h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Dogster:
>>Ed's other interesting point was about how you live your life. Given that the kernel of religion has no empirical component, it can be evaluated purely in terms of morality and ethics.

and anhaga:
>>I'm reminded of Gould's (sad mistake, to my mind) non-overlapping magisteria.

and Dogster again:
>>But is there an overlap? Religion doesn't really make testable claims, it makes moral and ethical ones. Science, as Ed has said, says nothing about these. When fundamentalist Christians say the world is only so many thousands of years old, then there's an overlap and science should win. But most of the time, they retreat from testable propositions (and the apophasis stuff is the ultimate expression of that).

Yeah...I don't want to be seen as going quite as far as the NOMA position and say that moral and ethical issues are separate to material concerns...and I *definitely* don't want to go as far as hiving off the moral magisterium to religion or allowing that religion may be capable of delivering superior insights to empiricism.

Apophasis, as I understand it, is the notion that we can say nothing about *god*. We *can* say something about morality, even it what we say is entirely subjective. Further, with an agreed common basis (eg Morality = Whatever is most conducive to happy, human lives) we can *at least in principal* apply a broadly empirical approach to exploring moral options. (The problem with this being that ethical issues are damn complex, multivariate problems with incomplete data and tons of variance. For practical purposes...your guess may be as good as mine).

My utilitarian definition of morality, of course, rests on a bold Humanist assumption which might not be shared:
'We should put the interests of the planet before people'
'We should not eat animals, even if we're starving'
'I don't care how good it feels, god doesn't want you to rub it'
...although I have a strong hunch that moral precepts such as these are over-abstractions of originally Humanist principles:
'If the planet dies, we all die.'
'Seeing animals in pain is uncomfortably like seeing babies in pain.'
'The psychological minefield of sex is best avoided.'

So I guess where this takes us to is whether it is empirically reasonable to grab the 'other' Magisterium for Humanism and thus (at least in principle, if not practice) apply the empirical test of human good to ethical issues. This is where The Selfish Gene comes in. Do we have any other option than to look after our happiness/survival?

Actually...as all typographers know (A4204135 ), Cicero said it better than Dawkins:
"There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain..."
Doesn't that empirical observation unite the two Magesteria? Isn't morality a material necessity?

Just pearoasting pedro's from The Other Thread. Back soon for comment:
"Increasingly, one hears a distaste for the polemics of the New Atheist debate and its foghorn volume, and how it has drowned out any other kind of conversation about religion: what it is, the loss of it, whether it matters, and what happens in a post-religious society?...

"Armstrong and Gray converge again on where they pinpoint the key mistake. Belief came to be understood in western Christianity as a proposition at which you arrive intellectually, but Armstrong argues that this has been a profound misunderstanding that, in recent decades, has also infected other faiths. What "belief" used to mean, and still does in some traditions, is the idea of "love", "commitment", "loyalty": saying you believe in Jesus or God or Allah is a statement of commitment. Faith is not supposed to be about signing up to a set of propositions but practising a set of principles. Faith is something you do, and you learn by practice not by studying a manual, argues Armstrong.

"We need to get away from the endless discussion about wretched beliefs; religion is about doing - and what every faith makes clear is that the doing is about compassion," she argues."

from http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentis...r/05/christianity-new-atheism-faith

Any thoughts?

Personally, I think it's kinda rubbish. The fact is that by looking at the evidence, it seems that the only sensible explanation for..... erm, *everything* is a materialist one. Calling people out on that is shrill or strident how, exactly?

I think she's got a point that rituals make people feel good, and that maybe having some might bring people together. But what religion has to do with that I don't know.

thoughts about the article:

A>
I was interested by the section trying to explicate Karen Armstrong, beginning "Armstrong and Gray converge [...]" and ending " [...] the doing is about compassion"

There the argument is put that it is a historical mistake to arrive at belief intellectually (or to believe that you can or should) Rather it's about commitment to 'compassion' and 'practising a set of principles' , concluding aphoristically, 'religion is about doing.'

A few thoughts about that:

1) if we allow for argument's sake that religion and belief are such that it's tolerable for people arriving at them without intellect (what is the non-judgemental way of phrasing that sentence?, I wonder?) then fine, but shouldn't then religions then automatically give up the corresponding privilege to talk about things that *are* arrived at intellectually, and give up the silly pretence to be authorities on things like geological, cosmological or biological history?

As an atheist I don't pretend that atheism grants any such authority, just that it rejects as false the claim that gods are responsible. Instead we tend, (on the whole) to take our cues about authority on such matters from elsewhere*.

We've long maintained that the religious explanation is incoherent - and here perhaps is why - becasue religious belief isn't every anything but the SCS of the believer , but if religion allows itself to be confined to this specific non-intellectual sphere, is it the case that it cannot be allowed - practically by definition - to have any purchase on those things it might wish to intellectualise about because it will have restricted itself to a quasi emotional realm of intuition?

What I'm saying is, in the philosophers wish to operate by clear definition, if religion is self defined as something not concerned with intellectual questions - is that preferable to the situation now of religion not applicable to intellectual problems *and pretending that it is*?

2) Armstrong is putting forward this idea of a global charter for compassion for all beliefs and none. I'm reminded of, I think it might have been minicheesemouse - or possibly even Warner - posted on the TGD thread, the statements of moral codes of the Unitarians, and there were very few objections to them. it's was things like respect the dignity of of the individual - oh I found the link:


http://tiny.cc/UUPP

The first half of the list with the possible exception of 3 - spiritual growth and congregations - I suspect most atheists could agree with. Who for instance doesn't want 'justice, equity and compassion in human relations' or 'A free and responsible search for truth and meaning'?

But the second half of that list showed where these precepts were drawn from, and they include quasi mystical experience (or rather as Chris Hitchens routine and forlornly wishes for separation between religious experience and the noumenal) revelation, ethics from Jewish and Christian tradition and a (false) sanctifying of nature, as interconnected (yes) but spiritually connected (no)

I think if Armstrong is going to produce such a list as to be as all-encompassing as the Universal Unitarian position appears to be, it would end up being as uninformative and egalitarian, in a pejorative sense as the UU-ers.

The flaw is in treating these SCSs (plural) and special revelation and evidentiary based reasoning as equal.


Which brings me to what action and doing, in a commitment to compassion would actually be like. Bunting obviously is concerned with Christianity in particular, whereas Armstrong is referring to 'faith' in totum.

If one means the doing of good works, the giving freely of charity, the helping of others in distress, the support of others in need, well okay but this sounds curiously un-like Christianity and everything like being nice to people - so my point is we don't need religion, even one as this anaemic version of faith, to achieve these ends.


B>
I'm not sure which dictionary Bunting uses, but 'apophatic' is in my dictionary
(adj.) (of knowledge of God) obtained through negation. The opposite of cataphatic .
and for completeness' sake: cataphatic (adj.) (of knowledge of God) obtained through affirmation.

I suppose this makes sense of all the non-starter discussions with warner RC and others where we've repeatedly asked for how they know, and for evidence of why they think certain things are true, but that would be cataphatic, I realise now, the establishment of divine truth by affirmation - but the apapphatic tradition is this idea that says knowledge can come about through absense of evidence.

This seems to be a pernicious deployment of the second kind of argument from ignorance
"Because there appears to be a lack of evidence for one hypothesis, another chosen hypothesis is therefore considered proven."

Which serves only really to bolster the idea that the mystery is inexplicable therefore we must proceed by SCS and revelation as our guides.


Clive.




* by which I mean, authority in the sense that have I personally hiked to the grand canyon and examined the geological column to see if it contradicts the antediluvian account -no - but I take it on authority from those that have that such evidence is available, verifiable and, indeed, I *could* go and check for myself. What I'm trying (and probably failing) to highlight here is that atheists operate by authority too, but that the religious claim special, indefatigable, ineffable authority.

anhaga,

No you're right I don't live in the US and for sure in Europe the remaining religion is less about literal belief in the statements in the Bible. Madeleine Bunting's article though, was very much addressing the European, specifically UK situation. Actually, one of the reasons for the clash with the New Atheists in the UK is probably that they were really writing their books for a US audience and so wasn't really appropriate for a UK one. (I for one would be happy if they all packed off to the US for good. Thankfully Hitchens largely has already, although unfortunately we still hear the occasional thing from him over here too.)

Ed,

"We *can* say something about morality, even it what we say is entirely subjective. Further, with an agreed common basis (eg Morality = Whatever is most conducive to happy, human lives) we can *at least in principal* apply a broadly empirical approach to exploring moral options."

Interesting stuff. I've become quite disenchanted with utilitarian, rational/empirical bases for morality. There are two issues, what to do at a political level, and what to do at a personal level. It seems to me that a better way of looking at the political level is not about happiness at all, but about freedom and cooperation. Politics should be about organising cooperation, and removing barriers for people to do what they want to do (when it doesn't hurt others), not about making us happy. I've attached a long section (no need to read it) from an email I wrote to a friend about how one can justify engaging in politics, which touches on this subject.

At the personal level, we typically don't need recourse to sophisticated empiricism. We make our own moral choices, see how they affect others, and perhaps change our choices accordingly.

I'm not saying that empirical, even scientific, investigation is irrelevant to morality, ethics and politics, but that it isn't as significant as deciding on what the basic values should be. Take, for example, someone who wants to make laws about where other people put their bits. This person doesn't think that because of a faulty idea of what is conducive to the common good. They think that either because it's what someone else tells them to think, or because they are disgusted by it and reflexively think it should be banned. The problem with this person is not that they have a wrong idea of what is conducive to human good, but that they don't have the idea that what other people choose to do is not their business.

The major place where empiricism does come into politics, irreducibly from my point of view, is the contention that equality is the prerequisite to freedom, and therefore that if we're concerned with freedom we should move towards something like socialism (or better, anarchism).

Long quote from my email below:

The basic problem is that there is no objective guide to action, no objectively right thing to do. That leaves us with choosing to do things even though they might not be right, which is related to what I wrote about in that thing about arationality. I think it's OK (necessary in fact) just to make a political stand based on your own values (for example, equality) even if you can't justify them objectively. The nature of politics is about sorting out conflicts in values at the social level, and therefore cannot be a strictly rational endeavour. One can provide "reasons" for ones values, but these aren't rational reasons, they're a form of (self-)persuasion. They're useful for linking together different ideas and values into a framework, and the act of doing this can change our relative weighting of the different values involved. This is a sort of rationality, but not the rationality of A=>B=>C etc.

It seems to me that if one is honest (i.e. you don't conceal what you think), engaging in this sort of persuasive rhetoric is a perfectly respectable political activity. You haven't tried to trick anyone, and you've tried to persuade people to hold the same values as you because this is necessary for political change to happen. You haven't taken any actions on someone else's behalf, presuming that it is for their betterment.

More than just being unobjectionable, it might be the only effective form of political action anyway, because real democratic political change must surely come from the bottom up based on a change of consciousness, rather than from the top down based on a change of circumstances created by someone else. Well the two shape each other for sure, and a Leninist would probably disagree but I think a classical Marxist would agree?

This doesn't rule out political actions incidentally, because in many cases they're a form of persuasive rhetoric. Whether or not it's right that it's like this, most protests are in some sense saying: we demand to be heard. That's not their only function of course, for instance strikes are about raising costs for elites but often they don't have that function (e.g. when the researchers here in Paris go on strike, there is no cost for the elites).

To sum this up, engaging in politics (i.e. taking political actions and manoeuvres, engaging in persuasive rhetoric, etc.) is an OK thing to do not because you can justify it from some objective common good grounds, but because engaging in politics is inevitable. Not to engage in politics is also a choice, it's a choice to leave it to someone else to determine yours and others fates. There's no neutral position, and there's no right position, you just have to pick your values and join in the fray. This seems symmetric, e.g. a rightist opponent (even a fascist say) could say the same things. Yes they could, and we can't criticise them on rationality based procedural grounds, but rather on the contents of their beliefs. Underlying this is the hope that good outcomes will eventually result because people are basically good and are only made bad by circumstances. But I think that's an OK thing because if this isn't true then there's no hope anyway.

So to go back to what you said about making value judgements about political systems without making value judgements about ways of life. I think one can say that a society where say, 100 people all work equally hard and one takes 90% of the material benefits by an accident of birth leaving the other 99 to share out the remaining 10% is something objectionable without making a value judgement about a way of life. Or if that is a value judgement about a way of life, it's one I'm quite happy to make and would try to persuade others to do the same without worrying about it. I'm not trying to persuade people that we'll all be happier in an equal society, I'm saying that I want to be in an equal society for its own sake (with the addition that valuing equality connects with other values too).

>>If one means the doing of good works, the giving freely of charity, the helping of others in distress, the support of others in need, well okay but this sounds curiously un-like Christianity and everything like being nice to people

Ah, but you see...in the Armstrong et al version, that *would* be a definition of Christianity. Or Islam. Or the common position of any religion. Although, yes - it's an incomplete definition which can also be applied to non-religious activity. But then...they're talking about 'The fringes between religion and Atheism'.

I'm prepared to give them some credit. We have to remember where they've started from - i.e. a religious tradition. To get as far as they've got, they've had to navigate a tangled web of competing theologies, all of which have equivalent empirical validity. Now, I don't know on what religious they have rejected most of it to arrive at their fringe position (and I'd argue that they've been followed their innate moral disposition, rather than being guided by religion)...but from their p.o.v. - when they talk about morality, being nice, etc...it's all God Stuff. As Recumbentman pointed out, this is part of their identity, the world they've been immersed in, so we can maybe see why it's hard to shake off.

We Atheists, though, presumably come at it from another direction. We can see the empirical reasons for why the God Stuff is a non starter - and therefore being kind and moral isn't really to do with god. But than...Empiricism isn't obvious. Is it? If it were, it wouldn't need so much explaining by the likes of Hume. Plus it takes scepticism, and we're not really programmed to be sceptical. In fact...surely we're programmed *not* be be sceptical, but to take a lot on trust. Be honest - even the most rigorous scientist does that. How many of us have actually tried dropping weights off the Tower of Pisa? Or how we know that we will increase net human happiness by preventing the beating of seventeen year-old girls for the crime of going outdoors without a man's permission?

Dogster:
>>I've become quite disenchanted with utilitarian, rational/empirical bases for morality. There are two issues, what to do at a political level, and what to do at a personal level. It seems to me that a better way of looking at the political level is not about happiness at all, but about freedom and cooperation. Politics should be about organising cooperation, and removing barriers for people to do what they want to do (when it doesn't hurt others), not about making us happy.

Yes - interesting. Another way of formuating this is that really, if we're honest, we *can't* come up with robust, empirical moral arguments. All we can hope for is competing Best Guesses. Hey - maybe net human happiness *would* be increased by killing the Untermenschen and dividing their spoils amongst the Uebermenschen...I don't *think* that sounds tolerable, but I'm going on no more than a hunch here. (Not quite. See later.)

So given that...the only sensible approach would be - ahem - A Market Solution: Support a pluralism of competing ideas(ie 'Freedom'), with freedom of choice to cooperate with those we deem desirable. And it will all come out in the wash. Monopolies of ideas - eg imposing pre-crafted religious solutions, run counter to this freedom.

And there is perhaps some empirical support for this approach. Do we not observe that pluralistic societies tend to be both creative and happy?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/audio/2008/feb/14/richard.dawkins

Found this:

A very interesting discussion between Dawkins and Bunting. Listen very closely to how she deals with the issue of the virgin birth of Jesus as it seems this goes to the heart of the distinction she is trying to draw (and gestates some of the points in the article we are commenting on - notably her inclusion of Karen Armstrong) that there are different sorts of truth - and that when it comes to religion we should apply the other kind. Dawkins counter contention is that religious claims of factual events can only be subjected to the empirical kind.

Dogster:
>>I've become quite disenchanted with utilitarian, rational/empirical bases for morality.

btw...I don't mean to imply that moral opinions should/can be subjected to empirical tests. All I'm saying is that they belong in the same *category* as empirical problems. Many of them are computationally intractable, though.

I'm having a bit of a fuzzy response to the discussion that's been going on (for me) over night. Maybe the fuzziness is because it's morning here but, here goes:


on the whole morality thing my thoughts concern compulsion. The scriptural bit which I can't be bothered finding right now about no compulsion in religion notwithstanding, the fact is that, for example:


nothing about his atheism required Pol Pot to commit genocide.

something about his particular brand of Islam required Mohammed Atta to fly a jetliner into a building, and continues to require the murderous suicides of young men and women each day.


atheism comes with the danger of allowing a person to construct a dangerous morality for themselves, a morality which will probably fade away after that persons death.

religion comes with the danger of constructing a dangerous morality for an entire society, a morality which may last for generations, supported by an undying, all-seeing deity.

So what is the aspect of religion that allows this? I suggest it's that fact that religion allows the assumption that some things are Absolute, Universal and Anarguable. Religion isn't unique in this...the Pol Pot version of Marxism-Leninism has the same characteristic - but note that adherents would argue that they are following a 'Scientific Marxism' which has everything sewn up.

I suggest that as decent, liberal empiricists (and even Marxists ) we have to be honest about the limits of our knowledge. Human problems are simply too messy and dynamic to get much of a grip on.

(In fact...this is my - if not Marx's - reading of Dialectic. On the one hand, I suspect Marx did think he had it all sewn up: we were inevitably headed for Communism. On the other...he was elusive and damned non-commital. It's little wonder that Marxism provided the basis for slippery French post-modernism).

Well, Ed, it seems it's back to that absolutist thinking, which is not uniquely an aspect of what we usually call religion. Of course, there is the possibility of arguing that such absolutism is a defining characteristic of religion, that any system with such an assumption, be it a Marxism, a Capitalism, or a Stalinist Larmarkianism, is a religion.

This kind of entrenched dogma should be avoided, and, Ben Stein ignored for the moment, it is the kind of dogma that modern science certainly does try to avoid, with mixed success.

Comment on Bunting:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/apr/06/religion-new-atheism-bunting

"Its true that Dawkins devotes little time to theological nicety, but isn't in perfectly legitimate for him to ask, on behalf of non-believers, what the mechanism is which might allow people to accept the notion of a powerful force in all our lives that is somehow "beyond description", what harm might be done in the name of such an entity when it is forgiven the duty of conforming to the rules of evidence to which the rest of us submit, and to ask why if faith is beyond description the major religions devote so much time and ink in describing it, and telling those who have it what they should do."

What are FMs?

Gif

Field Marshalls? Female Males? Fun Monkeys?
http://www.abbreviations.com/FM

'Finest Minds', apparently.

From Dan Dennett, quoted on one of the previous Grauniad links:

"[The clever theologians] would never tolerate such fuzzy and illogical thinking in their science–or, in the case of philosophers, in their analytic work in ethics or epistemology or metaphysics. They manage not to notice how they have transformed the object of their worship from the original Celestial Bio-engineer into a Divine Nudger of Randomness into an Omniscient Lawgiver into the (impersonal, but still somehow benign) Ground of All Being. Not only don't they notice this comical retreat; they applaud the deep sophistication of the theologians who have conducted it. (I haven't any idea what the Ground of All Being is, so I guess I don't have to be an atheist about that. Maybe the process of evolution by natural selection just is God! Now there's a way of reconciling evolution with religion! )"

So on this subject of the hazy transparency of GnatureD:

Plantinga has (apparently seriously) advanced the idea that:

- 1 + 1 = 2
- This is true by definition and not contingent upon the laws of physics (unlike, say, the strength of gravity which could conceivably vary in alternate universes)
- Therefore there is something about numbers or maths that exists outside our universe
- Therefore God exists

OK, so ignoring the last step (unless anyone wants to defend it) - what do people think of step 3?

Gif

I don't see that step three necessarily follows from step two. I don't see that it is necessary to postulate the existence of 'outside our universe' in order to explain 1 + 1 = 2. It would be more parsimonious to suggest that mathematical laws are fundamental laws of our universe, just as physical laws are. If you can argue that gravity can be different in an alternate universe, you can equally argue that mathematics would be different in a different universe. I think immediately of the mathematical fact that the angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees. Unless, of course, your flatland is curved.

Surely it's just a minor variant of 'The God of the Gaps'?

Simulpost. I initially typed something similar to anhaga. *I even mentioned 180 degree triangles* . But tghen I deleted in favour of pithiness.