Preface: Where the Conflict Really Lies (Comments continued)

Before I publish the full 17 pages of this response, let me just offer a brief disclaimer. Most of the things I talk about below are far, far afield of our primary topic of discussion, and probably don’t really belong here at all. However, since Colby and I have been the only regular participants up to this point, and my response addresses some questions that apparently are of interest to him, I decided to go ahead and include it just as one huge side note to this section’s discussion. To anyone else who might join our discussion later, I apologize for getting so far off topic. Feel free to voice your complaints if we start to do it again.

Q2C –

Colby wrote,

…if people are going to take a hard stance on something, especially if it has as much significance as the existence of God, they should be able to do so with strong, substantive evidence on their side.

When you say “take a hard stance,” do you mean epistemically or practically? Taking a hard stance on something epistemically might mean something like claiming knowledge or strong certainty about a subject, while taking a hard stance on something practically might simply mean being committed to a certain pattern of behavior, or to living as if something were true (even though you might not be at all certain of it). I think this distinction is an important one, because agnosticism doesn’t necessarily entail practical ambivalence, or vice-versa, and most people, I think, would say that morality often demands a practical resoluteness disproportionate to our epistemic certainty. Consider the following example.

In late 1993, the Criminal Division of the Washington State Attorney General's Office undertook a 3-1/2 year research project, partially funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, to study the investigation of child abduction murder cases…In 76 percent of the missing children homicide cases studied, the child was dead within three hours of the abduction–and in 88.5 percent of the cases the child was dead within 24 hours.[1]

Given these facts, how should we expect parents to behave whose child has recently gone missing? If we were to straightforwardly apply the rule you proposed and, in situations in which something significant was at stake, only take our stand with strong, substantive evidence on our side, then we should expect the parents to give up their search within the first 3 hours. But that’s not what we expect of the parents of kidnapped children, Why? Presumably, because we don’t intuitively approve of proportioning one’s belief – or certainly not one’s actions – to the evidence: extra-evidential considerations, like in what direction our practical interests lie, also matter. In fact, it would seem a more accurate description of our moral intuitions to say that the more significant the stakes of our decisions are, the less important it is to have strong, substantive evidence on our side.

That being said, I think you’re right that we run a pretty significant risk when we attempt to bolster one or another practical agenda on a presumption of superior evidence or arguments, if in fact that evidence doesn’t exist or those arguments aren’t as strong as we’ve made them out to be. That risk is just that people might eventually become so accustomed to rehearsing these arguments and evidences as the prime justification of their practical commitments that they eventually come to forget all the other, non-evidential reasons for which they made those commitments in the first place. This reliance may in time grow so complete that, were those arguments and evidences to ever fail, certain individuals might subsequently feel obliged to abandon their practical commitments, and perhaps end up with an ultimately less desirable or satisfying life.

I think the preferred way to avoid this problem is not to obsess over one’s evidences and arguments until one is perfectly confident that all of one’s practical commitments can be defended on rational or evidential grounds alone, but rather to never fall under the impression that evidence and arguments are what our practical commitments are all about in the first place. As many moral philosophers have pointed out, our practical commitments – especially of the moral variety – reflect not so much our beliefs about how the world is, but rather our vision of what our actions might potentially make it.[2] Likewise, our justification for living a certain way – our entitlement to the life that we love, and which is in harmony with our cares and interests – is grounded not in the evidence that proves that our hopes will be realized, but in the vast superiority of the future that our efforts strive to realize over that which would be left to us were we to resign them.

Colby wrote:

…it is my view that either side would be far more effective in the long run to teach people substantive arguments that hold up to scrutiny rather than just appealing to emotion and sensationalism…

I agree that this is the most intuitive view, but, following what I said above, I think there are some really good, less-obvious considerations in favor of the latter view, which a slight change in perspective about what it is exactly that these apologists and popular religious critics are doing can make more clear. Here’s my reasoning, you can tell me what you think about it:

(1)  When people debate issues with important practical implications, they are not seeking to influence their audience’s beliefs as much as they are trying to influence their behavior. Speculative debates (i.e., debates concerning what the facts are, or what we should believe), in other words, are often just practical debates in disguise (i.e., debates over what we should do, or how far what we know goes in justifying the various practical alternatives). For example, when two people argue about whether or not God exists, what they are often really arguing about is whether the available evidence justifies not the belief or disbelief in God per se, but the behavior that belief or disbelief in God entails. So, in the context of the present debate, the apologists could be interpreted as arguing, in essence, that the atheist doesn’t have adequate evidence to justify living as if God didn’t exist, while the religious critic could be interpreted as arguing, in essence, that the Christian doesn’t have adequate evidence to justify living as if God did exist.

(2)  Behaviors, moreover, are justified on the basis of different criteria than are beliefs. Namely, beliefs are justified primarily on the basis of evidence that either supports or refutes them, while behaviors are justified primarily on the basis of one’s practical interests (or perhaps the collective interests of one’s society, or all mankind). Epistemic norms are oriented to a different value than are moral norms, and often these two systems’ values are in conflict with one another, such that moral norms may actually prescribe actions that epistemic norms would prohibit.[3] While evidentialism provides a good approximation of epistemic normativity, it falls short of describing moral normativity, which actually follows a more Platonic or Jamesian principle, e.g., “believe[/act] in the line of your needs.”[4]

To summarize – Were the question merely about the most appropriate or ethical way to change someone’s mind with respect to some target belief (e.g., whether or not God exists), then I think Colby / Clifford would be right. But since the question is actually, though not explicitly, about the most appropriate or ethical way to change someone’s mind about some target behavior (whether or not we should live as though God existed or did not exist), I actually think it’s Plato’s / James’ prescription that best reflects our moral intuitions.

Q3C –

Colby wrote:

…the point I was making was largely the last part of what you said, that “scientists themselves… exaggerate the finality of their favorite scientific theories.” The scientific community needs to be more honest about this. If you talk about something scientific with people just in conversation or you watch some scientific presentation, as I mentioned, it is unlikely that you will see “facts” presented just as the best information we have now—it is far more likely to be presented as “this is the way it is,” which comes across to the average person as “fact.”

Yeah, it’s an interesting question why science is a field so rife with equivocations of this kind. I guess you could take a sort of quasi-Kantian approach, and argue that the scientific definition of fact (i.e., as something provisional, subject to change) is really the only definition that can possibly have any meaning for “phenomenally-bound” human beings, since the stronger definition (i.e., that which presents a fact as something known, and immune to future revision) represents more of an epistemically inaccessible “noumenal” ideal. So you could say that (capital-F) Fact doesn’t really refer to anything that we phenomenally-bound human beings could ever hope to know anything about, and so we should simply never presume that this definition is what is intended when anyone, scientist or otherwise, uses the word “fact.”

Or you could take more of a contextualist approach and argue that in normal “low stakes” contexts (e.g., common parlance), the criteria for what suffices as a “fact” are more permissive than in “high stakes” contexts (e.g., “brain-in-vat” scenarios). Then you could say that scientists are typically in relatively low stakes contexts when they talk about facts, and so their fact-statements are permissible because the lower-stakes criteria are operative.

Both of those responses, though, involve technical terms and concepts with which most of those reading this blog won’t be familiar. And, anyway, the most likely explanation is just that scientists themselves have trouble making the distinction between the two definitions, or simply get carried away. Long story short, I agree that we should watch our language more carefully.

Colby wrote:

I suppose this may not have been Plantinga’s point, but it seems relevant to his point that science isn’t up to the task. I’ve explained some why I would agree that science may not be up to the task, so what are your thoughts on this now?

If the point is something like "Ccientists themselves often exaggerate the finality of their favorite scientific theories, therefore science isn't up to the task of grounding our beliefs and guiding our actions,” then I don't think I'd agree. It might be unsuitable for other reasons, but not because of the behavior of scientists. I know that’s not quite what you meant, and I doubt it’s what Plantinga meant either, but I think it’s worth saying…

As to whether I personally think science is up to the task of grounding our beliefs and guiding our behaviors, I’m not sure what I’d say. I guess my general conviction is that we don’t so much need facts OR dogma for morality as people are inclined to believe[5], but that between the two of these, facts are much more helpful, and science is much better than religion at providing them.

Q4C/Q5C –

Colby wrote:

…some of these questions are very loaded and I just don’t think they largely fit this particular discussion (and we’re only in the preface!!!).

I admit to stating my case a little more bluntly than usual, but I inserted the appropriate qualifiers (“it wouldn’t seem to be”) so as to leave all possibilities open. Besides, I addressed some of these claims in a much more thorough and charitable fashion in previous posts (see http://muckrunner.blogspot.com/2009/09/moral-dilemma-part-2.html). I appreciate your effort to keep us on task, though : )

Colby wrote:

I don’t know that we need to assume the greater “miracle” is the false one right off the bat. Why would we not weigh all evidence available to us rather than just assume the more difficult view is false?...In simplistic terms, we have two possible ideas regarding the origin of the universe: 1) it was designed intentionally by some being, or 2) it was formed from nothing and evolved to its current state…Having myself observed many of the complexities of the world and having a basic scientific understanding of how the universe works, I consider #2 to be far more miraculous than #1. Am I really to believe the universe did not exist and a “big bang” (what does that even mean?) formed it? From there, should it be obvious to me that the unfathomably complex creatures that we are, with aspects such as DNA, senses, the mind, etc., all formed without intention out of very simple non-sentient building-blocks? In my view, the world looks far more like one that was formed intentionally.

I guess what you take to be the implications of Hume’s principle depends pretty heavily on how you define the term “miraculous.” It sounds to me like you might be thinking of miraculous in terms of difficulty to grasp intuitively or intellectually (?). And, granted, evolution by natural selection, big bangs, and the rest of it, are not the most obvious or intuitive explanations for everything that we observe. But besides the fact that you presumably don’t feel responsible for understanding the mechanism(s) that would enable a God to create this universe, or, for that matter, to even exist in the first place, I don’t see how the theistic perspective provides any simpler an explanation (i.e., to grasp intuitively or intellectually). If you think along the lines of even most theologians, then even assuming the existence of God doesn’t get you around the problem of natural selection and the big bang, because God presumably had to have created the universe via some natural mechanism(s) that matches their general description, adding perhaps the qualification that these process were guided. Unfortunately, this alleged “guidedness” is not something that scientists can observe, or even infer from what is observed, making that feature of the theory (for the moment, at least) explanatorily extraneous. A problem, in other words, for the theologian, is that even if God did design the whole complicated system, he appears to have created it in such a way as to be able to function on its own (i.e., at least after some initial impetus like the big bang, or through infinite cycling), allowing scientists to describe its workings with no reference to God whatsoever: the world with God, for all we can tell, looks just like the world without him. Given that scientists seem to be able to explain the operation of the system without invoking God as part of their explanation, it’s not clear to me how bringing him back into the picture is supposed to make grasping these phenomena intuitively or intellectually more simple. What theoretical work is this divine guidedness supposed to be doing? (Again, not trying to be antagonistic, just asking what I think are the pertinent questions.)

Second, I don’t think that “difficult to grasp intuitively or intellectually” is the definition that Hume had in mind for the term “miraculous” in the first place. I think he meant something more like “contrary to what we typically observe,” or “most dissimilar to our other experiences.” (Hume, by the way, had a much weaker notion of natural law than most of us: he was a skeptic about traditional causes, i.e., of the necessary following of one thing from another via natural law. For Hume, we add something to experience when we presume a law to govern the constant conjunction of two events, since all we ever actually observe is their constant conjunction.) If we interpret Hume in this way, then we don’t have to assume his judgment would be handicapped by something as accidental to the facts as how he happened to perceive them. In other words, even if (a) Hume were in Colby’s shoes instead of his own, and (b) he were applying his rule to judge the probable explanation of the universe rather than the probable explanation for the disciple’s testimony about a resurrected Jesus; and (c) all the available evidence were weighed prior to passing judgment, I think we’re supposed to think that the outcome would be precisely the same.

Anyway, I took your main objection to be this: Why should someone’s subjective evaluation of which of two alternative scenarios is the least miraculous (roughly translated “difficult to grasp intuitively or intellectually”) be considered a reliable method for arriving at the truth of the matter? To which I would respond, I don’t think that’s what Hume meant. I think Hume had a much more objective criterion in mind: “miraculous” is not just what someone finds unintuitive or intellectually difficult, but what is most contrary to what we typically observe, most dissimilar to our other experiences.

But maybe you’d like to reformulate your objection like this: Why should evaluating which of two alternative scenarios is more dissimilar to our other experiences be considered a reliable method for arriving at the truth of the matter? (Maybe, for example, arriving at the truth also requires something like faith in the impossible.) To which I would respond, What better ideas do you have for arriving at the truth of the matter? Or if you have none for arriving at the truth, what better ideas do you have for deciding which of the available alternatives will provide the best foundation for our belief or confidence? Honestly, I think the latter question is much more important than the former, and for our current purposes, much more relevant. In considering the latter question, however, I have to admit that I have genuine difficulty understanding on what grounds Christianity is supposed to achieve its superior credibility over science when in every parameter I consider apart from aesthetic appeal and scope of application, science (in my assessment) clearly surpasses it. What I wrote before I think deserves careful reconsideration:

Whatever evidences or arguments might possibly justify the Christian’s confidence in the infallibility of the Bible, can they possibly amount to as much as all the evidence supporting our confidence in science?...[I]f we could claim on behalf of our religion all the successes that science has secured for us, and if the only disappointments we had to rationalize away were those in which our nutritionists fed us misinformation about what portions of what food group comprised a balanced diet, just imagine how vindicated we’d feel in our faith…The primary advantage that the Bible enjoys over science textbooks, then, in my opinion, is not that it contains more factual content, or that it generates fewer disappointments in our intellectual or practical lives, but rather that it has stronger aesthetic appeal (i.e., it presents a more “intuitive” and emotionally satisfying worldview than that which science is revealing) and lends itself to wider application (i.e., it tells us how we should live in addition to what we should believe).

Colby wrote:

It seems you are assuming that a reliance on scripture is in fact problematic and may even be thinking that a reliance on science is NOT problematic. You seem to suggest the questions you ask do not have answers and that the “proposed mechanism” is therefore more problematic than science—this is not the case. Would [you not] agree that both sides have their share of problems? Fortunately for science, it can get away with just saying “I don’t know”—Christians are not afforded the same luxury in some areas (and rightly so).

If that’s how I came off, that wasn’t my intention. Sometimes the questions I present are intended merely to describe the situation as I see it and help focus our efforts at crafting solutions in the directions that I think are most promising (or most urgently needed). But probably more often I’m just trying to raise the questions that I imagine a critical reader – on either side of the debate – would have if they were to join the discussion. I think that’s kind of the special responsibility of whoever is facilitating the discussion for a particular week: to anticipate and voice the questions, objections, and possible solutions of all sides in the debate. Hopefully as the discussion moves forward, you'll see that I’m just as critical of certain opinions and arguments on the other side of the debate.

But to address your point directly, I don’t think that reliance on science isn’t problematic – I think that reliance on anything is problematic in some way or another. I DO think, however, that reliance on scripture is problematic in much more obvious ways than reliance on science (one of them being lack of clear standards to evaluate competing claims, while science has a verifiability criterion and peer review). Actually, to be fair, I think it might be a toss-up when it comes to having one of them guide our actions (since, as you and Plantinga have both pointed out, science hasn’t had much to say on this topic for most of human history).

I disagree, though, that Christians are not afforded the same luxury as science to admit that they don’t know if in fact they really don’t know. Or are you just saying that part of a Christian’s belief commitments just is the belief that they know certain things, e.g., that God is a certain way, that the Bible is his inspired word, that they will spend eternity in heaven, etc.? If that’s what you’re saying, do you mean to say that Christians don’t have the luxury to say that they don’t know because they actually do know, or that they don’t have this luxury because they don’t know but are supposed to know? Can you explain what you had in mind?

Colby wrote:

At least part of why religious leaders (and scripture) prescribe that we “live by faith” is in fact because there are many things we may never know by empirical data.

Again, this was a sincere question, not an attempt to antagonize, so I appreciate you answering it. I agree with you, that at least part of why religious leaders prescribe living by faith is because there are plenty of things of practical importance about which we will never have empirical evidence (or sufficient empirical evidence, I should probably say). But is that the only value that faith has, i.e., to fill in the gaps left by science? Or are there areas, too, that science does claim to address in which we should nonetheless practice faith, i.e., in spite of science? I don’t know, there seems something strange to me in characterizing faith simply as the “next best thing” to empirical evidence, and I’m just trying to put my finger on what that something is. (Maybe John 20:29, 2 Cor. 5:7, etc.?)

Colby wrote:

You can tell me there is a massive host of reasons that science is considered reliable by means of the reliability of its proponents (i.e., scientists, writers, etc.), and I can say with confidence that the same is true of the scriptures. People have devoted their entire lives to studying different aspects of science, but people have also devoted their entire lives to studying the scriptures in their original languages, studying other historic data from other cultures before, during, and after the Biblical events, doing archaeological digs, etc., verifying the claims of the scripture. How are these two fields different in their reliability?

Good question. I think there might be several reasons to trust the scientific community over the religious community. I’ll admit that I haven’t given it a ton of thought, but these are my initial thoughts for what they’re worth. First of all, there is greater convergence of belief between top experts in the scientific community with respect to the field’s major tenets than there is among biblical scholars, for instance, which are split pretty decisively between conservative and liberal schools. Second, the relatively high degree of convergence we find within the conservative school of biblical scholarship, seems to owe more to the special requirements imposed by that field to first adopt the tenets that it will later critically examine, i.e., to the experts’ membership in an associated religious tradition. (The liberal school seems hardly worth mentioning, since many, if not most, of them don’t even affirm the truth of the book’s content.) Thirdly, the worldview presented by science does not cater as strongly, if at all to the practical, emotional, and aesthetic interests of humans, and therefore provides fewer alternative incentives for adopting or propagating it than does any religious worldview. (This last consideration happens to be the same reason I am more distrustful of dieticians or nutritionists who both prescribe vegetarianism as the optimal diet for human beings as well as have strong feelings about animal rights. It’s not that I necessarily doubt that there are good reasons to adopt each position independently, but I do question whether the emotional incentives surrounding the second issue might be supplanting in some places the empirical evidence in support of the first.) What do you think? Does having a dog in the fight, so to speak, help or hinder our capacity to think critically?

Colby wrote:

Regarding another point you make, the existence of contradictory evidence, I would say that the “empirical evidence” that may contradict the examples you gave would be circumstantial and subjective at best. Can you really say that a prayer not being answered according to how you believe it should be answered is “empirical evidence” that prayer is ineffective or that having not observed a “miracle” yourself means miracles don’t exist? This amounts to “if I don’t see it, it doesn’t exist,” which is of course no argument at all.

You’re right, that wouldn’t be much of an argument. But imagine that two people were making two competing claims about the color of crows. Person A claims that all crows are black, while Person B claims that some crows are white. Both are empirical claims, but Person A’s claim provides a relatively simple route to empirical refutation while Person B’s claim doesn’t (a single white crow would decisively refute Person A’s claim while a hundred zillion black crows would still be insufficient to refute Person B’s claim, since the future may, for all we know, still bring a white crow). The empirical claims of Christianity are either of the first or second sort. If they are of the first sort, then it is not all that unlikely, at least in principle, that certain people might have acquired evidence that decisively refuted it (short of having some independent reason to think that the existence of white crows is impossible, like square circles for instance). If they are of the second sort, however, you’re right that it seems very unlikely, even in principle, that anyone has acquired any decisive evidence to refute it. I guess my question, then, would be: What sort of empirical claims does the Bible contain: the first or second? If this comment was at all unclear, you can find an extended version of the argument here: http://muckrunner.blogspot.com/2013/10/personal-experience-as-defeater-of.html and also here: http://muckrunner.blogspot.com/2013/10/james-on-achieving-intimacy-with-god.html.

Colby wrote:

If I am thoroughly convinced that God exists and that the claims of the Bible are true it would behoove me to live my life in a certain way, in light of this truth, would it not? In the examples you gave about science being more reliable and how it affects our lives, those are highly empirical examples. We act in those ways (boarding a plane, taking a pill, boarding up windows) because we have personally observed the science involved to be true. You cannot really compare this to something like evolution or the origin of the cosmos.

First of all, just to clarify, I’m not suggesting that we attempt to apply our knowledge about the big bang or evolution to the resolution of practical or moral dilemmas, at least in any direct fashion. To say that science has something to say that bears on our practical and moral lives isn’t the same thing as saying that everything that science says bears on our practical and moral lives.

That being said, I think the parallel between faith in science and religious faith is a lot closer than you recognize. Christians believe things about God that far outrun the limited practical engagements they’ve allegedly had with him in precisely the same way as many of us believe things scientists tell us about the universe that far outrun the limited practical engagements we’ve had with science. The difference, in my mind, is that the level to which we’re allowed to engage with science so as to shore up our confidence in its general reliability (the pills that cure our illnesses, the planes that carry us safely to our destination, the chemistry experiments we performed in high school, etc.) is much greater than that to which we’re allowed to engage with God so as to shore up reliability in his general reliability.

It is at a relatively few points of practical convergence that we form our first notions of both science’s as well as God’s reliability in the things that we still have not experienced or confirmed for ourselves. Even so, it would seem curious to me if someone who had once experienced the effectiveness of science to cure a virtually invisible illness, or land an automated motor vehicle on the surface of Mars and later retrieve it, still felt justified in their skepticism that science really knows about human physiology or interplanetary travel. (Apparently they know enough to be effective in this wide range of practical applications, right?) The science behind the things we’ve seen and benefited from isn’t necessarily any more or less sophisticated than the science behind the things we haven’t, so what is it exactly that’s supposed to justify their skepticism?

What is even more curious to me is that the skepticism that Christians so often bring into their engagements with science is largely absent from their religious lives, despite being plagued by the same uncertainty (and arguably much more). Granted, you don’t see many Christians these days marching 300 men out against armies of tens of thousand, but there’s hardly a Christian out there who won’t profess to believing, for instance, that his soul will survive his bodily death – and it’s hard for me to imagine an experience one could possibly have that could support that belief.

So how is it that the same individuals who are willing to stake their eternity on such relatively paltry evidence can simultaneously feel justified in their skepticism toward science, the proofs of which permeate their daily lives? The most likely explanation in my mind, as I’ve suggested before, is that we simply require fewer evidences to justify a belief in a prospect that we find emotionally satisfying or practically useful than we would to justify a belief in a prospect that that rather threatens these interests. As William James puts it, we “believe in the line of our needs.”[6]

Not just Christians, but human beings generally, exhibit strong biases in the way they allocate their trust. My personal opinion is that Christians should spend less time trying to deny that this fact has anything to do with their personal faith, and more time thinking about why we’re inclined in these ways to begin with. Maybe somewhere in that explanation is also a possible justification, one that is not only more honest, but also more compelling than the one they presently rely one.

Colby wrote:

I would also argue that many people can and do claim an experience accurate to what the Bible purports, even if you personally cannot say the same. I wouldn’t say that one person’s experience differing from yours can be attributed to their greater ability to “rationalize away” their disappointments. I don’t consider my own convictions about the truth of scripture to be so un-substantive and unfounded so as to be so easily discarded or explained away in such simplistic terms.

This goes back to the black crow comment from before. I think this is an important point, so I’ll make it again: If everyone else’s experience were to amount to something like a hundred zillion black crows, and mine a single white crow, then my experience would have more direct bearing than all of theirs on the question of whether all crows are black – not because I’m more special or intelligent than they are, but simply because a hundred zillion black crows can’t prove decisively that all crows are black, but one white crow can decisively refute it. I understand Christianity to contain at least some portion of claims similar in form to “all crows are black,” i.e., claims of universal scope, such that one experience that fails to conform to it effectively refutes it. In principle, therefore, I see no problem with someone – myself included – claiming that their personal experiences not simply differ from, but positively refute, the collective experiences of all Christians.

The fact that so many Christians continue to believe would not particularly surprising if the experiences that the Biblical claims discounted (the white crows, so to speak) were sufficiently infrequent or inconspicuous as to avoid detection by the majority of individuals. On that note, it should be clear that we don’t need to assume Christians to be unusually self-deluded or intellectually unscrupulous to explain the fact that so many of them continue to believe what they do. On the contrary, my point is precisely that Christians are not exceptional in any way whatsoever, and neither, necessarily, are those who may believe they’ve refuted Christianity. In principle, someone could arrive at either destination either through blind wandering or deliberate searching (although, depending on how many white crows were really out there, you might have to start wondering a little about how hard those who still insisted all crows were black were really looking.)

Colby wrote:

You may be right that something like scripture does have a more aesthetic appeal, but I don’t think that this means a religion’s adherents are inherently less informed…Most atheists (the “masses” that love Richard Dawkins) are no more informed about their worldview than the average Christian…I believe it is fallacious to say that religions have something that is intrinsically more appealing to the “masses” over an atheistic worldview, which is more rational or evidential—this is not the case. Would you disagree with this?

I agree that the average atheist is probably equally uninformed about his/her own beliefs as is the average Christian. I disagree, though, that the two worldviews have equal aesthetic and emotional appeal, or exert an equivalent influence over our beliefs: the religious worldview enjoys a significant advantage on both fronts, I think. This is an empirical question, though, so no use in arguing about it without the relevant data in front of us.

Q6C & Q7C – 




Colby wrote:

How do you measure “happiness?” It cannot be objectively measured. This is, of course, the fundamental flaw of Utilitarianism.

First of all, why think that happiness can’t be objectively measured? It’s not absurd to think that certain neurotransmitters like endorphins, serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin might one day be measured as proxies for happiness. We already actively manipulate people’s emotions through chemical intervention, so why shouldn’t we also be able to measure these same chemicals to provide information about people’s present emotional state?

Second of all, even if happiness itself is an objective matter, why insist on measuring happiness via objective means? People’s subjective self-reports might also provide some meaningful insight into what makes people objectively happy. I happen to have three different clinical tests alleging to measure happiness in my notebook as we speak, one of which makes use of a “Subjective Happiness Scale” (SHS).[7] Meanwhile, the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network apparently feels confident enough in the meaningfulness of subjective self-reports as to rank the various countries of the world according to how happy they are, and declare one of them “Happiest Country on Earth” (fyi, last year Denmark won the prize).[8] The small country of Bhutan in South Asia even has a Gross National Happiness (GNH) index alongside that used to measure Gross Domestic Product (GDP).[9]

Colby wrote:

Even if it were possible to measure “happiness,” this is in and of itself subjective. To the sociopath or psychopath, there may be an extreme level of happiness associated with killing another person or with even reducing the happiness of another person. Each person may derive a certain level of pleasure from different actions, which can never be measured objectively.

Actually, from what I understand, the actions of psychopaths are better explained with reference to (1) their lack of capacity for empathy, coupled with (2) a non-functioning fear response, which would otherwise make them averse to violent or gruesome actions, as well as to the consequences of those actions (which they seem either unable to anticipate, or undeterred by). In other words, they don’t do those things because it makes them happy. In fact, I think I read that psychopaths lack a robust emotional life altogether (something wrong with their limbic brain, I think), which may simply count them out from moral consideration altogether (or at least equal moral consideration, since their capacity for happiness would presumably be lower than the average person). So we may be able to just sidestep this problem altogether: sociopaths are either incapable of genuine happiness (0 points), or their happiness doesn’t explain the unpleasant things they do (in which case, forbidding them to do those things wouldn’t negatively affect their happiness). If it were happiness that was at issue, however, then maybe what is best (i.e., morally right) for the rest of us is simply to disassociate ourselves from psychopaths, e.g., isolate them in mental care facilities, or even eradicate them. Sounds cruel, I know, but hey…

Colby wrote:

It is not possible to determine all possible outcomes and therefore the total level of happiness resulting from one action or another. This would require seeing and knowing the future, or having some advanced technology (as you mention), which will never exist.

You’re right that predictions regarding which of a variety of alternative choices will maximize total happiness are problematic: Utilitarianism (and interest-based ethical theories generally) provides a much more effective tool for evaluating choices already made than it does prescribing what future course of action to take. But even when we have no certain answer, there are still better and worse guesses. The account I proposed merely claims that we are most likely to arrive at good guesses by a more well-informed understanding of the empirical facts of human nature and the probable consequences of their various actions. Besides, to be of value, it doesn’t need to be perfect; it just needs to be better than what we have.

Colby wrote:

“Happiness” is probably not the ultimate good to which we are aspiring. Something like human “need” may be a stronger factor here. For example, if the moral issue we are dealing with is abortion, the amount of pleasure certain people may acquire in the long run from having performed the act says nothing about how this may affect humanity in general in the long run. For example, if abortion were legal at all times and under all circumstances, this may result in a large reduction in the human population overtime if it becomes the norm. This may also contribute to an overall disinterest in human preservation, resulting in apathy as it relates to other plights of humanity such as world hunger, war, etc. Those relate to our basic “needs” for survival both individually and collectively. Measuring something like happiness cannot possibly address these types of issues.

Ok, let me see if I understand your concern correctly: Unregulated abortion à rampant abortion à large reduction in human population à disinterest in human preservation and general apathy à world hunger, war, etc. Yikes, Colby, no wonder you’ve got such strong feelings about abortion! First of all, I have to say that I find your hypothetical scenario highly unlikely. Even so, if unregulated abortion did lead to all the horrors you mentioned, then my account would simply conclude that it was not the morally correct one – not because it resulted in the lack of our basic needs, but because it diminished our collective wellbeing. But remember that I defined happiness in terms of satisfying an individual’s fundamental interests, which besides wants, hopes, and desires, also included needs. (Probably a better term than “happiness” would be Aristotle’s “eudaimonia,” or flourishing. I just didn’t want to scare anyone off.) But needs is kind of a slippery concept in relation to human happiness and morality, because we tend to associate the term so strongly with survival, and morality ranks many values higher than strict survival (for some good examples of this, see Harry Frankfurt’s essay “The Importance of What We Care About”).

Colby wrote:

Part of answering the question of whether or not science can address moral issues is not looking at the hypothetical of what science MIGHT be able to answer if it had all of the right technology, but what science CAN answer now.

At least as relevant to the debate as your question above is the question of what other alternatives we have. Insofar as we’re all still committed to not assuming the thing we’re aiming to prove, namely the divine authorship of the Christian Bible, we need to be careful not to hold science to the standard of an omniscient God. I’m not trying to argue that given the choice between science and God, we should prefer science as our ultimate moral authority. What I’m trying to argue is that given the choice between science and any religious text whose divine authorship is still open to doubt, we should perhaps consider science the best that we’ve got. Rather than the question posed above, then, we should really be asking two questions: first, How does science compare NOW in addressing moral matters compared to our traditional (religious) authorities? (to which I’d answer “pretty well, but needs some work”); and second, How much promise does science have for addressing moral matters in the FUTURE if we continue to develop it compared to our traditional authorities? (to which I’d answer, “very much, I think, and hardly worth comparing to the traditional authorities”).

Don’t get me wrong, I think Christian morality represents a huge advancement from many earlier ethical systems, and the New Testament, at least, is still a half-decent approximation to contemporary morality. But the fatal flaw with most religion-based moral systems, in my assessment, and the reason they’ll never be able to compete with science in moral potential, is their claim to finality or ultimacy. A book containing claims to (capital-T) Truth and (capital-K) Knowledge in an empirical world is tantamount to having an expiration date printed on its cover. Imagine if science were governed by that same tendency, and after the chapter on Newtonian physics, we just decided to write “The End” (“and a curse be on anyone who adds or takes away from the words of this book”). Morality is a science, as far as I’m concerned: the science of human wellbeing. And like any science, when it stops growing and changing, it dies in both relevance and credibility. As I’ve tried to argue before, we don’t need facts to ground morality, and we don’t need knowledge to ground authority. On the contrary, in an empirical world in which facts are always provisional and open to future revision, a presumption of knowledge can only undermine someone’s credibility and moral authority. The modesty and conservatism of science are the reason both for its present inadequacies in addressing moral issues as well as for its unique promise for being able to address these issues in the future. The domain of morality needs a scientific ethos, in my opinion, and what better than science itself to provide it?

Colby wrote:

Something like the Bible or even philosophy can look at [moral] issues from a subjective standpoint because that is what they claim to do, but if science only has facts, I still cannot see how it addresses these issues. Describing empirical facts does not tell us what to do with those empirical facts.

First of all, the interpretation of Christianity that I’m most familiar also teaches that morality is objective, i.e., that it is grounded either in God’s command or his nature. Many theists even think that the objectivity of morality entails God’s existence, and therefore serves as one of the proofs of his existence (this is the so-called moral argument for God). So why is the objectivity of morality non-problematic when it’s found in Christianity, but problematic when it’s found in naturalism? Could you clarify how it is that the “subjective standpoint” is supposed to figure into Christianity’s supposed ability to address moral issues?

Regardless, the reason I believe that science can address moral issues is because some of the facts it deals with are facts about human beings. In other words, subjects, themselves, represent huge reservoirs of objective facts. What Colby likes and doesn’t like, what makes Colby happy and unhappy, what are Colby’s hopes and fears, are all objective facts, i.e., facts whose existence and particular properties don’t depend on Colby’s thoughts about them (proved by the fact that Colby can have false beliefs about these things). Probably the majority of these facts are fixed to a large extent by Colby’s genetics. Many of those that remain unfixed by genetics probably become fixed soon after, either during fetal development or in the first years of Colby’s childhood. The point is that, if some of Colby’s preferences exist as they do independently of Colby’s thoughts about them, then they are by definition – or certain definitions, I should say – objective.

Of course, being objective doesn’t in itself make something the appropriate subject of scientific inquiry: it must also be empirical, i.e., perceptible through the five senses. God’s existence is supposed to be an objective fact, but not an empirical one, since God qua spirit is not perceptible through the five senses.[10] God therefore falls outside the domain of science. Likewise, 2+2=4 is considered objectively true, but its truth is analytical, not empirical. So my view holds that some of people’s preferences are not only objective, but also empirical. I’m less confident in this claim than I am the first one, but naturalistic reductionist views hold that mental states are reducible to (physical) brain states, which provides a plausible explanation of how the innate preferences and interests of human beings might serve as suitable subjects of scientific inquiry.

The last detail of my view is just that morality is grounded in these objective, empirical facts about human beings, i.e., that moral imperatives derive from the innate preferences and interests of individual human beings.

So, in summary, the reason that science can address moral issues is, on my view, because:

(1)  If x is both objective and empirical, then x falls within the domain of science and science can address x.

(2)  The innate preferences and interests of human beings are objective

(3)  The innate preferences and interests of human beings are empirical

(4)  Morality is grounded in the innate preference and interests of individual human beings

(5)  Therefore, science can address morality

Anyway, I don’t want to give the impression that your objection isn’t a serious one – it is, and a lot of people share it. Nonetheless, I’m confident that it can be overcome, and I’ve made at least a few attempts to show how. If the one above doesn’t work for you, maybe you can try reading one of my more extended attempts here: http://muckrunner.blogspot.com/2013/10/ethical-statements-are-ordinary.html. I also make an argument similar to this one in my paper “A Volitional Account of Moral Obligations,” which you can find here: http://muckrunner.blogspot.com/2011/07/volitional-analysis-of-moral.html.

Colby wrote:

Can you perhaps provide a different example or put things more in perspective using the example I gave (abortion) and explain how science can answer this from a moral perspective based on what we can do NOW? Actually, if possible, please expound on the abortion example. I think that is a good example because it is a polarizing issue and has major moral implications.

Sure, I can give it a shot. Unfortunately, it’s going to have to wait, because it’s going to require a lot of work. Besides, I think I’ve already worn everyone out with this response, so I don’t want to press my luck any farther.

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[1] Visit http://www.atg.wa.gov/page.aspx?id=2354.

[2] It’s often said that our desires do not seek to represent the world as it is, as our beliefs aim to do, but rather as we would like for it be. See, e.g., Michael Smith, The Moral Problem, (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 1994), 115.

[3] See Matthew C. Bagger’s article “The Ethics of Belief: Descartes and the Augustinian Tradition” in The Journal of Religion, Vol. 82, No. 2 (Apr., 2002), pp. 205-24 for a good discussion on this subject.

[4] The Will to Believe, 36.

[5] I agree with Kierkegaard that imagination and will are much more important. See Training in Christianity, 168-172; Fear and Trembling, 16-17.

[6] The Will to Believe, 36.

[7] Visit http://www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu/subjectivehappinessscale.pdf.

[8] Visit http://unsdsn.org/happiness/.

[9] Visit http://www.grossnationalhappiness.com/ and http://www.gnhbhutan.org/.

[10] John 4:24, Col. 1:15, etc.