Last night, we hosted a dinner party with our new grandkids and some very close friends and their family. Of the group, only wife kitteh and I are religious. The other family typically laughs at religion and last night was no different. Wife kitteh and I do not engage in arguments and almost always allow these episodes to go unchallenged. I hate that, but in the moment, I know my blood runs too hot to reply coherently. I want to blog what I should say the next time this happens.
The event that prompted them to sneer at religion was a wedding that some of the kids attended. The couple belonged to a sect of fundamentalist Christians which had all kinds of restrictions on behavior. There were mountains of hypocrisies on display. The couple had been living together for 5 years and kept it secret from the parents. Lies on top of religious infidelity made a mockery of the service. Everyone at dinner had a good laugh at those people. Ha ha ha.
The faith itself sounded pretty incoherent as well. Many fun things were prohibited, but the church had a long history of pirate-ship internal dynamics. That is, it looked like the way you advanced up the chain of command was to discredit and expel the person above you. Yarr.
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| Bishop Johnson was caught with his hand in the treasure chest! Scripture says that I be the new bishop now, you scurvy dogs! |
Illogic and bad behavior aren't all that unusual among us religious types. That means it's all lies! Hahahahaha!
With all of this incontrovertible data, how can you say that religion is real?
Err, wait a minute.
About 150 years ago, our understanding of the atom was ridiculous.
In 1897, the English scientist named J.J. Thomson provided the first hint that an atom is made of even smaller particles. He discovered the presence of a negative particle in the atom – the electron. He proposed a model of the atom that is sometimes called the “Plum Pudding” model. His theory was that atoms are made from a positively charged substance with negatively charged electrons scattered about, like raisins in a pudding or chocolate chips in a cookie.
An atom is a cookie? Hahahahahaha! Only an idiot would believe in physics!
Back in the day, I was called a scientist and only faking lab results and claiming to have discovered gravity on my own led to my defrocking*. In those days, I knew plenty of scientists who were even more duplicitous and immoral than I was. Results were invented and claims were made solely for the purpose of obtaining another year of funding. In some cases, the behavior was more scandalous. Marriages were wrecked, children abandoned and secretaries ended up in a family way, even ones that identified as men.
Scientists are amoral scumbags! You can't trust even one of them! Hahahahahaha!
With all of this incontrovertible data, how can you say that science is real?
* - Or maybe I wandered out into the parking lot and the locks were changed on my office**. It's all a bit hazy in my memory.
** - In all honesty, this is a joke. My career evolved into engineering and then into marketing and sales.
I think the big difference is that the basic scientific approach is not actually built on trust, and in fact is mostly leveraging the human tendency to want to show up the other guy, and rub his nose in his errors. You can advance your career by proving, with data and measurements that can be replicated, that other people are wrong. The whole enterprise is largely based on not fully trusting each other, and the process can be kind of ugly, petty, and unedifying. But, it does grind its way closer to the truth eventually.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that this is generally true of religion. We are just asked to trust the priests when they say they are speaking for God. Which is one thing if they are trustworthy. But, if they do things in their personal lives that makes us think they are untrustworthy, that kind of blows the whole deal, doesn't it?
==We are just asked to trust the priests when they say they are speaking for God.==
ReplyDeleteThat is a HUMAN tendency -- both to expect/demand it, and to do it even when explicitly asked not to do so (see: science vs scientism, AJA 'Science!').
However, CHRISTIANITY explicitly does not ask/expect/demand its adherents to simply trust the priests/pastors/ministers. And in fact, Christianity explicitly asks its adherents to rationally examine the evidence
==But, ['Science!'] does grind its way closer to the truth eventually.==
And how would you or anyone else *know* when either science or 'Science!' has gotten any "closer" (*) to any truth? Seeing as: 1) science isn't about truth, in the first place; 2) there is no scientific test to distinguish true scientific statements from false scientific scatements; 3) what "safegards" are employed "by science" are used mostly to protect the reputations and/or pet beliefs of prominent scientists.
(*) How does one even get "closer" to truth, as there is no such thing as '40% truth'.
==a sect of fundamentalist Christians==
ReplyDeleteHaving grown up as a "fundamentalist Christian", that church doesn't sound very much like "a sect of fundamentalist Christians" to me.
Fundamentalism is about -- Hell! it's in the name -- identifying and putting into practice the fundamentals of Biblical Christianity.
Ilion, I'm sorry if I misused the term, "Fundamentalist." I'm just an ignorant Catholic.
ReplyDeleteTim, Ilion, makes a good point. "Christianity explicitly asks its adherents to rationally examine the evidence." That's the way Catholicism is, if you read the Church Fathers like Aquinas or Augustine or even the layman Chesterton.
What do you think of proofs that don't use evidence? I'm thinking of the entire field of Real Analysis or Abstract Algebra.
==Ilion, I'm sorry if I misused the term, "Fundamentalist."==
ReplyDelete*Everyone* misuses it; anymore, it's all but required to misuse the term.
==I'm just an ignorant Catholic.==
Well, there is that. By which I mean that the bureaucrats of The One True Bureaucracy put in a lot of effort from the (late 19th / early 20th) century to ensure that you misunderstood the term.
It's kind of ironic that one of the important denominations spearheading the initial "Fundamentalist Movement" has, over time and through mergers, morphed into the "liberal" Presbyterian Church (USA).
Ilion says, "there is no such thing as 40% truth".
ReplyDeleteLet's say that one guy tells you that the Earth is a perfect sphere, while another tells you that the Earth is a flat plate being carried on the back of a gigantic turtle. They are both incorrect, but are you really saying that one is not much, much more incorrect than the other?
Or if you want something more quantifiable, if someone says that Pi equals exactly 3, and someone else says that it is exactly 3.14159265358979, again they are both incorrect, but the first one is so far off that it is useless for anything but the crudest estimations. While the second one is 14 orders of magnitude closer to the true value, and is good enough for designing even the most precise machinery.
Look, as an engineer, I have to work with what is available, and one thing that is not available in the real world is absolute perfection. The world is not divided into either "Wrong" or "Perfect", which is what you seem to want. There are grades, from "this doesn't even relate to reality at all" all the way up to "this accomplishes what we need well enough that it is not worth what it would cost to make it function better". And yes, "wrongness" is often quantifiable. That's what the various kinds of "efficiency" calculations are - calculations of the degree to which it is not right.
KT: you say " "Christianity explicitly asks its adherents to rationally examine the evidence." But if you look at what Aquinas and Augustine wrote, you will find a hard core that they are starting from. They both assume that Scripture is true, divinely inspired, and not open to question. It's been a while since I read Aquinas, but I do recall that at one point he concedes that if someone is not convinced that Scripture is divinely inspired, there is no evidence that Aquinas can use to show that it is.
ReplyDeleteThat is the thing that requires trust. 'Proofs that don't use evidence" still require axioms that are either accepted or not. This is one things when you can look at axioms and see if they correspond with what you can see around you, thereby establishing trust that they are at least serviceable approximations. But it is something else entirely when they purport to describe things that cannot even be sensed, let alone compared with observable reality.
My reply with have to come in today's blog post. As always, I learn so much from your comments, Tim.
ReplyDeleteOff to the gym now.
==Let's say that one guy tells you that ... [and remainder of post] ==
ReplyDeleteTim, you're conflating "approximation" for "x% true". Truth doesn't come in degrees, it is binary.
And you trying to use the fact that at the scale at which we live approximations are generally "good enough" as some sort of disputation and refutation of my criticism of your expression of scientism.
To put it bluntly, you're trying to change the subject.
Your set of assertions -- which are an expression of scientism -- was:
=="I think the big difference [between 'religion' and 'science'] is that the basic scientific approach is not actually built on trust, ... But [despite the "ugly, petty, and unedifying" nature of the process of scientists doing science], it does grind its way closer to the truth eventually.
I don't think that this is generally true of religion. We are just asked to trust the priests when they say they are speaking for God ..."==
You were not talking about approximation, you were talking about truth. You were claiming that 'Science!' (*) can discover truth and that 'religion' cannot.
(*) Also, and while I didn't explicitly say this, you were reifying 'science' (and also 'religion').
So, again I ask: =="And how would you or anyone else *know* when either science or 'Science!' has gotten any "closer" to any truth?"==
Tim @ KT Cat ==” 'Proofs that don't use evidence" still require axioms that are either accepted or not. This is one things when you can look at axioms and see if they correspond with what you can see around you, thereby establishing trust that they are at least serviceable approximations. But it is something else entirely when they purport to describe things that cannot even be sensed, let alone compared with observable reality.”==
One of the major problems which scientism, in particular, and materialism/physicalism, in general, run into is that not only is there no such thing as "partial truth" but also that there is no such thing as “The Evidence”.
To put it into philosophy of science terms: "All evidence is theory-dependent."
To put it into bumper-sticker form: "Until you know what you’re looking at, you don’t know what you’re seeing."
There is no such thing as a proof, or an argument, which doesn’t require and depend upon at least one axiom – there is *no* “The Evidence”.
Tim @ KT Cat ==” But if you look at what Aquinas and Augustine wrote, you will find a hard core that they are starting from. They both assume that Scripture is true, divinely inspired, and not open to question.”==
ReplyDeleteSo, are you saying that they (and especially Aquinas) wasted all that time and effort building and presenting arguments for the reality of God, and for the Christian understanding of ‘god’, by appealing to reason and logic and mutually accepted evidence?
==”It's been a while since I read Aquinas, but I do recall that at one point he concedes that if someone is not convinced that Scripture is divinely inspired, there is no evidence that Aquinas can use to show that it is.”==
I could show you – by reason and rational examination of (mutually accepted) evidence alone, without any reference, explicit or implicit, to ‘religion’ or the Bible -- that God-denial is not only false, but absurd, and ergo that God is. Over the years that you and I both have been reading and commenting on this blog, I expect that I already have more than once (because that’s what I do). I can show you this … and *still* you will persist in your God-denial.
I could show you – by reason and rational examination of (mutually accepted) evidence alone, without any reference, explicit or implicit, to ‘religion’ or the Bible -- that almost every distinctly Christian point concerning the nature of God is not only rational bit the *only* rational conclusion … and *still* you will persist in your Christ-denial.
Hell! I could show you -- by reason and rational examination of (scientifically accepted) evidence alone, without any reference, explicit or implicit, to ‘religion’ or the Bible -- that it is logically and biologically impossible to get from an alleged common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans to humans without positing some sort of intelligent, knowledgeable agent who monkeyed around, so to speak, with the genetics of the human lineage and thereby made it possible for our species even to exist (that is, I could show you that Darwinism is false when it comes to human beings) … and *still* you will persist in your Darwinism.
"There is no such thing as a proof, or an argument, which doesn’t require and depend upon at least one axiom – there is *no* “The Evidence”."
ReplyDeleteI am not clear what point you are trying to make here. Are you saying that there is not an objective reality that we can observe?
You then go on to say,
"I could show you – by reason and rational examination of (mutually accepted) evidence alone, without any reference, explicit or implicit, to ‘religion’ or the Bible"
But didn't you just say there is no "the evidence"?
In any case, the reason I am not convinced by what you say, is because as near as I can tell you aren't making actual logical arguments, although you apparently think you are. You are mostly indulging in "argument by intimidation", where you yell and shout, and wave your arms, and spout word-salad, and claim to be able to prove things that you never actually prove, and throw in the occasional insult, but never actually lay out a coherent position. If that's what floats your boat, hey, go nuts. But if you are wondering why so many people seem to find you unconvincing, that's why.