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.