The Greatest Intellectual Dishonesty Of Religious Believers

I was just watching a documentary about Catholic history, and I was thinking about how so much of early Catholic belief was pulled from someone's ass. Indeed, after Augustine, and even a bit before him, difficulties in reaching conclusions from scripture alone resulted in the generally-accepted practice of determining doctrine from the works of interpreters. As such, we are in our current bizarre situation, where the vast majority of Christian dogma cannot be found in any gospels or scrolls.

For my part, the point of greatest WTF, and indeed the point of greatest intellectual dishonesty, lies with the learned members of the church who rabidly research church history, and thus admit the truth of the history, yet seem to ignore the inconsistency inherent to this. To wit, if one accepts the history of the church, they must accept that beliefs and behaviors have changed and evolved, existed before the church, and will likely exist after the church has faded. Indeed, they must accept that the church will likely fade.

How can one's beliefs be timeless and be true, if they were different in the past? To me, it is impossible. If an eternal truth is one way today, then it must have been the same in the past, and will be the same in the future. Admitting the evolution of the truth negates its status as true, at least as regards this situation.

For the average church-goer, my criticism doesn't much apply. Many of them are unaware of the history of their own church, and are even less aware of obscure theological conflicts like the "mystery" of the Trinity. Since their beliefs are nebulous and undefined, there is no conflict, and thus no intellectual shenanigans. But the hypocritical dishonesty necessary to accept the evolution of one's own dogma while still asserting the truth of that dogma is almost beyond my ability to understand.

Justification For Life

In everyday life, there are really only three philosophical issues with which people are concerned and should be concerned: God, ethics, and justification.

Other more esoteric concepts are of less importance. For example, the meaning of life. It gets discussed all the time, but what good does it actually do for us when we go to the store for milk?

Ethics is critical because right and wrong are central to our actions involving other people. We do what's right and shun what's wrong. Thus, those two adjectives are REALLY important to define.

Justification is important because we have to understand the reasons behind our actions. My dad will frequently be heard saying that the most important things in life are knowing who you are, what you're doing, and why you're doing it.

Those first two parts sound simple but are really tough. Importantly, I also think that a person who completely lacks those first two parts can bumble happily through life. But why you're doing something is so important. If you don't understand that part, your actions are chaotic. Anything can happen because you don't grasp the motivations of your actions. You are a slave to your own impulses.

Justification allows us to semi-quantify our motivations. God is the complete abdication of justification. There is no philosophically strong way to rely on God as a way to explain our actions. It is lazy justification.

That's where the disconnect between religion and science lies. A religious person can easily be a scientist, but they cannot fully believe in the precepts of analysis and justification since a critical part of their life is predicated on something that is totally devoid of justification.

That is my answer to those who argue that I should simply leave people alone. That religion has a small effect on people's everyday life, and that they would act and be basically the same person with or without religion.

That's entirely possible, but it's also possible that people would be different. No, I think the question of God is critical and that people would in fact be different, and be different for the better. This study drives home the degree to which people rely on God for either direction or justification for actions.

God is important. These people are directing their lives and having an effect on society and those around them based on a philosophically baseless belief! So rarely does philosophy come into the average person's life, but it does here, and does so in a big way.

Is it any wonder that people once used religion to justify the oppression of women, blacks, and other religions? Or that we now have a war being waged against homosexuality? Or that we now have an "our God can beat up your God" situation going on with Islam? Or that evolution is tantamount to heresy? Or that Fox News is WATCHED?

Baseless beliefs are bad, especially when people don't know that they are. It is in this way that religion is fundamentally dangerous.

God Helps with Personal Decisions, Most Americans Say (LiveScience.com)

A Question Begged

I've just discovered the modal ontological argument. I'd been aware of the ontological argument for some time and actually consider it a rather strong argument, although not for what its proponents had thought.

The ontological argument is an argument for the existence of God. It goes something like this.

• God is that which no greater can be conceived


• It is greater to exist in reality than in idea alone


• Therefore, God cannot simply exist in our heads, because a God that actually exists is greater than a God that doesn't actually exist

I've always felt that this is a completely sound argument for the existence of an ultimate entity. Entities seem to exist on a spectrum, and there must be something at the ends of either spectrum. Be it free-floating amino acids on one end, and some sort of galactic intelligence on the other. But the argument says nothing about the ultimate intelligence, only that it must be there.

That's my take on it, but regardless of any novel interpretation, the argument is not widely supported. Alvin Plantinga is perhaps the most notable proponent of the argument, and being a logician, he's applied what he knows to the argument and created a modal ontological argument.

Modal logic deals with possibility. E.g. it is possible that "A". But the corollary to possibility is necessity. It is necessary that "A". Modal logic also uses as the core of its thought a concept that's getting a lot of play recently, what with string theory and all that: possible worlds. Anything that is possible is actually happening in different realms of existence. There is a world where I am the king of England and another in which I died at birth. If it's logically possible, it exists.

Thus, something is possible if it exists in at least one possible world. It is necessary if it exists in all possible worlds. And it is contingent if it exists in some possible worlds.

Using these concepts called modal operators, Plantinga sets out to argue for the existence of God. I find the entire argument to be, like everything else in the philosophy of religion, to be circular; a giant, begged question.

I stole this specifically from here.

(1) If God exists then he has necessary existence.
(2) Either God has necessary existence, or he doesn’t.
(3) If God doesn’t have necessary existence, then he necessarily doesn’t.
Therefore:
(4) Either God has necessary existence, or he necessarily doesn’t.
(5) If God necessarily doesn’t have necessary existence, then God necessarily doesn’t exist.
Therefore:
(6) Either God has necessary existence, or he necessarily doesn’t exist.
(7) It is not the case that God necessarily doesn’t exist.
Therefore:
(8) God has necessary existence.
(9) If God has necessary existence, then God exists.
Therefore:
(10) God exists.

Premise 2 is a restatement of premise one. And premise 3 adds nothing. It's a rejiggering of "either God as we conceive of him exists or he doesn't."

1. If god exists, then he has necessary existence.

• Basically Iff (if and only if) G (God exists), then N (he is necessary)


• Which is G = N


• If God exists, then God exists.


• Oh yeah. There's a masterpiece of logic.

2. Either God has necessary existence or he doesn’t.

• Basically, either God exists or he doesn’t exist, because if he exists, he has necessary existence.


• This is the first part where the usage of existence jumps around. He both exists and has existence as though it's a property.

3. If God doesn’t have necessary existence, then he necessarily doesn’t.

• Once again, semantic dodge. If God doesn’t exist, then he doesn’t.

4. Either God has necessary existence, or he necessarily doesn’t.

• Either God exists or he doesn’t exist.

5. If God necessarily doesn’t have necessary existence, then God necessarily doesn’t exist.

• If God necessarily doesn’t exist, then he doesn’t exist.

6. Either God has necessary existence, or he necessarily doesn’t exist.

• Either he necessarily exists or necessarily doesn’t exist.

7. It is not the case that God necessarily doesn’t exist.

• It was dealing with possibility earlier on to reach this point. IF God doesn’t exist, then he necessarily doesn’t exist. The first “if” is not answered. Only IF God exists, does he exist. Only IF God exists, does he not necessarily not exist. And ONLY IF God doesn't exist, does he necessarily not exist.

8. God has necessary existence.

• He only has necessary existence if he exists, which has not been determined

9. If God has necessary existence, then God exists.
10. Therefore, God exists.

My slight re-wording of the argument might seem like I'm playing with words to achieve my goal, and I am. But that's because the argument is playing the same damned game. The argument jumps back and forth between existence as a property or a state and conveniently forgets that the actual question is never answered.

Of Scientists And Popes.

There's an interesting dual article available at The Post Chronicle online about the separation between religion and science. The two articles discuss the Catholic Church's history of repressing scientific advance that didn't jive with dogma. The first, by Stephen M. Barr, has one main point, that most of the great scientific advanced of the past 1,000 years believed in God and were, to a great extent, members of the Church.

This can't be denied, but that's like saying that scientists back then also rode horses. Of course they did. Everyone did. In the Middle Ages absolutely everyone was part of, or a member of, the Church. And since the unwashed masses were usually illiterate, any achievements in any discipline were most likely made by those of the cloth.

The second article, by Thomas E. Brewton, is an almost incomprehensible attack on what he sees as "atheistic materialists." I'm not sure who these people are. Perhaps Madonna counts. He restates what Barr said by saying that the only real example of the Church repressing science was Galileo, and even that was primarily political. I have no way to counter this and have no time to look it up, especially since I write this between classes. I can say this pretty confidently. The Church on the whole was never the big problem, it was the Church in its smaller parts.

For an easy example, look at Witch hunts throughout the later Middle Ages and right into the Renaissance. It was never the "Church" per se, that did anything. It was smaller groups that caused the real damage. Religion is only as good as those who follow it, and the Church proper is responsible for the actions of its constituents, which were very nasty indeed.

Brewton eventually goes on to try and classify science and religion in relation to each other.

"Religion looks at the big picture, science at particular natural instances. Mathematics is a bridge between the two: applicable to particulars, but drawing its theorems from extrapolations into the immateriality of mental constructs, as did Plato with his paradigm of Ideal ForMs [sic]."

I don't know if Brewton thinks these are new ideas. I hope he doesn't. They're older than me, plus him, and his entire family. It's the age old argument of the primacy of philosophy over science. This "bridge" could be seen as modern logic. I have no idea what he means by the drawing of theorems. Is he espousing numbers as pukka abstract entities? Does he mean that the numbers of math "exist" and we simply access them from the Platonic Plane when we perform calculations?

Furthermore, I completely disagree with his assessment that science ignores the big picture. Scientists always have their eye on the big picture, the brass ring. For physicists, it's the ever-elusive "theory of everything." But instead of making sweeping declarations at the very beginning of discovery, they build the puzzle one piece at a time. There's a big difference to saying a jig-saw puzzle is a tiger before putting it together, and actually putting it together to discover it's an elephant. Most importantly, even if it turns out to be a tiger, the original declaration is no more correct. Even philosophers classify knowledge as a justified, true belief. Where's the justification? God? Sorry, pulling Deus from the machina doesn't work in these waters.

In a not quite as dramatic note, he asks "why do humans uniquely among God's creatures construct political societies?" Uniquely? I don't think so. What about the species of tree-dwelling monkeys that seem to hold "elections" to determine the leader. The actual species escapes me. And, again, I have no time to look it up.

He continues his attack against these apparently evil liberals.

"From the standpoint of atheistic and materialistic liberals, however, it is necessary first to destroy Western civilization's paradigm of religious morality if they are to replace it with atheistic materialism. Hence the unending assaults by the ACLU and other socialist organizations."

He treats these materialistic monsters as though it was some grand conspiracy to destroy religion and morality. He's certainly not alone. There are boat-loads of science-as-conspiracy people wandering around. He actually blames Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union on those evil liberals. Somehow, I doubt that most liberals in this country liked either the USSR or Hitler.

Both articles take a distinctly historical viewpoint on the conflict. This is their major downfall. I, instead, look at the concomitant evolution of religion and science. In the beginning, we didn't understand from where the river came, so it was the Gods. Then, we didn't understand lightning and thunder, so it was the Gods. Then we didn't understand the cosmos, so it was the Gods. Religion has always been there with answers to whatever science doesn't yet understand. Effectively, it has been forever picking up the crumbs of scientific discovery.

Brewton doesn't say this directly, but it can be inferred.

"The Big Bang requires that all of the laws of physics, mathematics, and chemistry be in existence prior to the Big Bang. This means, inescapably, that God existed outside of time and outside of the universe, and that the Mind of God is the source of all the natural laws and mathematics that form the subject matter of the physical sciences. God is what Aristotle called the Unmoved Mover where the buck stops, the source of all energy, of all potential and actual movement in the cosmos. Matter being just another form of energy, God is also the source of everything that scientists study to understand the laws of nature."

He is taking it to the final evolution, saying that God created the Big Bang. This is an entirely new perspective. He, and the Church which now accepts the Big Bang, are saying that ALL who came before were wrong. God exists, but not in the way previously thought. What?!

God created Eden. No, wait, God created Earth. No, wait, God created the cosmos and Earth formed. No, wait, God created the energy for the Bing Bang. Man, God just gets farther and farther away. How can we be so sure he even cares about us at all?

It is this obvious evolution of religion, which is supposedly the "final" word in everything, that is the real problem with it and science. Science continually picks away at religion and religion has spent the whole of the past millennium retreating back ever more to questions with no answers. We are now finally at the point of studying the very fabric of space-time, so it is no surprise that it is now there where God calls home. Science is evolving progressively, religion, regressively.

Brewton closes with two paragraphs with which I take exception. The aforementioned article where he credits liberal socialists with both WWII and the USSR, and another statement about science and religion's relationship.

"If, however, liberals were actually to adopt the methods of science to which they give lip service, they would analyze the real-world experiential data of 200 years and draw the scientific conclusion that liberal-socialism is both a pipe dream and a savagely destructive religion. Without it, the totalitarianism of Soviet Russia and National Socialist Germany would have been impossible."

In this paragraph, aside from being ridiculous to blame liberals for WWII and the Soviet Union, is the use of the word "experiential." Ooooooh. Not a good word. Even the most devout person must admit that experience is very frequently incorrect. Experiential data can never result in a scientific conclusion. Perhaps he refers to historical data. In that sense, both Nazism and the USSR are grand examples. But grand examples of what?

He calls them liberal socialists and seems to categorize all scientists in with this group. It's here that the lack of a definition for liberal socialists becomes very problematic. Are they different from the atheistic materialists? Do both groups go hand-in-hand? Is liberal socialism a form of political structure? If that's the case, and it is a "savagely destructive religion," as he says, then other forms of politics must be semantically equal. All forms of government must be religion. I think our founding fathers would disagree.

I guess I should return to the real point of this. It's not that some forms of government are bad, but that science is incompatible with religion. His final paragraph makes an equally uncogent argument as the rest of the article.

"If liberals were to become truly scientific, we could then return to the cumulative wisdom of Western civilization. Religion and philosophy would study humans' relations to the Divine and to each other, and science would stick to discoveries relating to the God-created material world."

Once again, his choice of words, and the only words he could choose, sink him. His "cumulative wisdom of Western civilization" comment makes no sense. How are we not using it now? And what about Eastern civilization? Does Confucius not count? Moreover, why are we "returning" to the wisdom? When did we leave? Where did we go? Is he referring to religious wisdom, which science and the world is leaving behind? It seems to me that it's nothing more than the ancient argument that the morals and fibers of modern civilization are crumbling under the weight of heathenism.

And finally, his use of the word "study" to describe religion and philosophy's role with the divine set my teeth on edge. It is impossible, in any sense, to study the divine. Philosophy is the antithesis of study. If you could study anything in either of them, they would automatically become science. No, science is the art of study, philosophy and religion are pure conjecture and contemplation. There is an ocean between the two.

Science Vs. Religion (Via The Post Chronicle)