A few times I’ve referred to my view about “the God question” as “radical agnosticism.” I thought it might be fun to work through what this means.
For the purposes of this discussion, by “God” I shall mean follow Hart’s definition of God as “the one infinite source of all that is: eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, uncreated, uncaused, perfectly transcendent of all things and for that very reason absolutely immanent to all things” (The Experience of God, p. 30).
Next, I shall stipulate that our assertions about the world fall into two classes: those that take a truth-value in all possible worlds and those that take a truth-value only in the actual world. This is a contemporary version of “Hume’s Fork”: there are “relations of ideas”, “truths of reason”, analytic a priori claims and then there are “matters of fact”, “truths of fact,” synthetic a posteriori claims. (There are some reasons to be skeptical of this neat distinction but I’ll leave that aside for now.)
Whether or not God exists would therefore seem to be either a “truth of fact” or a “truth of reason”. I shall therefore now argue that it cannot be either.
Truths of fact are either directly observable phenomena or they are posited phenomena. (Though the boundary is strictly methodological and shifts over time.) But there are many presumptive truths of fact — claims with truth-value about the actual world — which we know have turned out to be false. And we know that because of empirical inquiry, and in particular, in the collection of techniques of inquiry called “science”. (I shall not insult anyone’s intelligence by assuming that there is a single thing called “the scientific method”).
Central to disciplined empirical inquiry, including and especially the sciences, is the act of measurement: intersubjectively verifiable assignments of quantitative variation across some interval of spatio-temporal locations. (It might be said that “the Scientific Revolution” is the historical period during which measurement slowly becomes the dominant conception of objectivity.)
But with that notion in place, it is perfectly clear that it is not even possible to take measurements of a perfectly transcendent being. A being that transcends all of space and time cannot be measured, which means that no claims about Him can be subjected to the tribunal of scientific inquiry. And hence no matters of fact about God can be verified one way or the other. That is to say that all claims about God that are restricted to the actual world have an indeterminate truth-value: they cannot be determined to be true or false
The epistemic situation is no better when we turn from a posteriori to a priori claims. In a priori claims, the tribunal is not science but logic, and the central epistemic concept is not measurability but provability. Can the existence of God be proven? Many have thought so!
But here two things must be pointed out: a proof, to be deductively valid, consists of re-organizing the information contained in the initial assumptions. One can generate a logically valid proof of the existence of God. (Gödel, for example, has a logically valid version of the Ontological Argument.) The process of proof-construction is not going to give you more information in the conclusion than was present in the premises.
Logic is limited in another important way: there are multiple logics. What can proved in one logic can be disproven in a different logic. It depends on the choice of logical system. Once you’ve chosen a logical system, and you’ve chosen some premises, then of course one can prove that God exists. But neither the premises nor the rules are “self-evident”, inscribed on the very face of reason or of reality, etc.
Hence we cannot determine that God exists or does not exist on the basis of logic alone, since provability is no more reliable here than measurability is.
On this basis, I conclude that it is not even possible for beings such as ourselves to assign any truth-value at all to the assertion that God exists. This yields a radical agnosticism. Whereas the moderate agnostic can accept the logical possibility of some future evidence or reasoning that would resolve the issue, the radical agnostic insists that beings with minds like ours are completely unable to resolve the issue at all.
Radical agnosticism is at the same time compatible with either utter indifference to the question of the existence of God (“apatheism”) or some quite definite stance (ranging from theism to pantheism to deism to atheism). All that radical agnosticism insists on here is that all definite stances on the God-question are leaps of faith — no matter what direction.
That might be classical Deism, but it doesn’t seem to be that way ordinary people have viewed god or gods.
Those who are adversely affected by a stereotyping label get to reject the stereotype.
And the word I use is arational.
As for the the legal-research assistant derived from Watson, it is just that. Investigators in AI learned the hard way, a quarter-century ago, that the law is rife with contradictory principles and precedents. Judges must judge rather than reason which to apply.
True, they’ll avoid the term “create” or “Creator,” then they turn around and point to the Declaration of Independence, which includes the phrase “endowed by their Creator,” along with other writings by the founders, to claim Jefferson et al. to be IDists.
It’s a strange game they play to try to avoid being termed “creationists.” Jefferson and Paley would both be considered by most people to be creationists, both for their beliefs and their use of the term “creator,” but ID which claims both as earlier incarnations of IDists isn’t creationism–even though intelligent design itself is normally considered to be a necessary part of the human creation that they “analogize” to ID production.
In a Thomistic sense it’s possible that Intelligent Design might be responsible for the universe and its order without being creationist (in the anti-evolutionary sense it’s often meant, that is), but certainly not in the DI’s meaning of what Intelligent Design is in the biologic realm.
Glen Davidson
Do you know how social pressure in an atheist country feels like? If not, then you have no point of comparison to begin to make a point on this topic.
It just shows how different places of the world are different. Where I live, I literally don’t know any rank-and-file theists. They probably exist, except that they are nowhere to be seen. I know a pastor well enough to know that clerical career is an unrewarding (in every sense) career in this part of the world these days. Back in the old days it used to be at least spiritually rewarding and in the 90’s it was briefly economically lucrative. Not anymore.
There will never be any balance between atheists and theists, certainly not if they both take themselves seriously. They don’t mix. If you try to mix them, the result is explosive.
Erik,
You didn’t answer my question, Erik. Where can we find official atheism today? Or in the last couple of human generations on earth?
That you or your friends are afraid of vampires doesn’t make vampires real.
Social pressure is social pressure. Government sponsored social pressure is social pressure on steroids. Totalitarian governments may be atheist or theist.
By totalitarian, I mean governments that take active steps to manage what people think about and talk about and write about.
I merely observe my kids and their friends. Those who grew up in homes without strong pressure to conform to a faith have little or no interest in religion.
Totalitarianism is real. Atheism has been one of its franchises. Currently in a slump.
GlenDavidson,
Thanks for this. What petrushka did here, and has done occasionally elsewhere, is start by saying that he hasn’t really followed the debate or read many of the posts because it’s not a subject that is actually worthy of anybody’s interest, and then, often within minutes, begins inferring what a bunch of people must have said and accusing them of being morons or babies or of failing to want to discuss the real issues or something else bad.
Gets old.
I don’t dispute the reality of atheist totalitarianism in the past. I just don’t see it as a current threat. Makes more sense to worry about current realities I think. Right now, the devil is hanging with theists.
So you don’t know the history of humanity the last couple of generations? You have not heard of trends like dialectical materialism, Randianism, scientism, New Atheism, and of countries like SU, DDR, PRC, and DPRK? And even countries like UK (God save the Queen) and USA (in God we trust), the immoral “tolerance” and irrational political correctness have pervaded the society so deeply that they are not safe places for anybody’s mentality if one seeks consistency. Your question can only arise if you refuse to look around.
Which totally obviates your earlier “I think not believing is the default state, absent any social pressure.” In atheist countries, people are “nominal” atheists because social pressure makes them so, and some may proclaim theism as a call for independent thinking.
Absolutely. I think this kind of goes without saying. Everything about one’s perspective on the world and view of society and one’s place in it is shaped (and uniquely) by one or the other perspective. A theist cannot long tolerate an atheist conceptualized and ordered world and the reverse is equally true. Fundamentally, those worlds that do not align with (and worse, are opposites of) one’s perspective seem utterly absurd, irrational, delusional…even evil…take your pick. Having been on both sides of the fence, I no longer see how the two can coexist in any kind of balance. The two perspectives will always fight because they see the other not simply as absurd and erroneous, but dangerous.
Erik,
Still avoided answering my question. I have no doubt there are a couple of dozen dialectical materialists still alive, and many more Randians than I’d like too. But we were talking about “official atheism” no? Why not answer THAT question, Erik?
I won’t dispute that , but It’s all just power to me. I don’t distinguish between true believers in various isms.
It seems rather obvious to me that people tend to adopt the ism of their parents. It’s not a rational thing. Some people seem born with a tendency to adopt isms. My brother grew up in the same house I did and has, in the course of 80 years, adopted all sorts of isms, and is very adamant about them, even though they contradict each other.
As you have noted, I don’t enjoy word games. You are snide and condescending about that, but I have to ask if you really think you are clarifying anything in your discussions with fifth and erik. Can you summarize your progress?
So say the IDists, rejecting the label “creationism.”*
IOW, that you don’t like it isn’t necessarily evidence that it is actually wrong.. For myself, I wouldn’t want to be lumped in with a bunch of people who can’t even be bothered to pretend that they’ve thought enough about the “god question” to actually reject theism. Really, though, I don’t much like the term “atheist” myself, mainly because it seems odd to have a label for rejecting theism, especially since I’m not opposing it per se, but I think that it’s probably the best descriptor of my position to the understanding of a lot of people, hence I am willing to take the shortcut of calling myself “atheist.”
Single terms rarely do justice to all of those meant to be covered by those single words, because they’re general terms. That is what people need to recognize.
Glen Davidson
*I actually think that Behe’s rather incoherent belief in both evolution-transcending design and constraint by evolution is poorly covered by the term “creationism.” However, there isn’t a good term for it, since it’s a kind of idiosyncratic nonsense only vaguely shared by a few others, and ID itself is pretty much about anti-evolutionism, which is largely what “creationism” even means outside of theology. So I’m not keen on calling Behe “creationist,” while ID is sensibly creationist overall.
Must be due to our bad attitudes that it seems so.
Glen Davidson
As you may not have noted, I don’t enjoy them either–or your snide, condescending comments. Stick-’em,
That pretty much captures my attitude toward the term. I take it to be a bit more forceful than “agnostic,” so I shove myself in there. But it’s obviously a vague cluster concept, used differently by different people.
But there’s a ruling communist party in China that is officially atheist. You want political power? You’re at least going to have to pay lip service to atheist ideas. It’s said that education is atheistic there, although I haven’t discovered the specifics. It seems right to call China’s rule “official atheism,” or “state atheism.”
Then there’s North Korea. “Official” freedom of religion, certainly state-sponsored persecution of the religious.
I mean, I don’t know if there’s any great threat coming from “official atheism” outside of those countries, but to my way of thinking it’s still “official atheism” in China, despite increasing toleration of religion there. Threats to us do seem to often be theistic, and virtually never atheistic.
Glen Davidson
I would prefer agnostic, but that seems to imply not having looked for evidence.
I do not like labeling people or reasoning from labels. It’s a map/territory thing.
We do it all the time, but I at least try to keep it fuzzy.
I think that is a good point. Here is a paper about how we might be able to enable computers to learn as children do: Building Machines That Learn and Think Like People.
It makes the point that, unlike deep learning, children can can learn a new, richly structured concept with very few examples of them. It then proposes techniques for computers to learn the same way.
My first comment is to echo what I have said before: I suspect the reference to “mere computation” depends on a a wrong approach to defining physical computation.
More importantly, I think there are issues with “rule following”. We don’t explicitly follow rules in the human activities that have proved impossible for GOFAI: for example, fluid movement, language recognition and translation, face recognition, expert-level Go playing. Further, we cannot describe how we accomplish these tasks in terms of rules or norms that we have followed: otherwise we would have been able to make GOFAI work.
(It is true that we sometimes are able to rationalize what we have said after the fact, although many experiments show that we often confabulate when doing so.)
Now in certain restricted domains, like long division or checking a complex deduction in logic, we do explicitly follow rules and we can explain the rules we have followed. But these are the very domains where GOFAI has succeeded; here it too is able to list the rules it followed to derive a result. A possible appeal to a human consciously “knowing” that they following a rule in these cases, unlike any machine could be, sounds like a Chinese-room type of argument to me, and so would be subject to similar counter-arguments.
GlenDavidson,
Good point. I was under the impression that religions are now more generally tolerated, but you’re right that that can change at any time–particularly in the East Asian countries you mention. So maybe Erik is nervous about those states exporting their sentiments.
Do you know if China (or Vietnam) still officially endorses dialectical materiaism?
That remark reminded me of something I saw on Twitter yesterday (from Atlantic Monthly). It’s not particularly enlightening or useful, but it’s related to how difficult it is to figure out how humans think.
http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/482514/the-cognitive-science-behind-repeating-mistakes/
Go has been mastered by computers.
I would hazard that any task that can be defined by a performance gradient can be mastered by computer learning programs. Eventually that will include technical translation. I would think literature and poetry are a bit in the future.
Evidently your definition of atheist excludes Buddhists (who, in the United States, commonly refer to themselves as nontheistic to avoid — surprise! surprise! — the connotation of atheistic).
Great example.
Yes, that would be an accurate assessment. 🙂
ETA: by way of elaboration, a popular perspective sprung up – at least where I live just outside Washington DC (no idea if it’s as popular elsewhere) – sometime over the last…oh…ten years or so I’d guess (or at least, that’s when I started hearing it prominently), of self-identifying as “spiritual, but not religious”. I would lump Buddhists into that category. Not atheist, but non-theistic in the sense that they neither subscribe to a religious doctrine or dogma, nor do they acknowledge any particular deity or deities.
Amazingly, at my workplace, employees have been instructed (in “diversity training sessions”) not to use the word “religious” at all, but to replace it with “spiritual.”
So ridiculous.
I’m quite sure I answered with a list of schools of thought and with a list of countries where atheism is/was the OFFICIAL DOCTRINE.
Maybe define “official atheism” as you understand it so I can see if your question makes sense and is answerable.
You mentioned the USA and the UK, I believe. There is nothing like “official atheism” in either of those countries as far as I know.
Glen, however, has made your point for you, mentioning China and North Korea.
Except when they don’t, e.g. when they convert. But of course, for you things are only rational when they are oversimplified.
Official isms are of little interest unless there is official persecution.
I don’t know where to draw the line and say something is persecution. I’ve worked in places where religion was thickly applied to every corner and crevice of the workday. I don’t think that is persecution. Nor is it persecution to limit workplace discussion of religion.
When I was a kid it would have been difficult to get a job without belonging to a church. It was not uncommon for teachers to go through the class list and ask kids what church they went to.
I mentioned SU (Soviet Union), DDR (East Germany), PRC (continental China) and DPRK (North Korea). If you say that SU and DDR are defunct, I say their policies have had a profound effect on the people.
No. Where I live, any notion or hope for social religious life has been thoroughly outrooted. I am not afraid that it might happen. It has already happened.
I think I’ve mentioned before a study I saw cited in (I think) The New Republic many years ago according to which there was no strong correlation between the amount of church-going among parents (or lack of it) and the amount of church-going among their children. There was, however, a fairly high correlation between the particular religion the child practiced and that which his/her parents practiced–if the both went to church at all. IOW, parents being either religious or atheistic didn’t allow good predictions for what their kids would be or do, but if both groups were religious they were likely practicing the same religion.
Dunno how long ago or what the margin of error was.
Yes, I’ve seen that in my family. But the trend I see in young people is toward nonbelief. I don’t think my sample is biased. I think it’s a worldwide trend.
Perhaps you have some statistics on the percentage of people who convert as adults, without some incentive such as marriage.
Edited to remove non working link
Edited again. found it
http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/barro/files/conversion_paper_072209_2_.pdf
Sorry, I totally missed those references (and wouldn’t have understood all of them anyhow).
Where do you live now that’s so repressive?
I don’t find this to be an accurate response to Petrushka’s comment. Research (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_development) shows that people do tend to adopt the isms of their parents. Noting that some people don’t (e.g., they convert) does not change the accuracy of that observation.
So where exactly is the problem with Petrushka’s statement?
The Harvard table seems at first glance, to indicate about one person in five converts in one direction or another.
An accurate response to an oversimplification is to point out that it’s an oversimplification. Luckily he remembered that conversions have occurred even in his own family, so it’s not so simple.
His statement was, “It seems rather obvious to me that people tend to adopt the ism of their parents. It’s not a rational thing.” The problem is this works both ways: When kids adopt the atheism of their parents, they are evidently not being rational. With very high probability, petrushka intended to make a point against theism, but didn’t.
That study doesn’t look at either leaving religion completely or taking it up from nothing. I think the article in TNR I was talking about might have been based on the 1988 “Religion Module” discussed in your linked study.
What does “rational” mean in the context of faith?
Does it mean evidenced based? Is faith dependent on evidence?
Does it mean pascal’s wager, calculating the cost benefit ratio?
Does it mean calculating the cost of apostasy and the benefits of conformity.
I hope Erik’s old acolyte Gregory never sees that remark.
I merely pointed out what directly follows from what petrushka said. Surely you can follow context.
I don’t know what you mean by it. It was your choice of words. Your statements are too often directly self-refuting just as the one I pointed out.
Let’s avoid getting personal.
Thanks.
Take a look at the post to which I was responding, Neil. I took those words from petrushka..
None of what you point out above changes the accuracy of Petrushka’s initial point. People do tend to adopt their parent’s isms. Perhaps you’re a little sensitive about theistic suppression or some such, but that doesn’t change the accuracy and simplicity of Petrushka’s observations. The fact that it’s backed up by research doesn’t do much for your argument either.
Yep.
I don’t see where you’re reading Petrushka’s statement as a slight against theism. But even if he did, that still wouldn’t change the accuracy of his claim since the vast majority of people around the world are theistic. So the trend to adopt isms from parents would actually be more heavily weighted in theistic adoption. And oh…look at that! The studies show that too!
So again I ask…where is the actual problem with what he posted. Not with what you think he intended, but with what he posted?
Yes, I did say that children adopting the ism of their parents is not a rational thing.
It is not anti-rational. It is orthogonal to rationality.
There are contexts in which reason is useful, but I don’t see any context in which religion is amenable to reason. People have certainly tried, but there is nothing remotely like a consensus of believers on the nature of any deity.
I do not disbelieve because I have reasoned it all out. I reject revelation because, to me, it fits a pattern, no part of which would hold up in a jury trial. I just don’t believe.
De we need irony tags?