Great commentary as usual, although I haven't looked at the paper yet. Maybe later.
Even if religious belief in itself does not provide important and even essential benefits to mankind - and it obviously does - then its allegedly emerging from other "actually essential" causes would still not serve as a proof against the reality if its subject - that is, God.
This is a similar mistake to that which the "comparative religions" people make; just because multiple traditions have many similar stories / myths / archetypes / what have you, does not render those things false. Likewise, even if it could be shown that something like religious belief would be expected to emerge from "some combination of natural factors", this would not render such belief meaningless or its subject unreal.
If we are going to charitably assume the evolutive understanding to be true for the sake of argument, then the paper writers should charitably interpret their findings in the context of a sound theistic evolution - if God exists, and if he works His will in time through natural causes - as all theists, contra Deists, assert - then would it really be a surprise if natural evolutive factors in the development of civilization brought about religious belief? Would we not in fact expect this, since 1) God wills to work through His creatures / natural causes, and 2) God wills for man to believe in Him? Does not the human brain being "hard-wired" for religious feeling not suggest that this development was "in the works" very early on, and is to some extent a natural consequence? How does this in anyway contradict the reality of God?
The paper's premise is just not serious.
I dont agree with everything you say here, but I do think there is a sort of occam’s razor appeal to the theory that human complexity and complexity of the universe is down to a Creator.
I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say the paper’s premise isn’t serious.
Excellent reply to that paper. Even without reading it, you nailed some of the pretense of its authors. I especially like the point you make about their refusal to be charitable, when as believers we are inclined - for the sake of argument - to be oh so charitable.
That's the caveat they do no want to go near, however. That in the case where God exists and elaborates His creation through natural causal mechanisms, then the evolution toward belief in the real would be completely expected with time, including the belief in one's actual cause. This was one of the bewildering facts about their ignorance of this possibility. On the one hand, we are supposed to evolve a set of beliefs which are not real (counterintuitive, supernatural) but at the same time the same factors lead us to beliefs which are.
Never is there an argument made to support that idea. It is just assumed that belief in God is not intuitive or rational, but more empirical modes are, by default.
Here is where the job of philosophy is supposed to intervene on scientific investigation.
One obvious blunder I didn't truly attack was their characterization of religious beliefs as counterintuitive. On the contrary, wouldn't we take it as a matter of definition that the nearly universal belief in a creator (by all communities ever in recorded history) to mean that this belief was intuitive? Perhaps they mean it in a very narrow sense of not being empirically expected, but even just a little analysis of this, and one can see that it falls flat. For example, perhaps we say that a person observes an incoming thunderstorm. The researchers would say the belief that God was its cause is not intuitive. But is the scientific answer intuitive? Ah, it depends on what level of reductive explanation!!
If a meteorologist would say to us: "Well it's the result of two fronts having different properties of pressure and temperature colliding with one another, etc. etc."
I don't know that I'd ever call such an explanation intuitive. Logical perhaps. But what is intuitive is that we could continue to pressure our scientist for greater resolution (reduction) of explanation. We do as the child does, and we ask, "Why?" But, we find that further and further explanation in the empirical mode always leads to the counterintuitive. It can't be said that an explanation according to atoms in the QM paradigm is in any way intuitive. None of us intuit a world with a quantum nature, at bottom. So what is intuitive is only the level of direct perception at which our essential categories exist - natural kinds. The joints of the world fit together based on essences (which, if we cared to go into now, would actually greatly favor religious belief being true).
So at best, the researchers' argument falls flat because scientific explanation is only marginally intuitive at a level which is still prone to essentialism (i.e. natural kinds like 'storm fronts'). Well, where does that kind of essentialism come from? If you move beyond this categorically essentialist level, then the cosmos returns to being counterintuitive, begging the question as to why counterintuitive would not just suggest possible reality. Indeed, most of what the scientific paradigm offers in terms of explanation re: ourselves and our world today is obscenely less intuitive than the course of religious explanation.
Well said.
On a side note, I don't know for sure if any of my messages to ARM have been seen. I hate to continue using a platform he has been unjustly banned from via tenuous interpretation of the ToS, when really the admin just hates being pinged.
So, ARM, if you're lurking, please make an account at SearchVoat Forum so we at least have a safe hub / meeting place. We can go from there.
What are the chances that he could create an alt and mind his P's and Q's here, where we just split our time between platforms?
I like the idea of also using that forum, but I also think for the sake of getting the most people to think about these topics, it is still useful to promote as much dialogue here as possible.
There's no doubt we'd still benefit from a place where we can carry on the more sprawling private conversations that we are used to, which go on for weeks.
I'm also not happy about the fact ARM was banned. I disagree with it on principle, but I also recognize ARM's proclivity for, um, antagonizing people, particularly once they've told him not to do something. While I disagree with the choice to ban his account, we might think it was a tree - at least at this site - that he went barking up.
That's my attitude currently. You might be able to convince me otherwise, re: loyalty to ARM or something. But still, there would be nothing preventing ARM from participating in both places, with the understanding that in this one it's become obvious that getting on AOU's bad side is not a good idea. I suppose it invokes an ideological problem, which has me a bit torn at the moment. On the one hand, I'm thinking, "Free speech, mother fucker. Say it.", and on the other it's, "There's some common sense that we have to appeal to. You may not like that a cop has certain authority to supersede the one true law, but if you directly disobey a cop at the time they're giving you an order, you can expect problems."
Of course, the issue here is that we think the law is being applied unjustly, i.e. pinging an admin cannot be construed as spamming. In reality, it reduces to: "Stop pinging me. It's annoying me. I'm banning you for annoying me."
I guess I'm trying to find the best compromise, where we don't lose access to this site and some of the potential for talking about important topics here, but are also able to continue our discussion with ARM in a place that has less fickle banning habits. Please criticize me if you think I'm being a bit 'lukewarm' here.
Don't get me wrong. On the emotional side of this, my thought rests with ARM. Burn it down. But I'm also trying to think logically about it. Do we think that ARM antagonized AOU in ways that weren't visible to us? If we do, then what I've said above stands. If we think ARM did not, then AOU was completely outrageous to ban him for what amounted to one or two pings. Especially given the fact that I saw people title-pinging AOU in posts just last night, and as far as I could tell, there were no warnings issued about that use of mention functions. In general, I do find this trend a bit troubling, which is the general disdain for former Voat members that is kind of hitting us like a 'door in the face' at the moment. The welcoming of Goats back around Christmastime made it seem otherwise, but now that a few weeks has passed, I am definitely noticing some of the mask coming off. I don't mean to say they are 'hunting' Goats down, but that the rules are being applied unequally where admin has knowledge that someone was previously a Goat (or, their patience is about 1/10 as thin for Goats).
Did they ban arm? What did he do?
(post is archived)