Monthly Archives: August 2013

Dawkins, Delusion, and God – Revisited

Juan Bernal

 

Occasionally someone brings up the challenge to theism brought by the well-known atheist, Richard Dawkins and proceeds to show that it is a weak challenge.  Recently, an email correspondent, Spanos the man, brought up Dawkins’ denial of God as an example of a weak atheistic argument.  It is an interesting exercise to show that this downgrading of Dawkins does not succeed.

First, let’s take a quick glance at Dawkin’s position on God.

In The God Delusion, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that belief in a personal god qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence.

Dawkins distinguishes what he calls “Einsteinian religion” from supernatural religion, arguing that the former should not be confused with the latter. Einstein wrote that he was religious in the sense being aware of things beyond the mind’s grasp, “whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection”. But, Dawkins argues, this god “is light years away from the interventionist, miracle-wrecking, thought-reading, sin-punishing, prayer-answering God of the Bible . . .  The proposed existence of this interventionist God, which Dawkins calls the “God Hypothesis”, is an important theme in his book. Dawkins maintains that the alleged existence of the interventionist God would be a scientific fact about the universe, which  is discoverable in principle if not in practice.  He argues that there is no evidence supporting belief in such a God.  (from Wikipedia)

Correspondent Spanos made reference to Eric Reitan’s book Is God a Delusion?   Reitan recommends that people read what Dawkins has to say:

 ”In fact, insofar as The God Delusion nicely summarizes the main objections of contemporary atheists to religious faith, it seems to me it should be required reading for all who have yet to seriously confront a forceful statement of these objections.”

Spanos took up Reitan’s suggestion and quickly found (by the end of Chapter 2) that “although Dawkins’ argument might be forceful in a rhetorical sense, his arguments were pretty weak in a logical sense.”  When he elaborated why he saw Dawkins as presenting a weak case against God, Spanos noted that Dawkins completely ignored an obvious feature of the theist’s case for God, namely the theological doctrine of analogical predication.

Spanos made his case this way:

….. The Church endorsed a doctrine of “analogical predication.” In other words, to say that God exists is not like saying that flowers, animals, and people exist. One of the Einstein quotations that Dawkins uses in Chapter 1 suggests the kind of experience underlying the doctrine of analogical predication.

To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. (p. 40)

In the way that this “something” exists we sense a different meaning of the word “exists.”

Admittedly most ordinary theists have probably never learned of the distinction between univocal and analogical predication. They don’t have a sophisticated understanding of theism, but the one they have doesn’t have to be sophisticated to be useful. Dawkins‘ attack on theism is only an attack on an unsophisticated form of theism. However, it could be useful in motivating theists to acquire a more sophisticated understanding of their faith.

Conclusion:  Dawkins undermines only the simple, undeveloped views of God’s reality; nothing that he offers challenges the deeper, sophisticated concept of God.

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Off course, I could not resist and had to reply to Spanos:

The concept ‘God’ is not obviously a coherent one.  It is ambiguous, even a vague, abstract concept (especially in the hands of theologians).  It is never clear that when two or more people bring up the subject of God, that there even talking about the same idea. Historically and in current discussions,  usage of the term ‘god’ both by religious and non-religious people features an impressive varieties of meaning.  The ambiguity is so marked that when anyone claims either that God exists (or alternative the He does not exist), it is not even clear how the assertion could be verified or falsified.

Now, Spanos and Reitan, in choosing to go after Dawkins’ claim that God is a delusion and that any statement of his existence has to be understood as a scientific hypothesis, have chosen an easy target.  Yes, Dawkins assumes one version of the God claim:  God exists as something that should be detectable by scientific means, i.e., as a scientific hypothesis that should be amenable to scientific verification or falsification.   In this respect, many have charged Dawkins with oversimplification and even misunderstanding the issue.

You chose an easy target because Dawkins is surely not the most able atheist or non-theist that has argued that God likely is not real. (After all, he is a zoologist!)  But his arguments are not as ill conceived as theists like to think.  Dawkins is surely on target by focusing attention on an interventionist god.  When we set aside the sophistry and double-talk of our favorite tribe of theologians (with their mysterious, abstract — and ultimately incoherent notions — of the reality of God), we find that many believers – if not most of them –  have held the idea that God is out there somewhere detectable in some way by humans, capable of ‘human-like’ relations with humans, and intervening in human events.  This is surely an idea of God that has been and still is a common (maybe even primary) idea of God.  So Dawkins is surely not wide of the mark with his assumption that God’s reality can be taken as a scientific hypothesis, i.e., as a matter of fact that can verified or falsified by scientific means.

The fact that theologians and philosophers defending theism can come up with more sophisticated notions of the god-claim does nothing to nullify what most people understand by God, and does little to rationally justify the claim that God is real.  The tactic of theologians (with their talk of analogical prediction) only serves to transfer the issue from the arena in which things make some sense to one in which little or nothing makes sense.  This defensive tactic of theologians hardly amounts to an impressive feat nor does it do much to show that the God of scripture was or is a reality.

Yes, from Aquinas (if not from an earlier apologist) we get the notion of analogical predication, which amounts to just a fancy way of denying that by the existence of God we mean that God exists as ordinary things exist.  According to the theologian, we can only state an analogy with ordinary existence.  God is not someone you might invite to have a cup of coffee or join your bowling league; but he is a reality; so he must exist on a different order.  We can only refer to him by analogical prediction.

Having presented this very questionable account of religious experience, the theologian infers that the existence of God is on a completely different order, one which is not affected by the meaning and logic we attach to the ordinary sense of existence.  He concludes that nothing the sciences or critical inquiry have to say about grounds or lack of grounds for the existence of deity applies to the real Deity, properly understood.

Pardon me if I am not impressed by such maneuvers, which are more typical of lawyer’s tactics, than they are the moves of critical philosophers!  Dawkins’ critique of god belief might have its weaknesses, but it is not dismissed by bringing up the defensive tactics of classical theologians like Aquinas.

 

 

On “The Book of Revelations” – Robert Richert

THE BOOK OF REVELATIONS

By Robert A. Richert

 

Does the Book of Revelations predict that we are living in the last days before an impending and inevitable Apocalypse, or that this event will occur sometime in the future?  No on both counts!

According to the college textbook, Understanding the Bible; a Student’s Introduction, Harris, 1985, page 280, the Book of Revelations was written at the end of the first century during the reign of the Roman Emperor Domitian; 95 – 96 CE.  There is very little dispute about this date amongst respected Hebrew and Christian scholars.  The author was neither the apostle John nor the author of the Gospel John.  No one knows for certainty who authored this famous book.  Revelation is substantially about events occurring at the time of the destruction of the Hebrew Temple by the Romans around 68 CE and up until the time the book was written.  During the middle to late first century, the Hebrews and early Christians were experiencing rigorous and intense persecution by the Romans and for all they knew, their cultures might soon be destroyed forever.  From their point of view the Apocalypse was imminent!  The belief that “The end is near” is reflected many times—at least 30—in the New Testament, including by the words attributed to Jesus in Matthew 16:28, 23:36, 24:29, and Mark 9:1, 13:30.

According to Understanding the Bible, Harris, 1985, page 359, “John borrows many of his characteristic symbols, images, phrases, and theological assumptions from numerous Old Testament books, particularly Daniel, Ezekiel, Joel, Zechariah, and Jeremiah”.  Despite the obscure language of Revelations, scholars have unraveled the probable meanings of many of its passages.  For example, the beast with ten horns and seven heads likely symbolizes Rome.  The famous number of the beast, 666 is widely accepted by scholars as a reference to Nero Caesar, whose name in Hebrew has the numerical value of—you guessed it; 666!  The language of Revelations is allegorical and symbolic because of the intense Roman persecution during those times.  You better watch what you say or write because impugning the empire was punishable by death.  If this book were about events destined to occur far in the future from the first century, there would be no need to mire the text in the ambiguous language of symbolism and allegory.  In addition, people under extreme duress and imminent destruction are not likely to write about events that are not going to occur until more than 2,000 years after they are gone!  Biblical apologists often trot out a quote from Mark 13:32, “…about that day or hour, no one knows”.  However, this is no help to their cause because the text does not infer that the hour and day are way off in the distant future; ‘the end’ could still be imminent.  Again, the belief that the Apocalypse was ‘near’ is prominent throughout the New Testament, and considering the dire circumstances inflicted upon first century Hebrews and Christians by the Roman Empire; understandably so!  Within the pages of most university level textbooks one can discover a great deal of information about this turbulent time.  Those who are really interested in becoming enlightened about the Bible should feel obligated to inform themselves with this material.

The evidence is crystal clear —The Book of Revelation has NOTHING whatsoever to do with present or future events!  It is about events occurring just before and during the time in which the book was written.  Fundamentalist efforts to twist and turn these texts (including the above mentioned quotes attributed to Jesus) in order to make them appear relevant to contemporary times or the future simply do not understand the context in which Revelations—and indeed the New Testament—was written.  They display ignorance of and contempt for modern Biblical scholarship.  In my opinion, they do a ‘grave’ disservice to history and to the Bible itself!

 

MY VIEWS ON GLOBAL WARMING by Robert Richert

MY VIEWS ON GLOBAL WARMING

By Robert A. Richert

 

Let me be clear; I don’t want global warming to be real!  I don’t like the gloomy prospects that some scientists forecast for the future of our planet.  I am unhappy that current conditions—more severe heat, fires, droughts, intense storms, floods, etc. — are exceeding predictions from sophisticated computer models.  All of this doom and gloom is not what I want to hear.  However, I respect science and this issue is important.  I am unwilling to bury my head in the sand and ignore reality because it might make me feel better.  I am also motivated by concern about the eroding public confidence in science and sad state of scientific literacy in our country.

In the spring of 2013 the press announced that the earth’s level of atmospheric carbon dioxide—measured by an infrared analyzer located at the summit of the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii—reached 400 parts per million; that is the highest level in several million years!  Increasing amounts of atmospheric CO2 is the primary cause of our current (last 150 years) episode of global warming.  In what is commonly called the ‘greenhouse effect’, it traps heat radiating from the earth from escaping into space.  The gradual build up of CO2 and its effect, trapping heat, causes warming.  The planet Venus, which is permanently shrouded in massive clouds of CO2, is an example of the greenhouse effect gone amok.  The surface temperature of Venus averages about 900 degrees Fahrenheit.  No, the earth is not Venus, but most scientific institutions are alarmed by the rapid increase in CO2 in our atmosphere, the resultant warming, and its real and potential effects upon agriculture, wildlife, gulf stream patterns, rising sea levels, ocean acidification, melting glaciers, fires, floods, world economies, and more.  Scientists worldwide have investigated every conceivable natural cause—for example, solar activity such as flares, various natural cycles such as the earth’s orbit around the sun, and historic cyclical weather patterns—and they have all been ruled out as the primary culprit.  Today, there is no doubt in the scientific community that the burning of fossil fuels, which release CO2 into the atmosphere, is the principal cause of global warming.  Here is a link to Wikipedia for more on this subject

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosphere.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is our government agency responsible for monitoring and reporting global climate.  This is a vital endeavor because our military, commerce, and other agencies and businesses are dependent upon the best and most reliable information about weather available.  Here is a link that summarizes the evidence for global warming – http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cmb-faq/globalwarming.html.  Once you read the NOAA article, “Frequently Asked Questions” you can press the back button for links to further information.  You can also obtain similar information from NASA and other reliable sources; emphasis on reliable because many bogus anti-global warming websites pollute the internet!  Here is a partial list of scientific institutions and organizations that agree that the earth is warming and human activity is the primary cause: NOAA, NASA, National Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, World Meteorological Organization, American Meteorological Society, American Geophysical Union, American Physical Society, Geological Society of America, American Chemical Society—the scientific journals Science, Nature, Scientific American, and Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology.

The media loves controversy.  As a result, many in the media present the global warming issue, which is a public controversy, as though it were also a scientific controversy.  However, human caused global warming is NOT controversial in the scientific community; not anymore.  Thus, a need exists for a counter force to the propaganda campaign created by global warming deniers.  If you agree, please pass my article along.  Here is a link to an article written by Donald Prothero answering the most commonly circulated myths about global warming – http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/12-02-08/#feature.  Professor Prothero is a highly respected paleontologist (who has done research on paleo-climate) and geologist; a real, working scientist with impeccable credentials.  In May of 2013, I heard Dr. Prothero give a speech comparing the tactics of the Creationists, global warming and Holocaust deniers.  These are the subjects of his book, Reality Check: How Science Deniers Threaten our Future.  Prothero documents the quite similar shady tactics used by these three groups to deceive the public and promote their own social, religious, political, or economic agendas.

Deniers claim that global warming is a ‘hoax’ and is funded by ‘trillions’ of dollars.  That’s laughable!  Understand that most scientific research not conducted by industry is funded by our government.  In recent years, government funding has been shrinking in many areas of scientific research.  Also, research on climate is conducted by scientists throughout the world.  To imply that a vast international conspiracy exists to perpetrate a massive hoax strikes of paranoid lunacy!  In fact, the deniers complaint is a classic case of ‘misdirection’ – direct your audience toward what you want them to see so you can conceal what you don’t want them to see.  The truth is that millions are being spent by big oil, the Koch brothers, and other economic and politically conservative groups and individuals to undermine the solid science behind global warming.  This fact has been documented.  The following paragraph from Wikipedia stands as an example:

In one of the first attempts by industry to influence public opinion on climate change, a 1998 proposal (later posted online by Greenpeace) was circulated among U.S. opponents of a treaty to fight global warming, including both industry and conservative political groups, in an effort to influence public perception of the extent of the problem. Written by a public relations specialist for the American Petroleum Institute and then leaked to The New York Times, the memo described, in the article’s words, a plan “to recruit a cadre of scientists who share the industry’s views of climate science and to train them in public relations so they can help convince journalists, politicians and the public that the risk of global warming is too uncertain to justify controls on greenhouse gases.” Cushman quoted the document as proposing a US $ 5,000,000 multi-point strategy to “maximize the impact of scientific views consistent with ours on Congress, the media and other key audiences,” with a goal of “raising questions about and undercutting the ‘prevailing scientific wisdom’.”

As a group, the global warming deniers have not earned any respect or credibility in the scientific community; especially by the people that actually do the relevant research.  Deniers are not part of mainstream science; not by a mile!  Many of the scientists denying global warming are funded by the special interests mentioned above.  Yes, a few credible scientists not connected to special interest groups still deny human caused global warming, but their numbers have continued to shrink.  The current situation is eerily similar to the tobacco industry’s 1970’s campaign to counter the growing body of evidence that cigarette smoking causes cancer.  They funded scientists willing to compromise their scientific integrity to do ‘research’ to undermine the real science confirming that smoking causes or contributes to lung and other cancers.

It cannot be repeated enough that over 97% scientists working in various disciplines related to the earth’s climate agree that global warming is real and human caused http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article.  Deniers tout the few dissenters as if this somehow adds credibility to their argument and means that a real controversy exists.  This is called confirmation bias.  Cherry pick only the bits of data or experts that are in agreement with one’s point of view and ignore the majority that is not in agreement.  It is nearly impossible to get universal agreement on almost any issue, inside and outside of science.  This only demonstrates human fallibility.  The fact that human caused global warming is supported by such a high number of scientists throughout the world should be seen as impressive and as a clear signal!  Most of the industrialized world accepts the scientific consensus on global warming; including Japan, China, Russia, most of Central and South America, and almost all countries in Europe.  Unfortunately, a large and financially powerful right wing coalition in America is behind the denier movement.  However, there is reason for optimism.  The latest public opinion polls show increasing public acceptance of the science on climate change.  About 60% of Americans agree that global warming is real and human caused.

America can no longer afford to ignore the strong body of evidence that our planet is warming and that humans are the primary cause!

 

GLOBAL WARMING AND CALIFORNIA

 

A recent 250 page document compiled by 51 scientists from the University of California, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, US Geological Survey, NOAA, and other agencies and institutions states firmly that climate change is “an immediate and growing threat”.  The report goes on to say that global warming threatens our state’s water supplies, farm industry, forests, wildlife, and public health.  Although California is a leader in reduction of greenhouse gasses, because of our large size and if we were a country, we would rank as the 13th largest contributor of greenhouse gasses in the world!  Here some alarming figures:

  • Since 1950, our three worst fire years occurred in the past decade – 2003, 2007, and 2008.
  • Since 1895, annual average temperatures in California increased about 1.5 degrees and they continue to rise.
  • The sea level at the Golden Gate has risen 8 inches over the past century.
  • At Lake Tahoe there are 30 fewer days a year when temperatures average below freezing than a century ago.
  • In 1910, 52 percent of Lake Tahoe’s precipitation fell as snow.  Today it is 34 percent.
  • Depending upon their location, California’s glaciers have shrunk 22 percent to 69 percent over the last century.
  • Over the last 100 years spring runoff from the Sierras to the Sacramento River has decreased by 9 percent.

Any one of the above statistics viewed as an isolated event might not be significant.  However, climatologists look at combined data and patterns.  It is the convergence of many bits of data and evidence that demonstrate a clear trend of escalating warming.

 

Remarks on a few philosophers’ misconceptions

Juan Bernal  -  November, 2012

What we mean by truth is just the recognition that someone (or some group) has correctly affirmed some fact or other.  In this sense “truth” is nothing more than a term in the vocabulary of an intelligent, language-using culture.

The contrary to this – that truth stands apart from the truth seekers – seems plausible only because people tend to equate the term ‘truth’ with reality or with some actual event.  Thus, we get such metaphorical phrases as “seeking the truth” and “look to the truth,” which misleads insofar as they suggest that truth lays ‘out there somewhere’ waiting to be discovered.

So is truth a fiction then?  Is it not real?

Truth like happiness and moral good is real only in relation to a society of intelligent beings who seek to learn the truth about their world.  ‘Truth’ is real only in relation to human thought, language, the sciences, culture, history, and the society of active, striving human beings. Such ‘realities’ — as truth, happiness, and moral good — evolve or emerge in the context of a human culture. When we notice and articulate them, we might say that we discover them.  But such ‘discovery’ only happens with regard to something that we created in the first place. The apparent discovery is very different from that associated with the sciences, historical inquiry, or exploration of the planet.

Normally by the term truth we mean “what things are really like.”  Use of the term “truth” is just a preferred way of talking or a short-hand way of talking.  “We learn the truth” is short for “we learn what things are really like.”   (or learn “the nature of things out there” or “learn what events actually occurred.”)

Truth, happiness, and moral good are all human-based notions, sometimes associated with the actual nature of things, but often dis-connected with the ways that the universe works.

We build a large portion of our reality (social, cultural reality), and then forget that we originally built it.  So we come to see that social, cultural construct as objective reality that we discovered, a reality that was there separate from and independent of our human work.

There is much that we discover (by the sciences and other rational inquiries) and much that we construct.  We should not confuse the two.

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The world is of a specific sort.  Scientists investigate, discover things, propose and test hypotheses, analyze, and ultimately issue descriptions and reports.  A subset of philosophical tribe takes what the scientists issue and work to sort and clarify things for the rest of us.

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Contrary to what much of Western epistemological thought has assumed, human’s primary activity is not simply that of perceiving the world (surely not just visually perceiving the world), and the primary philosophical problem is not to certify those perceptions as valid.  Humans act and interact in the world; we effect changes in our environment and in turn are changed by our environment.   And philosophical problems of pragmatics are just as vital as those of epistemology.

The world is real, and our being-in-the-world is a fundamental reality.  It is not something that has to be proved!    Hence, statements like the following are very misleading:

 “The world we perceive is an artificially constructed environment whose character and properties are as much a result of unconscious mental processing as they are the product of real data. Nature helps us overcome gaps in information by supplying a brain that smooths over the imperfections, at an unconscious level, before we’re even aware of any perceptions.”

(Leonard Mlodinow, Subliminal, How your Unconscious Mind Rules your Behavior, Pantheon Books, 2012)

Why is this misleading?  Because it rests on a bad assumption, namely, that analysis of the process by which we experience the world undermines, instead of explains, our experience of the world.

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One can issue explanations (scientific, neurological, psychological, quasi-psychological) of the processes (neural processes, workings of the sensory faculties) which under lie sense perception.  These result in analyses or breakdowns (e.g., reducing things to neural processings) of the processes that underlie a person’s perception of the world.  It could be called an “examination of the machinery the makes perception possible.”

But nothing about this work refutes the common-sense proposition that we perceive (see, hear, touch, taste, smell) aspects and objects of the real world.  Nothing precludes the idea that we see things as actual existents in the objective world, although these things perceived can be described and analyzed in different ways.

Mathematical physics breaks down the objects of ordinary perception to a level far removed (and unknown by) ordinary experience.  This scientific analysis amounts to a “deep probe” of physical reality.  It does not amount to a replacement with a separate, inaccessible world.  Nor does it show that we never perceptually experience the real world.

When scientists analyze (explain) the processes that underlie perception and behavior they do not negate the fact that the subjects who perceive things and act/interact in the world are persons existing in an environment and interacting with other persons. The work of scientists in this respect does not give any reason for thinking that the perceiving subject is the brain itself or a little homunculous within the brain.

The brain (or something within the brain) does not perceive the world; rather the brain enables the perceiving subject (an animal existing in a natural and social environment) to perceive aspects of his environment.