Posted on 07/16/2007 4:13:26 AM PDT by Kaslin
Years ago I had a series of debates with the literary scholar Stanley Fish. Our topic was political correctness. I portrayed Fish as the grand deconstructor of Western civilization, and he fired back in There’s No Such Thing As Free Speech, several chapters of which are an answer to my arguments. As I got to know Fish, however, I recognized that although he defended some of the practices being promoted in the name of multiculturalism and diversity, he was not himself a politically correct thinker. We became friends, and in 1992 he and his wife attended my wedding.
Fish has of late been demonstrating his political incorrectness by writing critically of separation of church and state, and also by challenging leading atheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christoher Hitchens. Indeed Fish uses his detailed knowledge of Milton as well as his famous skills of literary deconstruction to show the emptiness of the atheist arguments.
In his New York Times blog, Fish takes up the argument advanced by Dawkins and company that belief in God is a kind of evasion. According to this argument, we avoid the responsibilities of this life by putting our hopes in another life. Religion makes us do crazy things.
Fish takes as an example of the Harris-Hitchens-Dawkins critique the behavior of Christian in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Christian becomes aware that he is carrying a huge burden on his back (Original Sin) and he wants to get rid of it. Another fellow named Evangelist tells him to "flee the wrath to come." Evangelist points Christian in the direction of a shining light. But Christian can't clearly see the light. Still, he begins to run in that direction. Bunyan describes his wife and children who "began to cry after him to return, but the man put his fingers in his ears and ran on, crying Life! Life! Eternal Life!"
For Harris, Hitchens and Dawkins, this is precisely the kind of crazy behavior that religion produces. Here is a man abandoning his duties and chasing after something he isn't even sure about. Fish writes, "I have imagined this criticism coming from outside the narrative, but in fact it is right there on the inside." Bunyan not only has Christian's wife and children imploring him to return, he also has Christian's friends struggling to make sense of his actions.
Fish comments, "What this shows is that the objections Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens make to religious thinking are themselves part of religious thinking. Rather than being swept under the rug of a seamless discourse, they are the very motor of that discourse." Citing the atheists' portrait of religion as unquestioning obedienece, Fish writes, "I know of no religious framework that offers such a complacement picture of the life of faith, a life that is always presented as a minefield of difficulties, obstacles and temptations that must be negotiated by a limited creature in the effort to become aligned with the Infinite."
Fish observes that while religious people over the centuries have dug deeply into the questions of life, along come our shallow atheists who present arguments as if they first thought of them, arguments that Christians have long examined with a seriousness and care that is missing in contemporary atheist discourse.
In a follow-up article, Fish deepens his inquiry by looking at the kind of evidence that atheists like Hawkins and Harris present for their “scientific” outlook. Harris, for example, writes that “there will probably come a time when we will achieve a detailed understanding of human happiness and of ethical judgments themselves at the level of the brain.” Fish asks, what is this confidence based on? Not, he notes, on a record of progress. Science today can no more explain ethics or human happiness than it could a thousand years ago.
Still, Harris says that scientific research hasn’t panned out because the research is in the early stage and few of the facts are in. Fish comments, “Of course one conclusion that could be drawn is that the research will not pan out because moral intuitions are not reducible to phyhsical processes. That may be why so few of the facts are in.”
Fish draws on examples from John Milton to make the point is that unbelief, no less than belief, is based on a perspective. If you assume that material reality is all there is, then you are only going to look for material explanations, and any explanations that are not material will be rejected out of hand. Fish’s objection is not so much that this is dogmatism but that it is dogmatism that refuses to recognize itself as such. At least religious people like Milton have long recognized that their core beliefs are derived from faith.
Fish concludes that “the arguments Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens mostly rely on are just not good arguments.” We can expect our unbelieving trio to react with their trademark scorn, but Fish has scored some telling points.
“my bad” (?)
No, according to the superposition principle it is a physical reality. May I suggest the book "The Quantum World," by J.C. Polkinghorne. It is just a light bedtime reading that explains the superposition principle in great detail.
He was also a Nazi, and Einstein hated the implications of the the equation and spent most of the rest of his life trying to disprove it, only to fail utterly.
Heisenberg's theory is very basic, but it proves that if the position is determined the momentum cannot be known. It is why electrons don't spiral into the nucleus. The theory explains much of the known universe.
The synthesis of all of this is that nothing can be known with certainty. God indeed does roll the dice and even he has to wait to see what the outcome is.
Schroedingers cat is impossible for God. Put the cat in the box. A mechanism kills the cat if a single atom is released from radioctive decay of an element. We do not know if the cat is alive or dead until we open the box. The state of the cat is unknown to us until we observe it. But God does know. It’s human measurement, human limitation, nothing to do with God.
God is outside of time. The dice have already rolled in my view.
Well, see, we’ve found some level of common ground. I have as little time (probably less, actually) for “sophomoric atheists” as I do for those who engage in blind faith. Unfortunately for both of us, I believe that the sophomoric and the blind make up the majority of people on both sides.
The sophomoric athiest seems to think that he can prove the reverse somehow, that he can “prove” the non-existence of God.
The ultimate non-existence of God cannot be proven, just as the ultimate existence of God cannot be proven. All I have been trying to point out in my previous posts, in this and other threads, is that all of the empirical evidence to date certainly seems to point to the non-existence of God. And I’m glad that someone else here besides me understands superposition and that it is perfectly possible for something to come into existence from nothing; as demonstrated by modern QM theory. If the religionists studied science, they might at least begin to start understanding our arguments, rather than resorting to name-calling like “sophomoric” or “juvenile”. Isn’t it children who believe in fairy tales and adults who do not? Who is being juvenile here, really?
Of course it can be dismissed...by those who don't share such subjective evidence. Other people's subjective evidence is pointless and useless to you and I.
However, getting back to the point, based on such experience or its lack, one can be certain that God exists, or one can be uncertain; it's impossible to be certain that God does not exist based on your personal experience. Within this narrow frame, that leaves one an agnostic (one who lacks knowledge) rather than an atheist (one who is certain that God is nonexistent).
Our limitations don’t limit God.
I have a physicist friend that tells me that many modern “theories” in physics require such huge energies that they can never be tested. Is an untestable theory science at all? Or is it theology/philosophy/even an internally coherent fairy tale?
Hey, I seen Stanley...he carries a purse.
I used to be an agnostic. When I got worked up I sometimes declared myself an athiest. It was more mood than reason when I did and I certainly wouldn't have published the nonsense as some people seem compelled to do.
Similarly, I get more worked up by the irrational theists who hold to impossible doctrines than I do by rational agnostics who simply have not been touched by God.
Re: Why believers do it. Ah.. because Christ say's that we should.
NASB Matthew 28:19 "Go therefore and make [b] disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
If Christians truly believe what they say they do, they can NOT not reach out. The news is so good that we are compelled to share it.
Furthermore, why would those who know and love you want you to face God on your own merits instead of Christ’s?
Cheers
When all else fails, read the instructions (CCEL > Bibles and Commentaries)
atheist was asked what he would say when he found himself at the pearly gates after he died, looking at st. peter. his answer; Whoops!
His alternative answer: Okay, I admit I was wrong. Now where are my 72 virgins? ;-)
I prefer the 72 armed Virginians that meet the muslim suicide bomber at the Pearly Gates . . . just a typo dontcha know.
Ah, the friend of a cousin who’s aunt... May I suggest a very short and quite readable book, Science and Its Ways of Knowing, edited by J. Hatton and P. Plouffe. It contains a series of essays discussing science as a method and philosophy written by such luminaries as Sagan, Hawking, Popper, Gould, L. Alvarez, et al. It will help you understand the strengths and limitations of (for example) young vs. mature, data-driven vs. theory driven, and experimental vs. observational sciences.
Is it not also juvenile to suggest that the current laws of physics as we know them are concrete? Nothing more than theories, devised to help us explain how the universe works. I personally see science as a way to explain how God created the universe, but I also know that certain things we cannot see or measure - Heisenburg’s Uncertainty Principle, for one - simply because we have too many limitations upon us.
Just as an example, within the next few years, it’s very likely that the Higgs boson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson) will be determined to exist or not. If it does not, then expect the current “laws” of physics to undergo some thorough revisions (there is a reason why it’s called the theoretical “God particle”).
And that’s fine by me. There’s still more to learn. Humans, fashioning themselves as gods, cannot hope to grasp the full functions of how the universe works. Not yet, in any case.
You REALLY don’t understand Science, do you? Your physicist friend is right, and is most likely referring to M-theory (what used to be called String Theory). You’d need a particle accelerator the size of the Solar System in order to prove some of the implications of M-Theory. Perhaps the greatest difference between science and religion (other than science being based on observable, repeatable data, i.e. empirical evidence, and religion being entirely faith-based) is that science makes PROGRESS. Religion already claims to know all the answers, and thus it is static. Furthermore, if religion changes, then doesn’t this render it untrue as it has strayed from the original ONE TRUE WORD of God? How many times have religions been updated or changed during history?
OF COURSE a currently-untestable theory is science! Theories are the building blocks of science! The presently-untestable M-theory is a perfect example of this. Just because we can’t think of a way to test it NOW, science doesn’t just give up, or ascribe it all to a mythical supernatural force. Scientists continue to strive to find new ways to test, they just don’t give up, even if it takes generations to find the answer. A good analogy to the state of incompleteness M-theory now finds itself in would be the theory of electromagnetism. In the 19th century, they had theories for electricity and magnetism, and knew that both were related somehow. In 1864, James Clerk Maxwell published a paper with his now-famous equations that showed the relationship clearly. Unlike static religion, science has excellent prospects for solving problems, and, indeed has done more to alleviate human suffering than any religion is remotely capable of.
Science is a search for the ultimate Truth. Theories and hypotheses are presented, published for peer-review, and all those who read it try every way they can think of to DISPROVE the theory. If they cannot, then that hypotheses or theory becomes a stronger theory. Ultimately, as with thermodynamics, enough proof can be amassed to make it into a scientific Law.
ah, an adherent of John Stuart Mills ?
You say: Science is a search for the ultimate Truth.
______________
What if the ultimate truth is God? Many scientist think so. Do you tell them that they nothing of science?
HA! That’s great!! Ya know what - if Science leads us to that conclusion with empirical, provable evidence, I’ll concede the point! Unfortunately for your proposition, there is no current scientific proof that points to the existence of God. The scientists you refer to are HUMAN, and as such, have a very human fear of death. Many delude themselves with religion in order to give meaning to their lives. Also, don’t forget how impressionable children are; their parents probably introduced them to religion and their love and respect for their parents causes them to continue in that behavior. Furthermore, I believe that a little bit of our childhood psychology remains with us when we become adults. That feeling for wanting someone to watch over us, protect us, guide us and love us unconditionally never completely goes away. It is the desire for all these things that causes otherwise rational adults to believe in religion. If that makes them feel better, no problem, as long as it doesn’t ruin their work as scientists. I cannot lie to myself, so that is why I do not believe.
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