the natural had been subjected by Rationalism to the same test, and that its reality had been left in even greater dubiety...This skeptical conclusion was as inevitable in the one case as the other, and in both for the same reason, which was neither remarkable nor recondite. It is simply that we cannot prove the reality of any environment while omitting the only evidence it ever gives of itself, which is the way in which it environs us (emphasis mine)."
An epistemological work with important ramifications for the science-religion discussion is The Construction of Reality by Michael Arbib and Mary Hesse, again so far as I can tell insufficiently appreciated. The author's claim is that our experienced reality is indeed a construct, the result of information processing in the brain, but that this construct is constrained by feedback from our actual environments in such a way as to prevent the construct (which they call a 'schema') from becoming completely abstracted from the 'real' world (pp.2-3).
Therefore attempting to show that 'religion is all in the mind' or the result of neural activity accomplishes nothing (for the atheist), without also showing that religious schemas are not constrained by feedback from the environment which religion professes to encounter. The authors go on to argue that methods for evaluating possible feedback mechanisms are not nearly as straightforward as some people think, especially in the case of religion. Here again it is worth repeating Michael Polanyi's explanation for why debates about the existence of God or the rationality of religious belief so quickly reach deadlock, even though there are intelligent, educated people on both sides of the debate:
“A controversy between two fundamentally different views of the same region of experience can never be conducted as methodically as a discussion taking place within one organized branch of knowledge. While clashes between two conflicting scientific theories or two divergent biblical interpretations can usually be brought to a definite test in the eyes of their respective professional opinions, it may be extremely difficult to find any implications of a naturalistic view of man on the one hand and of a religious view on the other, in which these two can be specifically contrasted in identical terms. The less two propositions have fundamentally in common the more the argument between them will lose its discursive character and become an attempt at mutually converting each other from one set of grounds to another, in which the contestants will have to rely largely on the general impression of rationality and spiritual worth which they can make on one another. They will try to expose the general poverty of their opponent’s position and to stimulate interest for their own richer perspectives; trusting that once an opponent has caught a glimpse of these, he cannot fail to sense a new mental satisfaction, which will attract him further and finally draw him over to its own grounds. The process of choosing between positions based on different sets of premises is thus more a matter of intuition and finally conscience, than is a decision between different interpretations based on the same or closely similar sets of premises."
Atheists often complain that these and similar arguments, such as that circularity or 'faith' are found in science as well as religion, are merely desperate tu quoque efforts to stave off the challenge of encroaching secular knowledge. This complaint, however, misses the point. To be sure some apologists operate under the unconscious mentality of 'if I'm going down I'm taking you down with me', but even secular scholars realize that this is the sober truth of the matter, and that it does not only or even primarily have negative implications for human knowledge of reality. The only 'negative' consequence for atheists is that they are forced to take religious truth claims seriously and actually (gasp!) engage in intelligent dialogue with believers as opposed to 'disproving' such truth claims through inane skeptical apologetics such as "Gospel Fictions" or "God's Defenders: what they believe and why they are wrong".
When philosophy of religion takes epistemology seriously, we arrive at some surprising conclusions: theology can meaningfully be treated as a science with its own data (Scripture, religious experience, miracle claims, etc) and method. Though its justification is necessarily internal, means of establishing (or refuting) consonance with extra-systemic reality are readily available. For example, Alister McGrath in his "Scientific Theology" evaluates the 'traction' of the doctrine of Creation with the world as we know it, based on the 'unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics', the 'rational transparency' of the external world to the human mind, a solution to the Euphythro dilemma and beauty and simplicity as criteria for establishing scientific truth. These considerations do not 'prove' that the doctrine of Creation is 'true', but they do provide strong undergirding for the doctrine, so that believers (and even outsiders) can acknowledge that Christian theology is a reasonable option for thinking people in today's world.
El Moe's Response:
I tried to post this on your blog "theory of ever'thang" Unfortunately I was foolish enough to switch to betablogger (dont do it) which prevents me from posting to non beta sites. Talk about segregation! Anyway here is the comments to your sunday post.
I stumbled across your site surfing around blogspace and found these musings very stimulating. Thank you for that. Here's a little story and my two cents, for what they are worth. In my undergraduate years I sometimes found myself embroiled in debate (usually after a copious amount of wine)with a Salvadoran friend of mine who was an avid supporter of the FMLN guerillas. He was also a professed atheist. In those days I fancied myself an agnostic. I always would ask him what "the revolution" was for if the universe were a morally moot place. "Ethics" he would burst out, incredulous that I could ask such a thing "for the ethical treatment of our brothers and for a more just society," both laudable motives, of course.
The problem, however, is that such a response doesn't address why it is that we ought be ethical and just to begin with, or what it is in the breast of most of us in humanity that impells us to "do good." Even Hitler, after all, wanted to do "the right thing" and thought he was doing so. So, whence this impulse for good? If we dispense with the notion of a moral universal, we are left with a few options: one is mere (evolutionary) adaptation to environment as the primary motivator. That is, ethics as modus accomodaptionus. It tends to perpetuate the species to be loving and brotherly, ergo, brotherly love. Most atheists I have met, however, usually rely on the simple "we are raised to believe it is good to behave ethically, and so we feel satisfied (fulfilled?) when we do so." We get the warm fuzzy from doing what Momma said a good boy (girl) oughta do. I have always felt, however, that if you drop one Nietzchian shoe, you ought to drop the other one as well. If you wish to believe that the Universal Benevolence, directly experienced by countless mystics throughout history, is no more than a confusion in the human psyche, then accept all the consequences for such a position. If all metaphysics are no more than brainwashng, encrypted on our tabula rasa minds, well then, get over it. Become the überman!
The same goes for the Darwinian thing. Of course this leaves one cold. And thats there's the rub. It's not in our nature (if I may use that term) to take such an approach. It is, one might say, counter-intuitive (though rationalists and empiricists will recoil at the use of this term also.) Moreover, despite the nonstarters in the standards of proof issues you correctly raise, I think it needs metion that it is the rationalist position that is increasingly under siege, in these days of theoretical physics and quantum reality. Atheists seem scarcely able to deal with the often contradictory realities of the observable universe, let alone abstractly imagine beyond time/space - imagings which, I would argue, are demanded by general relativity and quantum physics. Regardless, for me, all this post-Enlightenment, rationalist hullabaloo recalls Shakespeare "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing!" It may be that one day we will all look back to these times and say that we stood on the brink, at the precipice of a great Hegelian dialectic of consciousness and nature - as if the two were ever really separate!
God, you say?
I have become convinced that the intellectual deadlock between atheism and theism stems in part from an inadequate theory of knowledge. Ditto for the surprising resiliency of the absurd claims of some atheists that there is no 'evidence' for the existence of God, or that believers must 'prove' that God exists in order to be taken seriously. Of course the answer to the first claim is that intelligent, educated believers are more than happy to supply cartloads of 'evidence'. What's really going on is that unbelievers reject the evidence as inadequate. As for the second claim, the standards of proof which are usually required to prove the existence of God would result in radical skepticism not just about the existence of God, but the existence of other minds or even an external world. Here John Oman's remark, which I mentioned in an earlier post, bears repeating:"
Rationalism proceeded on the assumption that the world with which religion was concerned needed to be proved, and this by evidence not depending on itself. Religion came so badly through the test that the supernatural seemed reduced to the shadow of a shade, leaving naturalism triumphant through pure lack of a rival...Yet the theory was plausible only to those who overlooked the fact that the natural had been subjected by Rationalism to the same test, and that its reality had been left in even greater dubiety...This skeptical conclusion was as inevitable in the one case as the other, and in both for the same reason, which was neither remarkable nor recondite. It is simply that we cannot prove the reality of any environment while omitting the only evidence it ever gives of itself, which is the way in which it environs us (emphasis mine)."
An epistemological work with important ramifications for the science-religion discussion is The Construction of Reality by Michael Arbib and Mary Hesse, again so far as I can tell insufficiently appreciated. The author's claim is that our experienced reality is indeed a construct, the result of information processing in the brain, but that this construct is constrained by feedback from our actual environments in such a way as to prevent the construct (which they call a 'schema') from becoming completely abstracted from the 'real' world (pp.2-3).
Therefore attempting to show that 'religion is all in the mind' or the result of neural activity accomplishes nothing (for the atheist), without also showing that religious schemas are not constrained by feedback from the environment which religion professes to encounter. The authors go on to argue that methods for evaluating possible feedback mechanisms are not nearly as straightforward as some people think, especially in the case of religion. Here again it is worth repeating Michael Polanyi's explanation for why debates about the existence of God or the rationality of religious belief so quickly reach deadlock, even though there are intelligent, educated people on both sides of the debate:
“A controversy between two fundamentally different views of the same region of experience can never be conducted as methodically as a discussion taking place within one organized branch of knowledge. While clashes between two conflicting scientific theories or two divergent biblical interpretations can usually be brought to a definite test in the eyes of their respective professional opinions, it may be extremely difficult to find any implications of a naturalistic view of man on the one hand and of a religious view on the other, in which these two can be specifically contrasted in identical terms. The less two propositions have fundamentally in common the more the argument between them will lose its discursive character and become an attempt at mutually converting each other from one set of grounds to another, in which the contestants will have to rely largely on the general impression of rationality and spiritual worth which they can make on one another. They will try to expose the general poverty of their opponent’s position and to stimulate interest for their own richer perspectives; trusting that once an opponent has caught a glimpse of these, he cannot fail to sense a new mental satisfaction, which will attract him further and finally draw him over to its own grounds. The process of choosing between positions based on different sets of premises is thus more a matter of intuition and finally conscience, than is a decision between different interpretations based on the same or closely similar sets of premises."
Atheists often complain that these and similar arguments, such as that circularity or 'faith' are found in science as well as religion, are merely desperate tu quoque efforts to stave off the challenge of encroaching secular knowledge. This complaint, however, misses the point. To be sure some apologists operate under the unconscious mentality of 'if I'm going down I'm taking you down with me', but even secular scholars realize that this is the sober truth of the matter, and that it does not only or even primarily have negative implications for human knowledge of reality. The only 'negative' consequence for atheists is that they are forced to take religious truth claims seriously and actually (gasp!) engage in intelligent dialogue with believers as opposed to 'disproving' such truth claims through inane skeptical apologetics such as "Gospel Fictions" or "God's Defenders: what they believe and why they are wrong".
When philosophy of religion takes epistemology seriously, we arrive at some surprising conclusions: theology can meaningfully be treated as a science with its own data (Scripture, religious experience, miracle claims, etc) and method. Though its justification is necessarily internal, means of establishing (or refuting) consonance with extra-systemic reality are readily available. For example, Alister McGrath in his "Scientific Theology" evaluates the 'traction' of the doctrine of Creation with the world as we know it, based on the 'unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics', the 'rational transparency' of the external world to the human mind, a solution to the Euphythro dilemma and beauty and simplicity as criteria for establishing scientific truth. These considerations do not 'prove' that the doctrine of Creation is 'true', but they do provide strong undergirding for the doctrine, so that believers (and even outsiders) can acknowledge that Christian theology is a reasonable option for thinking people in today's world.
El Moe's Response:
I tried to post this on your blog "theory of ever'thang" Unfortunately I was foolish enough to switch to betablogger (dont do it) which prevents me from posting to non beta sites. Talk about segregation! Anyway here is the comments to your sunday post.
I stumbled across your site surfing around blogspace and found these musings very stimulating. Thank you for that. Here's a little story and my two cents, for what they are worth. In my undergraduate years I sometimes found myself embroiled in debate (usually after a copious amount of wine)with a Salvadoran friend of mine who was an avid supporter of the FMLN guerillas. He was also a professed atheist. In those days I fancied myself an agnostic. I always would ask him what "the revolution" was for if the universe were a morally moot place. "Ethics" he would burst out, incredulous that I could ask such a thing "for the ethical treatment of our brothers and for a more just society," both laudable motives, of course.
The problem, however, is that such a response doesn't address why it is that we ought be ethical and just to begin with, or what it is in the breast of most of us in humanity that impells us to "do good." Even Hitler, after all, wanted to do "the right thing" and thought he was doing so. So, whence this impulse for good? If we dispense with the notion of a moral universal, we are left with a few options: one is mere (evolutionary) adaptation to environment as the primary motivator. That is, ethics as modus accomodaptionus. It tends to perpetuate the species to be loving and brotherly, ergo, brotherly love. Most atheists I have met, however, usually rely on the simple "we are raised to believe it is good to behave ethically, and so we feel satisfied (fulfilled?) when we do so." We get the warm fuzzy from doing what Momma said a good boy (girl) oughta do. I have always felt, however, that if you drop one Nietzchian shoe, you ought to drop the other one as well. If you wish to believe that the Universal Benevolence, directly experienced by countless mystics throughout history, is no more than a confusion in the human psyche, then accept all the consequences for such a position. If all metaphysics are no more than brainwashng, encrypted on our tabula rasa minds, well then, get over it. Become the überman!
The same goes for the Darwinian thing. Of course this leaves one cold. And thats there's the rub. It's not in our nature (if I may use that term) to take such an approach. It is, one might say, counter-intuitive (though rationalists and empiricists will recoil at the use of this term also.) Moreover, despite the nonstarters in the standards of proof issues you correctly raise, I think it needs metion that it is the rationalist position that is increasingly under siege, in these days of theoretical physics and quantum reality. Atheists seem scarcely able to deal with the often contradictory realities of the observable universe, let alone abstractly imagine beyond time/space - imagings which, I would argue, are demanded by general relativity and quantum physics. Regardless, for me, all this post-Enlightenment, rationalist hullabaloo recalls Shakespeare "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing!" It may be that one day we will all look back to these times and say that we stood on the brink, at the precipice of a great Hegelian dialectic of consciousness and nature - as if the two were ever really separate!
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