A couple of months ago
I posted on the topic of reason, specifically pertaining to faith in God. At the time I claimed that the question of God's existence cannot be addressed by use of reason, though reason can address perhaps every question that stems from that point. I may or may not still agree with that; read: I'm currently unsure if I'm asking the right question. Meanwhile, I have gotten some really great food for thought on the matter from a new book by Matthew Dickerson, entitled
The Mind and the Machine: What it means to be human and why it matters.
One of the main issues Dickerson addresses is reason, specifically how we can talk about reason in light of naturalism, materialism, physicalism and determinism. That's a lot of -isms, but it comes down to a simple idea: if we live in a causally closed universe (a universe in which there is no God) then what we consider to be reason is only programmed response. There can be no creativity without a creator--no ability to be rational without something more than a brain; creativity requires a mind. At this juncture, Dickerson draws upon a dualist understanding of human beings as both physical and spiritual.
There is something profound in this approach not least because we live as if our choices matter, as if our creativity is something good and beautiful. It is far more intuitive to say that our creativity is real than to claim that it is the result of a complex computational algorithm that governs all of creation. Reason affirms this creativity. Dickerson claims that faith comes through reason precisely because reason is evidence of a creator-God. Faith comes through the awareness of being more than computational beings; it comes in the understanding of a spiritual nature at work within us. We might say that faith is evidence of things unseen (Hebrews 11:1)--if by "things" we mean our ability to understand what it evident in the first place.
So, for a bit of not-so-light but profoundly interesting summer reason I would
strongly recommend
The Mind and the Machine by Matthew Dickerson. Let me know your thoughts!
Even if everything in this post were true, said deity could still be just about any deity, including the great one who manifests himself to us in the form of invisible purple unicorns.
ReplyDeleteThere is a clear logical flaw, however, in your/Dickerson's line of reasoning. You paraphrase his argument as "There can be no creativity without a creator." We are creative, therefore there is a creator goes the argument. The problem with this argument is that it solves nothing because it leads to an infinite regress. For the creator to be creative, according to this logic he too must have been created. And for the creator's creator to be creative, he too must have been created. And if the creator's creator's creator is creative, he too must have had a creative creator created by another creative creator. If at some point (say at a Christian God) you stop and say that a particular creator was not created by a creator, you admit that having a creator is not necessary to being creative.
More broadly, the notion that the ability to be creative or reason necessitate a creator is a variation on the idea of irreducible complexity or the idea that life (particularly human life) is too complex to have evolved. This idea has no scientific merit. The ability to reason has evolutionary advantages (the last person who ate those berries keeled over and died, should I feed them to my children?) as does creativity (would a sharp point on the end of my stick help me kill my prey? Will a potential mate be more attracted to me if I can sing beautiful songs?).
Finally, faith means believing something despite a lack of evidence, while reason requires having a legitimate justification for believing something. So while reason could lead you to God, it cannot lead you to faith. If reason is your path to God, as opposed to the make believe of faith, then I will join you in eagerly awaiting publication of evidence for God in the journal Nature.
I don't think it's a variation on irreducible complexity at all. Basically, Dickerson tests two hypotheses: 1. That we are programmed creatures and the physical is all that there is; OR 2. we are creatures with the ability to be creative.
ReplyDeleteThe two cannot be reconciled. What we understand as creativity requires that our actions are more than programmed response solely to environmental factors that pre-date us.
So, what you understand to be reason cannot exist in a causally closed (materialist, physicalist) system. It requires a measure of creativity. Dickerson's question is to ask where does that creativity come from?
He argues that we have two natures--physical and spiritual. It seems that what you want to suggest is that we have two natures--physical and rational--which might actually be saying the same thing. Still, the problem you run into is that you have the same kind of presuppositions that you suggest with the creator-creation argument.
Reason cannot prove reason to be true, though it assumes it. To say faith lacks reason is an Enlightenment argument. I am absolutely not willing to give you that one.
1 Kings 18:21, Elijah says, "‘How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.’"
Sounds like an appeal to reason to me. And there are countless others in Scripture. Just because you re-frame the criteria to mean what can be observed by means of the scientific method does not mean that you have cornered the market on reason.
I have already shown why adding a deity adds nothing in terms of the creation of creativity. Add a dualist soul and guess what? The system is still causally closed, it just has an additional made up substance that explains nothing (I suppose you could give the made up substance more made up qualities, such as the quality of "solving the problem," but an additional substance does nothing to solve any problem of a first mover in a causal chain. It simply hopes that you do not ask what moves the made up 2nd substance).
ReplyDeleteBut suppose for the sake of argument that you are right and that "you run into is that you have the same kind of presuppositions that you suggest with the creator-creation argument" with a physical account of the world. Then the two accounts explain the same amount of information. The difference is that your account would assume a dualist substance that has never been observed, as well as a God whose existence is at best questionable. By occam's razor, the physical account is preferred because it makes the fewest assumptions. Everything that can be explained by hypothesizing an unobserved dualist substance and an unobserved God can be explained without them. Or in the words of Stephen Hawking, "Science makes God unnecessary."
In actuality, science explains more because it shows that what we call creativity can be an evolved trait that does not require a creator: creativity has obvious evolutionary advantages, such as the ability to make and refine tools, which has evolved in humans over time. To say that creativity cannot be a purely biological/physical ability that has evolved is to say that it is irreducibly complex (otherwise it could be an evolved physical trait).
I like 1 Kings 18. I looked it up and it is indeed a rare instance in the Bible in which reason is used, rather than faith demanded (by the characters in the story at least). However, it is by faith and not reason that you take this account to be the word of God. I have written down a 20 digit number and placed it in my pocket. Any omniscient being is free to tell you the number and allow you to post it on your blog. If that were to occur, things would get real interesting. You may say God does not have to reveal himself, that he does not have to submit to my tests. Ok, but then don't pretend that 1 Kings 18 is any more than a made up story that is not an appeal to reason, but rather an attempt to dupe you into thinking that God's existence and power have been tested. Or in scientific terms, we have repeatedly failed to replicate the results described in the Bible (I just asked God to light my end table on fire and he didn't) so there is a question as to whether they weren't fabricated in the first place (especially given that the authors of the Bible have a demonstrated habit of lying about who they are and making stories up).
ReplyDelete"Just because you re-frame the criteria to mean what can be observed by means of the scientific method does not mean that you have cornered the market on reason."
We follow the scientific method because it works. There is a reason your people have stopped coming to you when they're sick, asking you to rid them of demons. It's because the scientific method has developed treatments for illnesses that actually work. The default position in science is the null hypothesis. In other words, a scientist arguing for a hypothesis starts their argument by assuming that their own hypothesis is wrong. They then build up an argument as to why their hypothesis explains more than the null hypothesis. If they cannot do so, the null hypothesis remains the position of science. I haven't cornered the market on reason, but believing something despite the null hypothesis' ability to explain the same thing is not reason. You cannot square reason with taking a 2000 year old book, much of which was plagiarized or fabricated by people pretending to be people they could not have been or written 40+ years after the historical Jesus lived, as sufficient evidence for such an extraordinary claim as the existence of a deity.
The reason this discussion is frustrating for me is that the two of us have worldviews that are just simply different. Occam's Razor and the scientific method are designed to deny the existence of God so naturally you agree with them. A dualist understanding is meant to resonate with God, so I resonate with it.
ReplyDeleteEvidence is what you're looking for, and I don't have it in the way you want it. But my worldview is something akin to C.S. Lewis' quote, "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
I crave God either because it is a biological coping mechanism or because God is real. Dickerson and myself and many thinking people in the history of the world have seen the options chosen belief.
Occam was a Franciscan friar. Occam's Razor is many things, but it is not a conspiracy against God. The scientific method is similarly not "designed to deny the existence of God" it just happens that God is a really bad hypothesis. I agree with you that it can at times be frustrating to have a discussion with someone who doesn't think you the way you do. The biggest difference from my perspective is that you are trying to arrive at a particular result no matter whether it is true and I care far more about the process by which knowledge is obtained. You may like dualism because it is "meant to resonate with God" but I prefer the scientific method because it is meant to not have a preference other than the truth.
ReplyDelete"Evidence is what you're looking for, and I don't have it in the way you want it."
It's not just that the evidence doesn't measure up to my standards, it's that it doesn't really measure up to your standards either. You don't defend the merits of either dualism or the idea of God, you just say that you like them. You don't deny that portions of the Bible are fabrications written by pretenders who were not who they say they are, you don't deny that several canonical gospels are plagiarized, cribbed from other gospels, you don't deny that the earliest accounts of Jesus were written 40+ years after the historical Jesus lived. The evidence isn't good enough for you either, you just don't care about the evidence because you want a particular result. You select the comfort of a rising sun knowing full well that the sun does not rise, the earth orbits the sun while spinning on its axis.
you can't seem to stay on a single issue here. It just reminds me of the comments on every Huff post article.
ReplyDeleteI deny a lot of what you say, but our frameworks are so entirely different. You understand truth as a concept; I understand it as Jesus Christ. That's probably irreconcilable.
I lean toward scripture like Luke 16:19-31 in which a rich man who is negligent of the poor Lazarus dies. From the land of the dead, the man begs Abraham to come back and warn his family so that they don't have the same fate. Abraham's response: "If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”
You wrote:
"The biggest difference from my perspective is that you are trying to arrive at a particular result no matter whether it is true and I care far more about the process by which knowledge is obtained."
True. Although I am not trying to arrive at the outcome. I start from the outcome, because it's the only way my world makes sense. You will deny that as unscientific and irresponsible. Fine. My worldview doesn't depend on that; yours does.
"Luke" was likely not Luke the Evangelist, was written decades after the historical Jesus, and was plagiarized from Mark and the Q Gospel. Quoting "Luke" is a bad joke.
ReplyDelete"I am not trying to arrive at the outcome. I start from the outcome, because it's the only way my world makes sense. You will deny that as unscientific and irresponsible. Fine. My worldview doesn't depend on that; yours does."
It's not just that it's unscientific and irresponsible, it's that it's intellectually dishonest. Ignoring the evidence because you don't like the result is lying to yourself. Let me say that again: it's not a different world view, it's a lie told by you to yourself. What strikes me about this discussion, particularly the discussion around your previous post, is that you are able to recognize that the evidence doesn't measure up, but unable to admit what that means. Put another way, you don't believe in God, but you still have faith in him. You can say this is not a problem for your worldview, and to the extent that you stick to the evidence-free world of faith you are correct, but the moment that you leave that cocoon of pure intellectual unaccountability you are confronted with the obvious fact that having faith in God cannot be reconciled with recognizing that the evidence for God is objectively inadequate.