The Dangers of Flawed Arguments (Naturalism, Cosmology, and the Bible)

Amber Shomo asked for my response to http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/atheismintro.html

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Since Rich Deem (the author) conveniently splits his argument into three components, I will share my views in a similar way.

Section 1: The Philosophy of Skepticism and Naturalism

The very first thing that jumped out at me on this page, was Deems lack of subtlety. He is blurring the lines between many different philosophies, and the result is an easily attacked straw man. I figured it would be best to try and condense his argument into some key statements, rather than just give a general response. This will probably create a longer email though, so we'll see how much stamina I have :)

"Most skeptics take pride in their intellectual ability and like to think that they have no 'beliefs'."

Let me start off by saying that the words belief and faith are NOT interchangeable. Belief is the rather benign act of formulating conclusions based on the available information. These conclusions range from the grand (the theory of relativity) to the mundane (which route to take home from work?). The human brain is continually creating and modifying beliefs to suit the stream of information flowing into it. Since we can never know everything at all times, we are forced to make temporary conclusions based off of what seems most likely. Faith, on the other hand, is explicitly defined as a "belief that is not based on proof" (dictionary.com). Faith is the conscious decision to formulate a conclusion despite the absence of evidence. Unlike traditional beliefs, faith-based beliefs are not subject to continual adjustments and modifications from new information. Since evidence was not required to establish the faith, evidence cannot dethrone it either. A skeptic, on the other hand, holds beliefs only as far as they are necessary to test and refine a viewpoint. These beliefs grow stronger and weaker as new evidence presents itself.

"[for the skeptic] first and foremost is that all beliefs are based upon observational evidence...skeptics must rely completely upon physical evidence. The second principle is that skeptics must be logically consistent at all times. In other words, a skeptic may not believe something to be true if it is contradicted by observational evidence. Most skeptics who are atheists believe that all phenomena have naturalistic causes."

This is the core of his argument, and it is also where his missteps become most obvious. Before jumping in though, it is necessary to define some terms which Deem jumbled together under the banner of 'skeptic' (for the sake of neutrality, these have been pulled these from Wikipedia):

Empiricism - The theory emphasizes the role of experience and evidence, especially sensory perception, in the formation of ideas, while discounting the notion of innate ideas.

Logical Positivism - A school of philosophy that combines empiricism, the idea that observational evidence is indispensable for knowledge of the world, with a version of rationalism incorporating mathematical and logico-linguistic constructs and deductions in epistemology.
Methodological Naturalism - The view that the scientific method (hypothesize, predict, test, and repeat) is the only effective way to investigate reality.
Metaphysical Naturalism - The belief that the natural world (i.e. the universe) is all that exists and, therefore, nothing supernatural exists.

Since we are clarifying terms, it is best to start off by replacing the fuzzy word skeptic with the much more precise word empiricist. Deem starts by asserting that the empiricist feels that "all beliefs are based upon observable evidence". This is not a bad statement in and of itself, but the absolutism of the word all requires a response. While an empiricist would certainly give much more weight to evidence-based beliefs, that does not come at the cost of ignoring faith-based ones. Deem paints over this group with a rather broad brush, failing to notice the subtlety of thought that this philosophy proposes. I would even argue that many thoughtful religious people are empiricists at heart, preferring to leave as little up to faith as possible.

Deem then states that "skeptics must be logically consistent at all times". Whether or not he is aware of it, Deem just defined an offshoot of Empiricism called Logical Positivism. LP takes empiricism one step further by demanding a rational and logically correlated explanation for everything in existence. While Empiricism allows for the possibility of metaphysical explanations, Logical Positivism does not. LP has the very major problem though of requiring absolute logical consistency, which is almost impossible to achieve with any reasonable certainty. Every time a question is answered, it only brings up the question of the origins of the answer itself. This regression of logic has no end, and it is why LP died out as a mainstream philosophy in the 50s. For Deem to try and represent all Empiricists as Logical Positivists is a gross oversimplification.

Continuing on, Deem switches from skeptics in general to atheists more specifically. Atheists, he argues, "believe that all phenomena have naturalistic causes". Notice that he, once again, lumps naturalists into a single group. There is a major difference between Methodological Naturalism, which is more of an operational form of Empiricism, and Metaphysical Naturalism, which is more of a belief structure. Deem seems to be satisfied with simply leaving this distinction unaddressed.

To summarize, Deem used the general term skeptic to represent Empiricists, which he then misrepresents as Logical Positivists, forces them then to be Naturalists, and then boxes them into Metaphysical Naturalism. What he is really saying is that all Logical Positivists who happen to also be Metaphysical Naturalists have some logical inconsistencies in their belief structure. I agree, but I don't see how this applies to 'skeptics' or 'atheists' in general. To say that his argument lacks subtlety is putting it mildly.

"So despite the lack of observational evidence for a naturalistic cause for the universe, the strong atheist believes that the universe has a naturalistic cause and that there is no god, contradicting the tenet that all beliefs should be based upon observational evidence."

This is Deem's concluding statement on page one, and I'm pretty sure you can see where he goes wrong. Belief is a fundamental human characteristic, much like decision making, observation, memory, and any number of brain activities. The act of belief is not incompatible with ANY human worldview, because holding a worldview at all requires the brain to establish a framework of beliefs with which to differentiate. This is another example of confusing the faith and belief, and I only point it out to illustrate how easy it is to hijack language to falsely bolster an argument.

Now if, once again, we correct Deem and insert the word faith into the quote above, it is still important to notice the term strong atheist. The primary difference between a strong atheist and a weak atheist is one of certainty. A strong atheist will make the declaration "there is no god" with the same certainty that a strong theist will claim that there is one. A weak atheist will state the belief that "there is most likely no god" and leave the door open to the possibility that they are wrong. Strong belief in improvable things always requires faith (non-evidence-based beliefs), and this holds true for both theism and atheism alike. As with all things though, the majority of people on both sides fall into the weak category. Intellectually honest people are open minded enough to recognize the possibility that they might be wrong, even if that possibility shrinks with time and study. Anyone close minded enough to state with certainty that which they cannot prove, is not someone who is likely to have a well developed worldview. Most atheists believe that god does not exist because that is what the culmination of evidence has led them to believe. These are not leaps of faith, but temporary conclusions (beliefs) that have to be made while the deep questions like the origins of the universe remain outside the grasp of humanity. Deem's tendency to gloss over such nuances shines through once again.

In the end, Deem seems to be satisfied with taking an extreme of an extreme and using that to represent all skeptics. This is a classic example of a straw man argument, and he doesn't make an honest attempt to address the realistic differences between believers and non-believers. He did bring up some science in this section, but those were almost off to the side of his main point. Even when stipulating his point of a caused universe, which is far from certain, that does not create any logical inconsistencies in the atheistic worldview. Everyone has to formulate beliefs from a limited amount of knowledge, and atheists are not immune to this. The only difference between an atheist and a theist is the willingness to accept faith-based beliefs, not in the willingness to accept belief itself.

Section 2: The Cosmological Argument

Mixing philosophy and science is always a dangerous proposition. Science values what can be proven via experimentation, while philosophy values what can be rationalized via critical thinking (forgive the oversimplification). While both are required to ponder any of the 'deep questions' of life, combining these two schools should always be handled with care. Deem presents some of the more common arguments that Creationists use to point to a designer, and rather than talk about each of those individually, it seems better to address the approach in general.

One of the big differences between science and religion is in how each approaches truth. Science starts with a blank slate and tries to explain the natural world through an iterative process of gradual observation and testing (the Scientific Method). Religion, on the other hand, assumes it already knows the truth and works backwards to reconcile observation into that truth. This is called a priori reasoning, of which Deem's cosmological argument is just another example. There are certainly things about our universe that modern science cannot explain. Science takes this as an opportunity to hypnotize (the multiverse theory, for instance) and test with the ultimate goal of learning the real truth. A priori arguments seize on this opportunity to insinuate their own particular truth into the mix. The argument goes, "if science cannot provide a good explanation (i.e. the origins of existence), then god MUST be the only answer". This is sometimes referred to as the 'god of the gaps' fallacy, and it simply isn't a logical way to demonstrate truth.

The 'god of the gaps' fallacy was seized upon by middle-brow Creationists looking to hijack science to further their agenda. Most intellectually honest apologists recognize the futility of such an argument, and reject this kind of reasoning outright. John Lennox, an Oxford mathematician and Christian author, called these the bad gaps. These are gaps that science will most likely find answers to in the future, therefore it is foolish to base a belief structure off of them. He goes on to point out that the real gaps come from the philosophical questions of purpose, consciousness, morality, and the spirit. He is wise to deflect the arguments away from science and toward schools of thought less bound to empiricism. While observation can reveal the nature of god, only these kinds of philosophical questions can give any sort of meaning to it all. The trick is, as mentioned before, figuring out how to mix the two together to reveal what is genuine.

Section 3: Why Christianity?

Hoo boy, this section is going to take some unraveling. Deem entitled section 3 as 'Why Christianity?', but it seems that only a small portion of the points are directed at differentiating Christianity from other religions. In an effort to organize this jumble of concepts, my response will be broken out into three subsections.

Can Religious Claims be Tested?

In this initial section, Deem quotes the late Carl Sagan in a 1985 lecture. Sagan is someone I admire quite a bit, so it is somewhat irksome to see his quote used in such an improper way.

"what happened before that [Big-Bang]? There are two views. One is 'Don’t ask that question,' which is very close to saying that God did it...[the other] is an experimental question...and I stress that this is very different from the usual theological approach, where there is never an experiment that can be performed to test out any contentious issue. Here there is one. So we don’t have to make judgments now. All we have to do is maintain some tolerance for ambiguity until the data are in, which may happen in a decade or less." -Carl Sagan


Deem goes on to argue that since the theory of an oscillating infinite universe is debunked (not totally true, but true enough for this context), that the ONLY other explanation is god. If there is a more starkly stated example of the 'god of the gaps' fallacy, I haven't seen it. Deem's own words play this out:

"Therefore, it makes absolutely no sense that the universe is eternal with the characteristics that we observe. We are left with Sagan's first alternative - God did it"

Notice the either/or absolutism here? Deem states that if the one singular explanation that Sagan proposed is not proven to be true, then god is the only other possible alternative. Forgetting the fact that Sagan likened god to not even ask the question in the first place, Deem is missing the much larger point. He goes to great lengths in the previous section to demonstrate the massive improbability and complexity of the natural world. With all of this complexity and all of these unknowns, how can Deem possibility reduce such a sophisticated question like the origins of existence down to a simple either/or scenario? Real life isn't that simple, and the wonders of nature are even less simple than that.

All of this was to try and point out that religious claims are testable by science. Nothing in his previous arguments really pushed this argument forward, but the concept is not a bad one. Regardless of what claims are being made, empirical observation and testing should always be brought to bear. Religion is notorious for being immune to reason though, so this noble effort often proves useless.


The Bible Makes Valid Scientific Predictions


This subsection really should have been left off of Deem's site, as it weakens his general credibility. The proposition that the myths and legends of the Bible make actual scientific claims is laughable. This is an example of cherry-picking a very small number of passages and combining them with the benefit of hindsight. If the Bible is going to be held up as some sort of scientific oracle, then it must be taken as an entire book. I doubt that Deem is ready to argue the scientific validity of staffs turning into snakes, the sun standing still in the sky, virgin birth, walking on water, or any countless numbers of absurd Biblical notions. Most believers will call these miracles and accept them as a matter of faith. Whatever the belief though, these claims cannot be referred to as scientifically valid.

Why Atheism (Naturalism) is not an Adequate Worldview

I feel conflicted as to whether or not it is worth my time to refute his claims here. Unlike the previous sections, which dealt with science and philosophy somewhat dispassionately, Deem apparently wants to end this paper with an irrational and biased attack on naturalism. He continually harps on the purposeless and pointless nature of the atheistic worldview. He moans about how we are not special, we do not have a higher purpose, and that we only exist for one lifetime. How any of these weigh on the truth value of naturalism as a philosophy is completely beyond me. Truth is truth regardless of how it makes us feel, and not liking something isn't a valid argument against its validity. Is his Christian moral viewpoint based off of similarly (but opposite) weak arguments? Does he believe in god simply because it feels good to do so? This is an incredibly fickle means with which to judge, and is subject to far more influences than the moral relativism that he accused natrualism of. There are many more biased statements he makes in this section that are simply not true, but my previous point was the only one worth making. If you want to have a real conversation about the naturalistic foundations of morality, we can have that in parallel.

Well that about wraps up my first thoughts on those three articles. I apologize if I sounded overly critical of Deem, but I really don't like people who try to argue by twisting language and hiding behind misconceptions. I'm not accusing him of doing this overtly, but his broad generalizations confuse what would otherwise be a productive conversation.

So tell me what you think! I was kind of writing this without any context as to what you personally found compelling, so I'm interested to read your thoughts.

The Chewning Conversations: Jesus, Scripture, Creation, etc.

This is the archive of a series of email conversations that Matt Chewning and I had over the span of a few weeks. In this particular exchange, he made the first points and then I responded. For the sake of balance, I would recommend reading his post first, and then my reponse afterwards.

In response to

Conversation w/ an Agnostic: Part 1 Creator

Conversation w/ an Agnostic: Part 2 Revelation
Conversation w/ an Agnostic: Part 3 Historical Evidence
Conversation w/ an Agnostic: Part 4 Prophecy
Conversation w/ an Agnostic: Part 5 Jesus

Conversation w/ an Agnostic: Part 6 It's Personal (A Relationship, not a Religion)
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Matt,

Now onto my general thoughts...Given that you already broke your thoughts out into categories, I will try to group my own responses in a similar manner. I will also ask for a bit of latitude when it comes to some of the assumptions I will make about your viewpoints. I haven't had enough exposure to you to always speak with certainty, so I might be forced to draw an inference or two. Please do not view me as presumptuous and certainly point out those areas where I misconstrue your true beliefs.

Creator:

I have read Lee Strobal's book (The Case for a Creator), so I am familiar with the arguments he lays out there. From the information you provided below, I think it is safe to say that Strobal has had a significant influence over your cosmological viewpoint. Without turning this one point into a review of the book, I would like to start by saying that I was a little disappointed with it's lack of depth. He jumps from topic to topic so quickly that I never felt like I was getting the whole story. Once I actually started researching the science of his claims, I found that there was much more going on than Strobal ever lets on. Rather than pursue real science, The Case for a Creator seems to be happy with simply creating a sense of awe and amazement in the reader. I certainly felt this myself, and it was clear from your "it blows my mind" comment that you felt similarly. In the light of this feeling, existence seems so fantastic and improbable that it is difficult to imagine any answer other than god. This is where it is so very important to keep your critical thinking skills sharp. The argument above can only flourish in an environment of ignorance simply because it is the lack of understanding that produces the feeling of affirmation. A caveman would "have his mind blown" by observing any number of mundane objects we take for granted everyday. A cigarette lighter, for instance, might be imparted some divine qualities (perhaps from a fire god) simply because the primitive does not understand the simple natural and mechanical properties that produce the fire. There are still plenty of things that remain beyond the reach of scientific understanding, and it is in these gaps that modern humans continue to impart divine explanations. Rather than providing evidence to construct a the positive case for god, this logical fallacy simply asserts that god is the de facto answer to everything.

Now I did want to take a bit of a breath there and quickly address the very real number of scientists who hold both a scientific and theistic worldview. Many will point to this as evidence that Steven Jay Gould's NOMA philosophy (Non-Overlapping Magisteria, the theory that science and religion occupy two mutually exclusive spheres of knowledge) is not true. They say that these scientists have reconciled two worldviews such that their science encourages their religious beliefs. I think your quote from Allan Sandage sums up this particular philosophy quite nicely. My personal view is that faith and reason are fundamentally incompatible simply because faith requires belief without evidence. You can still form some of your spiritual beliefs through rational thought, but you will eventually have to yield to the unforgiving force of irrational (non-evidence based) faith. I believe that these scientists who say they can be both are simply not attempting to reconcile the leaps that their faith makes them take.

Of course the entire sum of my cognitive faculties cannot find fault with the beer argument. Perhaps that is because it only takes a few of them to make all arguments sound alike :-)

Revelation:

With regards to my view of the Bible as a book, I have no problem accepting most of what you put forward. The Bible is certainly an important document and it has flourished over many thousands of years and been used by many different societies to setup many different cultures. The Bible does not have to be divine, mystical, or anything else for me to confidently say that it is a book of significance. To take your line of questioning to it's logical next step, I have deliberately tried to avoid drawing any conclusions about the Bible's message. Since you need to believe in the existence of the god of Abraham for the Bible's message to have any real meaning, it seems that my energies are best focused on answering more basic questions. I have dabbled in some studies around things like the historical accuracy of the Bible and the historical likelihood of the Jesus story (the supernatural claims, not his existence as a person), but I wouldn't say that I've plumbed the depths of the subject by any stretch of the imagination.

Since you brought it up, I did want to voice a small complaint that I have when it comes to historical arguments for the literal accuracy of the Bible. I have no problem with the four premises to prove historicity presented in the link you provided although I can imagine more criterion that didn't make his list. Stipulating that those four points (eyewitnesses, corroboration, hostile testimony, maintained through death) are enough to go on, I still feel that the evidence presented is simply not enough. The key thing that is continually overlooked with regards to the authors of the Bible is that they are biased sources. I am not implying that they sought out to mislead people, but I do feel that the message they were trying to communicate was paramount and the hard historical facts were not. The Bible is full of stories that are not meant to be taken literally, and I think that people are all over the map when it comes to where they personally draw this line. The fictional parts of the Bible have many different names like parables, poetry, psalms, but whatever you choose to call them, you do not call them historical. It would be like reading Harry Potter 2000 years from now and claiming that it provides an accurate depiction of life in London. While certain aspects of it are based in reality, the story as a whole is entirely fictitious. It is not reasonable to think that Jesus had no father (how was his lineage traced to David, by the way, if he had no father?), that he walked on water, or that he rose from the dead. These are fantastical claims that require more than a two thousand year old document to prove. If a 2100 year old document claimed that Cesar crossed the Rubicon on a flaming T-Rex, you would demand much more convincing evidence before accepting that as fact. The Bible makes far more improbable claims, and highly improbable things are extraordinarily difficult to prove without direct evidence.

Historical Evidence:

The only way that the number of authors would be interesting is if some of the ones separated by distance wrote mutually-reinforcing documents at the exact same time. This is almost impossible to determine with any degree of accuracy though. What we are left with is the most likely scenario that the cumulative authors of the Bible shared similar cultural backgrounds and similar historical myths. The Jews are ushered onto main stage of the Bible relatively quickly, so I think it is safe to assume that much of the old testament was written by Jews of similar beliefs and traditions. Since their backgrounds were similar and they were all writing about the current state of affairs for their particular culture, it is not too crazy to think that their stories fit together. I also wouldn't discount the number of potential edits and modifications that some of the older documents went through as well. There are excellent 1900 year old manuscripts that helped refine our modern new testament, but that is still thousands of years after much of the old testament was written. There is also the nasty little list of books that were excluded from the modern Bible because the church did not agree with their message. These were just as old and just as authentic as the canonical books, but they had Jesus doing odd things that didn't fit with the consistent message that the church was trying to present. I'm not crying conspiracy here, I'm just saying that the bible evolved into it's current state based off of many thousands of years of trasnscriptions, translations, additions, subtractions, and corrections. To ignore all of this is to vastly oversimplify the lineage of the Bible we have today.

Prophecy:

The new testament authors were well aware of old testament prophecy, and it would have been a trivial task for them to write the Jesus story to "fulfill" them. This is simply the most reasonable scenario to explain the connections between the old and new testaments. If you choose to believe the unlikely truth that Jesus' life was the literal fulfillment of prophecy, you are doing so based off of faith and not evidence.


Manuscripts:
I think I covered this before, but I have no problem accepting that the Bible is a unique document, and the number of manuscripts is just one of those aspects.

As far as my claims to know the nature of an omniscient deity, I probably should clarify that. If you presume the existence of god, then of course you have to accept that he can arbitrarily do anything he wants whenever he wants. This fact, while unavoidable, is also entirely irrelevant. The god of the Christian Church has a defined and predictable nature. He setup the laws of physics, fine tuned creation, manifested a highly ordered universe, and did so through the unimaginably elegant forces of evolution and the big bang. If god exists, his nature is clearly reflected in the care he used to construct reality (as you argued vis-à-vis cosmology). Doesn't it seem somewhat contradictory that a god capable of such brilliant elegance choose a comparatively ham-hocked vehicle such as the Bible for his revelation? If the only response to this is that we can't understand god's plan, then I can only conclude that god is inconsistent in his nature. If god is not consistent, then how can any religion claim to have an established dogma for communicating, appeasing, and understanding god? It doesn't seem to me that you can have it both ways.


Jesus:
I completely agree with C.S. Lewis on this point. Jesus does indeed demand an absolutist opinion, as he leaves no room for half measures. This is another one of those areas that I have not researched with any degree of detail. There is certainly a good argument to be made that you can work from Jesus up to god's existence, but I'm choosing to go from god-down at the moment. My primary reason for this is because I do not want to make the assumption that the Christian revelation of god is the correct one. If I can be reasonably sure that god exists, I will then start to look at the further likelihood that any particular religion is actually correct.


Q: For you, which changed first, your views, perceptions, and beliefs in God, or your rebellion against your original beliefs?
I don't think I can honestly answer that question, because I'm not sure I ever really had views about god. It was just one of those things I never bothered to reconcile in my mind, and it wasn't until recently that I cared enough to take a position one way or the other. Once I thought about my own beliefs, I came to the realization that I had nothing more than a vestigial loyalty to the religious exposure of my youth.


Etcetera:
I will freely admit that I tend to air on the side of rationalism. There are strengths and weaknesses with this philosophy as there are with all philosophies, but I'm not going to fight my nature. The best I can do is try and recognise where my blind spots are and compensate as best as I can.

I understand the analogy you are using with regards to your personal relationship with god. I'll even take it one step further and say that I can appreciate the power that a relationship can have to make big doubts seem smaller. If your relationship is truly as you say it is, then it is a wonderful thing. If you are in a one-way relationship with an imaginary friend though, the entire edifice of your case falls down around you. This is why evidence, no matter how tough it is to come by, is so valuable in my book. You can't tear down something if it is a brute fact, and a case build on a sound foundation is much more likely to stand.

My ultimate goal is not to prove or disprove god. I am not a philosopher nor am I more capable than the countless others that have come before me seeking to do the exact same thing. What I need to do is surround myself with information from many schools of thought and across many different disciplines. I need to let that information flow through me and round out the edges of my perceptions. As this gradual exploration continues to shape me, it will gently push me in whatever direction I need to go. I can't force it and I can't be in the drivers seat on this one. The worst thing I could try and do is set some sort of artificial criterion to signify a decision point. I'll know when I've arrived at truth and I'm happy taking as long as I need to get there.