Making a mockery of the principle of charity: or see how easy it is to ridicule atheism when you don't understand it

People become atheists for all sorts of reasons, but one of the more commonly cited reasons is that atheism is a rational and reasonable position to take based on the lack of evidence for the existence of any sort of god. However, it is not uncommon for religious believers to argue that atheism is somehow based on faith and is inherently irrational, presumably more so than standard religious beliefs. A recent example of an attempt to argue for the irrationality of atheism can be seen in the online magazine Philosophy Now, in a piece by Stephen Anderson, a philosophy teacher in Ontario. A striking feature of Anderson’s article is that he repeatedly claims that he is doing his best to observe the principle of charity, by addressing atheism’s “strongest and most representative form, rather than in any of its weaker or less representative forms.” I find this deeply ironic, as what he actually addresses is a straw man version of atheism that very few atheists indeed would accept as representing their views. Hence, he has not been charitable at all.

Anderson’s article is verbose and convoluted and contains much that is of doubtful relevance, so I will try to summarise the key points as best I can. He begins by noting that although atheism was once a hazardous position to hold, it has now become a respectable and orthodox one that is no longer particularly radical.

Today, atheism has taken its comfortable seat by the fire and has its feet up… Atheism has never been so respectable.

This ignores the fact that in some parts of the world today, professing atheism remains extremely hazardous. Consider for example, recent cases of atheist bloggers being hacked to death in Bangladesh. But I digress. The purpose of Anderson’s article is to examine the credibility of atheism as a philosophical position.

He states that it is important to define what atheism actually is. He then argues that in doing so we should observe the principle of charity, a subject he reiterates many times. A detailed explanation of this principle can be read here. Here is Anderson’s take:

This means we ought to address an opposing view in its strongest and most representative form, rather than in any of its weaker or less representative forms. In charity, then, we must ask ourselves, ‘What is the strongest form of atheism?’

This is actually a decent summary of what the principle means. However, from this point on things take a strange turn indeed. He notes that atheism derives from Greek roots combining the word for god with the prefix ‘a’ signifying negation. (However, this prefix is more usually translated as ‘without’ and is used in this sense in many English words, e.g. acausal, ‘having no cause’.) Therefore, Anderson asserts, atheism claims that “there exists no kind of god.” This definition may come as a surprise to many people who consider themselves atheists, who prefer to define it as lack of belief in gods, which is subtly different from the assertion that gods absolutely do not exist. Vlogger QualiaSoup sums up this view in an excellent video on the subject as “Gods don’t feature among the things that I believe exist.” The claim that “there exists no kind of god” represents what is sometimes called “strong” or “positive” atheism, as opposed to “weak” or “negative” atheism. In practice, positive atheism seems to be very rare, and most self-described atheists are of the negative variety.

However, Anderson will have none of this. He argues that “a less categorical definition” of atheism that “allows for softer forms of skepticism” will not do, because “atheists will surely want to reject that.” His argument is that a “less-than-firm stand on the question of the existence of a Supreme Being” is already known as agnosticism, and that atheists will not be satisfied with agnosticism because it is no more than a personal declaration of one’s own lack of knowledge that fails to bind anyone else. Hence, the “strongest” and hence most charitable version of atheism in his view is positive atheism. I consider this to be a weird application of the principle of charity. As he stated earlier, according to this principle, one should address the “strongest” version of an argument. Usually, this is taken to mean the most persuasive, most reasonable, and therefore the best version. Yet in this case, Anderson conflates “strongest” with the most literal and extreme meaning he can think of. Anderson also stated that according to the principle of charity we should address the “most representative” form of atheism, yet the definition he provides hardly seems representative of what most atheists would consider the best and most reasonable form of atheism: a lack of belief in gods due to the absence of evidence that any such entities exist. 

In order to buttress his argument that a less absolute form of atheism is not acceptable to atheists he gives a silly and convoluted example of someone being agnostic about the existence of Denmark because they have never been there. He then argues with no evidence whatsoever that an agnostic who has no personal knowledge of the existence of gods “has no logical reason at all to insist that no one else can possibly have such knowledge.” This is because some people do claim to have actual knowledge of god’s existence, so agnosticism cannot be generally applicable. Anderson does not address arguments that skeptics have made that these kinds of “knowledge” that some people claim to have (e.g. personal experiences of a mystical nature) are not valid claims about objective reality, or that knowledge of the existence of god may actually be impossible. Instead, he proceeds to argue that atheists will not be satisfied with mere agnosticism because it “does not sponsor the kind of firm commitment implicit in atheism.” (Perhaps he has never heard of agnostic atheism?) He then goes on not only to argue that atheists cannot admit to any sort of uncertainty, but to insist that this really is a charitable interpretation of what atheism is actually about in the real world:

If I'm wrong about this, I'm open to being challenged: maybe atheists don’t mind pulling the deadweight of those who may be less than firm in their metaphysical doubts. But the charity principle seems to suggest we must accord atheism the firmness its most passionate advocates want it to have. Thus we have to take atheists at their word, understanding their claim as being that there is ‘no God.’ Period.

Please note that at this point he has not cited the word of a single one of these “most passionate advocates” to prove that they actually do insist that atheism must be the claim that “there exists no kind of god.” Later on he even acknowledges that Richard Dawkins, surely one of the most passionate advocates of atheism today, does not actually insist on this level of firmness. I will return to this point later. For now, I will briefly look at the remainder of his arguments.

He rambles on at great length at this point, in order to make two arguments that atheism is inherently irrational. Firstly, he disputes the claim that atheists’ disbelief is based on evidence. His argument is that because atheism involves an absolute negation of the existence of gods, that this would only be justified if atheists had absolute proof, which would require them to have godlike knowledge of everything in the universe. Obviously this is silly, so atheists are deeply silly people who do not realise just how illogical and irrational they are. To further hammer home his point, his second argument, accompanied by yet another convoluted and inane example, is that atheism requires proving a negation to be true, which is clearly impossible, therefore atheism is ridiculous.

He then goes on to say something I found infuriating in its smugness:

Now, we have been trying to be kind to atheism, not going beyond what it claims. We have done our best to observe the principle of charity in describing its essential features.

 Tried to be kind?? Not gone beyond what it claims?? He still has not specified who actually makes these claims that he thinks are so ridiculous, and yet he still insists he has done his best to be charitable! Is this some kind of joke? Remember that the principle of charity means that one is supposed to address the “most representative” form of an argument that one wishes to argue against. Yet he then goes on to state that Richard Dawkins, “contemporary atheism’s most famous proponent” does not actually endorse this view of atheism. Anderson argues that Dawkins has “realised the problem” that “atheism simply is not a rational choice” and “publicly declared himself a ‘convinced agnostic.’” As evidence of this he links to a YouTube video with the misleading title Richard Dawkins: I can't be sure God does not exist.

Because there is so much difference between being 100%  and only 99.9% certain 

However, what Anderson fails to note is that in the video Dawkins acknowledges that he is an agnostic, and states that the problem he has with that term is that for most people it connotes a stance that there is a 50-50 chance that god exists, whereas he regards the probability of god’s existence as “very, very low”. Hence he refers to himself as a "de facto atheist". He goes on to point out that in his book The God Delusion he argued that it may be useful to rate belief in god on, say, a 7-point scale, where 1 represents “I know god exists” and 7 represents “I know god does not exist.” As for Dawkins himself, he would rate himself a 6.9 on the 7-point scale.

Anderson argues that Dawkins only seems to use the term atheist as a “rhetorical flourish” and that deep down he understands how deeply irrational atheism really is. In spite of Anderson’s repeated insistence that he has been as charitable as possible, this take on what Dawkins actually thinks is about as disingenuous as could be. Since Dawkins has taken pains to be clear that his version of atheism is not the same as the “irrational, ridiculous” version that Anderson critiques, then surely the most charitable interpretation is that Anderson’s version of atheism does not accurately represent what Dawkins means by the term in the first place. After all, critiquing a straw man that no-one actually believes is the complete opposite of what the principle of charity entails.

Anderson’s final paragraph indulges in some cheap cynicism about why atheism has become so popular in academia, stating smugly that since atheism cannot be justified on a philosophical basis it must be just empty posturing. I would be so bold as to venture that perhaps it has become so popular in academia because most academics are smart people who have a better grasp of logical reasoning than Anderson shows here. Anderson seems to reveal something of the true nature of his motives for writing this egregious piece of sophistry near the end: 

As for the Supreme Being, if He has seemed reticent to weigh in on this debate, it is not too surprising. Those who claim to know something about Him have often insisted that God is particularly uninterested in bowing to the demands of the hard-hearted cynic.

My response is “Good luck with trying to convince anyone of the existence of the Supreme Being with this pretentious bit of non-logic supported by no evidence.”
Anderson ends his piece with this charming bit of prose:

Even by our most charitable account, we have seen that atheism is a disingenuous, bombastic claim to certainty, one without evidence or logic. What then can one call it but foolishness?

As I hope I have made clear, Anderson’s version of atheism is not a charitable one at all, but a nonsensical caricature, ironically itself without evidence or logic. Hence if anyone is guilty of being disingenuous, bombastic, and foolish, it is Anderson himself.

I dedicate this article to the memory of my old school friend Sean McGerty, who sadly passed away in August 2015. I hope this article is something he might have enjoyed. 

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© Scott McGreal. Please do not reproduce without permission. Brief excerpts may be quoted as long as a link to the original article is provided.

"Zeus might be Real!" And the Whole World might be Magic too!

The New York Times published a bizarre opinion piece by philosopher Gary Gutting called Did Zeus Exist? With apparent earnestness, Gutting argues that not only did the ancient Greeks have good reason to believe in the existence of Zeus (and presumably their other gods) but that we should take seriously the possibility that they might just have been right. Not that they were right, but that the idea is just plausible enough that we cannot reasonably dismiss it altogether. Naturally I have wondered if this is some sort of elaborate joke, but if so the punch line remains elusive. Perhaps it was intended as a provocative thought experiment to encourage critical thinking and scepticism about our own claims to knowledge. However, if this was the intention – and I have no proof that it is – then it fails miserably as the amount of uncritical nonsense presented to the reader is so shocking it has to be seen to be believed.

Could Zeus have existed just because people believed in him? What about fictional deities like Cthulhu or Sauron, could they exist on some mysterious plane of reality too?

Gutting acknowledges that we have no evidence at all today that Zeus existed, but that “back in the day (say, 500-400 B.C.), there would seem to have been considerable evidence” to justify believing in him. Let’s examine this “considerable” amount of evidence that Gutting assembles and see just how well it stands up under scrutiny.

Firstly, Gutting seems very impressed that most people in ancient Greek times apparently never even questioned the existence of divine beings. So if enough people believe in something, then there might be something to it then? Because that’s how the smart people decide what is true, by popular vote I suppose.

Oddly enough, after stating that few people ever questioned the existence of Zeus, not even clever fellows like Plato or Aristotle, he goes on to ask, “Why did belief in the gods persist in spite of critical challenges?” (Huh? I thought there were no critical challenges? I’m confused already.) He answers his own question, by stating that the Greeks were convinced by “experiences of divine actions in their lives.” He cites author Robert Parker: “The greatest evidence for the existence of gods is that piety works . . . the converse is that impiety leads to disaster.” Examples of piety at work include “clear expressions of a god’s favour such as weather conditions hampering an enemy, a miraculous escape, or a cure…” Oh yes, piety works alright – except when it doesn’t. For example, Hannibal’s successes in Italy were believed by the ancient Romans to be a sign of divine wrath. Presumably, failure to escape from a dangerous situation, or remaining ill in spite of prayers for a cure, were seen as signs of divine disfavour, rather than evidence that piety works no better than chance, or that the gods might not be real after all. Has Gutting honestly not heard of confirmation bias? Someone who believes in gods can easily interpret anything that happens as confirmation of their belief because the ways of the gods are inscrutable and mysterious. The fact that the ancient Greeks did exactly this is hardly impressive or evidence of anything except the gullibility of human nature.

Gutting does seem to be aware that there are mundane explanations for why people in ancient times might have believed in their gods, e.g. such as the sociological theory that organised religion reinforces social control of how people behave. However, he wants us to consider an alternative possibility:

“Yes, but why did the society so insist on belief in the gods? We may assume it’s simply for the sake of social control. But the reason could just as well be that everyone was rightly convinced — from their own and others’ experiences — that the gods existed. Then the control would derive from the belief, not vice versa.”

I think it is equally plausible to argue that the reason could just as well be that they were being manipulated by a super-computer from another galaxy. Then the control would derive from an extra-galactic source, not a sociological one.

He goes on to talk about something much more interesting than belief in omens. He notes that during religious rituals worshippers would sometimes actually experience a sense of contact with the divine, a conviction that they could feel the presence of the gods. I think this is a genuinely interesting psychological phenomenon, and people today still have experiences like this, although the particular gods involved depend on the specific religion of the worshipper. Gutting is aware that scientific explanations for such experiences have been proposed by psychologists and neuroscientists, but he summarily dismisses them.

“In principle, any experience of our daily lives can be produced by electrochemical alternations of the brain, but this does not show that, for example, I did not actually eat breakfast or talk to my wife this morning.”

Gosh, what an insightful response. Gutting seems to be saying: “Anything we experience might be an illusion or a hallucination; therefore, anything at all we can experience just might be real.”

If we take this seriously, then the fact that there is corroborating evidence for the existence of things like breakfasts or wives, but that there is no such evidence for the existence of gods, should not trouble us. I once did a research project on people with schizophrenia. One fellow I spoke to was adamant that he had a radioactive transmitter implanted in his brain that was the source of voices only he could hear that constantly abused him. By Gutting’s logic, we should take this man’s explanation of the voices that trouble him just as seriously as a more mundane psychiatric one. The fact that this man’s beliefs do not appear to be grounded in anything that most people would consider to be real is only a minor detail.

Gutting explains why the lack of any evidence for the existence of gods of any kind is not an issue:

“Yes, but the people who worshiped Zeus claimed to experience his presence in their everyday lives and, especially, in their religious ceremonies. There’s no reason for us to accept this claim, but we have no reason for thinking they were wrong.”

No reason?? Again, I am forced to wonder if this is some sort of joke. This is like saying that anything at all might be true and there is no way of knowing if certain beliefs might be wrong. In other words, modern science, with its careful attempts to discern between true and false ideas about reality, can go take a flying leap just because ancient peoples claimed to experience things they thought were of supernatural origin. Gutting goes on to up the ante by suggesting that ancient peoples might have lived in a different kind of reality altogether:

“But how can we be so sure that the Greeks lived in the same sort of world as we do? … This response has force only if we assume that there is very little likelihood of a world that contains supernatural forces. But we have no a priori basis for such an assumption. We may well think that our world contains little or no evidence of the supernatural. But that is no reason to think the same was true of the Greek world.”

This is a great argument. In essence, Gutting seems to be saying that we should take seriously the possibility that the world just might be a magical place where the nature of reality is not consistent over time. The ancient Greeks for all we know might have lived in some special world where the laws of science as we know them just did not apply. Ironic considering that the ancient Greeks were pioneers in the discovery of universal laws and regularities in nature that form the basis of modern science.

Gutting sums up his argument by stating that “atheistic denial” of Zeus’ existence is “ungrounded.” We have no reason, he says, to assume that the ancient Greeks lacked good evidence for his existence. Indeed, he might still exist today, but just remains in hiding! Gutting’s ideas about what constitute reason and good evidence seem to derive from Alice in Wonderland. He concludes thusly:

In any case, to the question, “May we properly remain agnostic about whether Zeus ever existed?” the answer is “Yes, we may.”

My response: “yes, we may… if we are prepared to jettison reason and seriously consider any and all fantasies as equally probable, no matter how crazy.”

Hat tip to The Friendly Atheist for alerting me to Gutting's article.

Near Earth Object has a nice succinct critique of the article as well.
Further reading - the following articles are about belief in non-human entities based on psychedelic drug experiences:
DMT, Aliens and Reality: Part 1 & Part 2.

© Scott McGreal. Please consider following me on Google Plus, or Twitter.

Why belief in Hell really isn't very nice at all

There has been some discussion about the topic of Hell over at Psychology Today recently. You might even  say it's a hot topic! (Sorry.) Psychologist Nathan Heflick wrote about the psychological aspects of the subject and invited readers to share why they personally believe in Hell. Humanistic blogger Greg Henriques, took a more controversial line, and wrote an article stating that he finds it  rather objectionable when religious people go on about how people who don't believe in God are going to be sent to Hell for their impiety. He was even bold enough to say that if there actually is a loving God then he would never do such a cruel thing; either that or this God person is not a morally just being. Either way, telling people they are going to Hell is just plain not nice.

Image of Hell in the style of Bosch 

This article prompted a response from Christian blogger Michael Austin. He acknowledges that the idea that God sends people to Hell (or lets people go there, depending on your interpretation) does not seem all that nice. In fact, many Christians are "deeply troubled by the thought of people spending eternity in Hell." And as well they might be. If this doctrine were true, then most people who have ever lived will end up in this dreadful place. Even worse, if you are Christian, then you face the prospect that people you care deeply about - family members, friends, one's spouse - might share this dire fate. Honestly, how do they sleep at night?

Detail of "The Last Judgment" by Luca Signorelli

But I digress. Austin's particular concern is with how the doctrine of Hell can be reconciled with the goodness of God. Many critics of the doctrine, just like Greg Henriques mentioned earlier, have argued that it can't be. And jettisoning the doctrine apparently is not an option for good Christians. (Although, as Austin notes, some Christians have done exactly that.) Austin quotes C.S. Lewis on this point:

There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power. But it (1) has the full support of Scripture, and, (2) especially, of our Lord's own words; (3) it has always been held by Christendom [thus three arguments from authority]; and (4) it has the support of reason (sic!). 

 Christians don't get to pick and choose what they believe you know! Or do they? Austin finds some wiggle room. Enough room for considerable theological gymnastics in fact. His argument is that God does not actually send people to Hell. He simply honours their choice to be separate from him. What a nice guy God is, allowing people their choice of how to spend eternity. Hell is "not some sort of medieval torture chamber" but simply "separation from the ultimate source of joy, love, peace, and light." So Hell is actually a favour done by God in his goodness for those who actually want to spend eternity in the absence of joy, love, peace, and light. Because some people just don't want those things I suppose.

Well there are a few problems with this. The most obvious one concerns inconsistency. Austin quotes Lewis to the effect that belief in Hell is required by scripture, especially by the words of Jesus himself. Jesus apparently had a great deal to say about Hell and there are over 70 references to Hell attributed to him. Hell is most definitely referred to as a place of punishment, such as Matthew 25: 46:

And these shall go away into everlasting punishment.

There are lurid descriptions in the New Testament of the horrors awaiting the damned. The place is described as a "lake which burneth with fire and brimstone"  and there are repeated references to a "worm that dieth not" that presumably gnaws on the flesh of the damned. No, not a medieval torture chamber, medieval technology did not have the capacity to create lakes of molten sulphur or immortal worms.

Furthermore, according to the words of Jesus, sinners are cast into this place. Matthew 25: 30 for example is one of several references to people being thrown into Hell:

And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness...

According to Austin, God allows people to go into Hell voluntarily, but according to Jesus they are thrown there like prisoners. But Hell is somehow compatible with a loving God because in spite of all these scriptural references to punishment, torment, and being cast into fire like garbage, God has simply created this place so that unbelievers have somewhere to go after they die. This is like saying, "It's up to you really, if you don't want to spend eternity with me, you have everlasting punishment as an alternative. Just saying, don't want you to feel pressured at all."

What strikes me as odd about all this is that unbelievers do actually manage to experience a measure of joy, peace, love and so on while they are still alive in spite of not believing that these things come from God. So it is possible for people to be happy without God playing a role in their lives. So if God's wish is actually to accommodate people who don't believe in him because of his infinite goodness, then why not create a paradise world for unbelievers where they can be left in peace after they die? Like a nice planet somewhere, with green fields, sandy beaches and tropical islands in the sun where no-one has to do any work? Only thing is,  God won't be joining you, that's all. Surely being omnipotent that would be in his power? Why tell people that Hell is a horrible place of everlasting punishment full of immortal worms and lakes of fire when the intention is simply to provide people with an opt out from Heaven? Believers might counter-argue that even though unbelievers think they are happy without God, his presence is still somehow essential to their happiness, for reasons that are not at all clear. But if God really is omnipotent why can He not make it possible for people to be happy in his absence?

Consider an analogy. A loving father is preparing his will in order to provide for his children after he is gone. He knows that after he dies he will be absent from their lives but he wants them to be happy and prosperous anyway. Therefore, he makes preparations so that they will benefit from his legacy. According to believers, God knows that he will be absent from the lives of certain people after they die. Why cannot he make arrangements for them to benefit in his absence? Surely, if he is loving and good, he would do this.

A final point I find particularly irksome is the idea that people who do not believe simply do not want to be with God and are making a final choice not to be with him. What this assumes is that deep down unbelievers really do believe God is real, but are rejecting him for some unknown reason. I'm not just making this up, there are Christians who actually believe this. For example, creepy William Lane Craig (whom I have dealt with elsewhere) actually has this to say:

No one in the final analysis really fails to become a Christian because of lack of arguments; he fails to become a Christian because he loves darkness rather than light and wants nothing to do with God.

Ah, no. Christians seem to have a hard time grasping this, but when someone says that they do not believe in God, they mean they genuinely do not think God is real. Yet Christians seem to think that someone who chose not to believe in God while they were alive because they saw no reason to do so, will one day wake up in the afterlife, be confronted by God and go, "Oops there really is a God after all, but I love darkness so much I would rather spend an eternity in Hell than admit I made a mistake."

In summary, Christians justify believing in Hell based on scripture. Some, such as Michael Austin, want to argue that Hell is compatible with a good God who honours one's choices. But according to these same scriptures, God does not honour choices, he punishes people for making a choice he does not approve of. Furthermore, people who go on about how unbelievers are choosing to be separated from God really ought to make an effort to grasp what the concept of unbelief actually means. Therefore, no matter how Christian theologians bend over backwards to whitewash the concept, the doctrine of Hell remains as inhumane and illogical as ever. Really not nice at all.

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Further reading:

Interesting article on why even Heaven may not be so nice after all:

The Problem with Heaven - The A-Unicornist

Great video by QualiaSoup critiquing the concept: Hell: an excessive punishment 

Is Richard Dawkins a bully for appealing to reason?

Richard Dawkins has been called a bully in a rambling post by theologian Neil Ormerod. He argues that

....Dawkins and his multitude of followers feel entitled to express such contempt and anger toward religious believers.  Nothing religious believers say can be tolerated because they are at heart irrational human beings; they are free to be otherwise, and in not choosing to be rational they are failing in some sense to be what human beings should be. They are like a watch that does not properly tell the time. They need fixing. And the proper fix is to be more rational, a better human being, and drop their religious beliefs. If these are not Dawkins' and his followers' beliefs about what it means to be human, then all their contempt and anger is nothing more than an attempt at bullying believers, like alpha male primates beating their chests to warn off rivals.

The true face of rationality?

He then goes on to argue that:

However, for many religious traditions this demand for rationality is what is meant by saying that we are "spiritual" beings - that is, we are beings who are not determined simply by their material components, but by something more than mere materiality, by meaning, reason and purpose.

In other words, if humans can make rational choices we must be "spiritual" beings, presumably equipped with immaterial souls that magically endow us with the ability to think and reflect on what we decide to believe is true.

As Dawkins claims, we are just atoms in motion, and all our activities are reducible in principle to the laws of physics. While we may not be able to do so at present, eventually science will find a way to explain all human behaviour.... The whole universe is a purposeless, meaningless set of forces and particles banging into one another according to the laws of physics. How then might Dawkins construe the apparently purposeful appeal to live according to the dictates of reason that is implicit in the aims of his book?

This assumes that for human beings to experience some sense of purpose the universe itself must have purpose. If we are "just" atoms we may as well not make any choices at all! But if Dawkins himself is just a robot with no purpose how is he a bully? By this straw man argument presented by Ormerod, Dawkins is just doing what he is programmed to do. How is this equivalent to bullying? Ormerod seems to think that an appeal to reason is somehow equivalent to the use of intimidation and coercion to get one's own way.

The whole argument is ludicrous and incoherent. "If you believe that it is good for humans to make rational choices then you must believe that we are immaterial spiritual beings, even though there is no rational evidence for this claim." Therefore, to be rational you must be irrational. And what about the problem of dualism? If rationality descends from some immaterial soul, how exactly does an immaterial substance interact with a physical body?[1] Alternatively, maybe we have rationality not because of an immaterial substance which cannot be rationally comprehended, but for the same reason that we have the ability to think and make intelligent decisions. Which might be because we have a brain perhaps?

"If you don't believe the universe has an objective purpose then you cannot have a sense of purpose as a human being." So no objective purpose means that subjective purpose is not possible. Ahh, why exactly? If the universe has no objective purpose does this mean that humans cannot have any values or indeed feelings about what they consider important? Humans do have feelings about what's important, in spite of the fact that we have no way of ever knowing what purpose the universe might even be. So what is wrong with asking people to make rational choices that will lead to better outcomes or that will help to make the world a better place? Theologians have been arguing for millenia that people who choose not to believe in a particular religion will be condemned to an eternity of punishment, just for exercising their "God-given" free will. But Richard Dawkins is a big bully beating his chest and trying to intimidate people just for exhorting people to think critically about what they believe. Perhaps to be fair, some people find having their cherished beliefs questioned very uncomfortable, so trying to get people to think probably seems plain mean.

---

[1] For a detailed critique of substance dualism, I recommend this video.

The unknown purpose of the universe

Some philosophers, such as Richard Swinburne have argued that there is evidence from fine tuning that the specific laws of physics that allow intelligent life forms to exist are so improbable that it is plausible that these laws were fine tuned by god in order that intelligent life forms could exist (Leslie, 1990). Swinburne argued that a good god would have particular reason to will that beings such as humans could come to exist, e.g. so that we could develop the capacity to learn true beliefs, such as the laws of physics.

This would seem to imply that the purpose, or at least one purpose, of the universe was to allow the existence of life forms such as human beings. This would therefore imply that our prehuman ancestors existed mainly for the purpose of allowing human beings to evolve. Therefore, hominoid life forms of the Miocene epoch for example might not have had any purpose of their own, they might simply have existed as a precondition of the emergence of human life.

What if human beings then are not themselves the reason for the existence of the universe? Could it be that we exist as a precondition for the emergence of some even more advanced form of life that we can hardly even imagine? That is, humans might eventually evolve into super-intelligent life forms that transcend the current limitations of human life. Therefore, even if a god was responsible for fine tuning the laws of physics, human beings in themselves might not have any relevance to the fulfillment of god’s ultimate purpose. Therefore, current human concerns might hold no more interest for god than the daily lives of prehuman apes.

This is very similar to Nietzsche’s idea that man is a transitional form between the ape and the superman.

The point is that even if god were somehow involved in setting the laws of the universe to allow the existence of living beings, it is quite possible that god’s purpose in doing so has nothing to do with current human evolution. That is, human affairs might be of no concern to god, who might have some unknown purpose we can barely conceive of.

Human beings like to think that their own lives are of great significance and therefore of concern to a higher power. Yet chimpanzees might consider their own day-to-day needs and desires to be of great importance yet it seems ludicrous to think that god is watching over the lives of chimpanzees and taking a great interest in the outcomes of their interpersonal dramas, of which they have plenty. Dinosaurs roamed the earth for an impressive 120 million years. There is no evidence that intelligent life forms would have evolved from dinosaurs if they had survived even longer. Again it seems ludicrous to think that god was taking great interest in their development and quotidian concerns. If dinosaurs were part of some great design it seems hard to see how they could possibly fit in to some purposeful scheme. On the other hand, if they evolved through natural processes questions about their ‘purpose’ become irrelevant. Therefore, I think that the great apes evolved through natural processes involving no design and see no reason to suppose that human evolution involved design or purpose. Hence, I find it preferable to suppose that the laws of physics as they apply in our universe also developed through natural processes without a designer.

Click to enlarge image

Reference:

Leslie, J. (1990). Physical cosmology and philosophy: Macmillan.

Explaining the universe with the unexplainable

Religious philosopher Richard Swinburne contends that the fact that the universe is actually explicable ‘points to the existence of a deity’.

As a thought experiment, imagine a universe that was not explicable to its inhabitants, where the reasons why things happened were completely opaque and not open to human understanding. People there might say that ‘god works in mysterious ways’, that ‘mere mortals’ are not meant to understand god’s great master plan, hence we must have faith that the deity has his/her own reasons for everything, even if we can never comprehend them due to our limited perspective…

Andromeda Galaxy. If God created the universe for the benefit of humans, why create myriads of galaxies we will never visit?

But wait! In our universe, that is exactly what traditional religionists say anyway! Therefore, theologians seem to be trying to have it both ways! The argument from explicability seems to lack refutability, because if the universe were not explicable they could argue that this too pointed to the existence of a deity.  

Atheist have also pointed out that trying to explain the universe by invoking a deity is vacuous because it requires believing in something that cannot be explained, and hence is no explanation at all. I think this makes Swinburne's claim particularly ironic. He seems to say: "We humans have an amazing ability to explain virtually the whole universe through science but we don't know why this is possible - it must be because something we can never hope to explain (God) exists after all." So if there is a God, our ability to explain what's real ultimately fails. Such contradictory logic never ceases to amaze me.