The Lack of Reason for God, Chapter 8
Nov. 13th, 2014 01:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blimixThis is part of a series examining the the logic of Timothy Keller's book The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism.
Standard disclaimer: This, despite being a public post, is not an invitation for a religion debate with strangers. Been there, done that, still jaded.
Last week: In the intermission, Keller made claims about his epistemology.
Chapter 8
In which Keller tries to give evidence for the existence of god.
(Page numbers are from the hardcover version of the book.)
pp. 128-129. Keller argues that the universe could not have created itself (at the Big Bang); therefore something supernatural, outside of the universe, did it.
The main fallacy here is the usual "I don't understand it; therefore it was god/spirits/supernatural whatever" idea. I haven't gone into this fallacy in depth before, so I will take this opportunity to point out that it requires a tremendous degree of arrogance. The statement "If I don't understand it, then it is not natural" is precisely equivalent to the statement, "If it is natural, then I understand it." This is a claim that you cannot reasonably make unless you understand literally everything about the natural universe. A rational reaction to not understanding something would be curiosity and investigation, rather than dismissing that thing as supernatural. That dismissal seems to be a defensive, closed-minded way to avoid acknowledging gaps or errors in one's own understanding.
Another problem with this argument is that it can be made equally against any theory, regardless of that theory's accuracy. "What was the prior cause of the first thing you know about?" is an impossible question to answer, no matter what beliefs you hold. You can't know what came before the first thing you know about; otherwise, that predecessor would then be the first thing. For example, you could ask any theist, "Who or what created god?" and never get a satisfactory answer. (God can't create himself without preceding himself. You could invoke time travel, but even Skynet technology traveling back in time to inspire its own existence doesn't answer the question of who designed it, or why the timeline didn't lack Skynet entirely.)
pp. 129-132. Keller presents the "Anthropic Principle": The idea that life is extremely improbable, requiring many physical constants to be within certain narrow limits, so those constants must have been set by a deity specifically aiming to create us. He presents a very weak version of a counter-argument (portraying this universe as one of many, each with different properties), then offers that counter-argument against other improbable events (such as a poker dealer dealing himself four aces twenty times in a row) to show how it would never be accepted.
First, and less importantly, I will address Keller's counter-counter-argument. If there are billions of universes, one or two of which happen to contain life, those rare life forms may exclaim, "How extremely unlikely! This universe must have been made for us!" Because they have no experience of the billions of other universes, they suffer from an extreme form of salience bias. Salience bias will happen any time that you are more likely to notice an event happening than not happening (or vice versa). (It's like when you think you always get stuck at a particularly long red light, when really, you just fail to notice the times you don't, because those times, it doesn't annoy you into noting it.) The universes without life have nobody in them to say, "Boy, it sure is probable and unremarkable that I don't exist!" to balance out the occasional outlier who, due to their limited viewpoint, says, "I exist! It's a miracle!"
Twenty straight hands of four aces, dealt fairly, are improbable enough to be considered impossible for all practical purposes. But in that case, there is no salience bias preventing people from noticing (and collecting their winnings from) the dealer's losing hands. Additionally, there is a known mechanism (cheating) by which such hands may otherwise occur, which creates an alternative explanation much more likely than a particularly lucky dealer. Conversely, no ways of manipulating physical constants are known, or even suspected. For both of these reasons, the two situations (improbably lucky life forms and an improbably lucky dealer) are incomparable.
My book club friend points out that the analogy to the poker dealer is begging the question by assuming a creator (the dealer) who can engineer the situation. Of course people will conclude that the dealer is involved, if we start the story with a dealer.
The other problem with the Anthropic Principle is that it only addresses life as we know it. Our entire concept of life is limited by our experiences with life on Earth, in this universe. Even here, there are forms of life that we would not be aware of without technological aid (microscopy). Would you recognize a plasmoid life form? How about a life form that arose from, and depended upon, a different set of physical principles? I sure wouldn't. That doesn't mean it cannot arise. Such an alternate-universe life form might well say, "Boy, we sure are lucky that gravity overcomes magnetic force at short range! Otherwise, life would be impossible!"
There doesn't have to be design for us to fit our universe. Either some kind of life works in the universe (and wonders at its luck and the unlikely conditions that created it), or it doesn't, in which case the universe comes and goes with nobody noticing. Our existence just happens to indicate the former case.
p. 132. Keller proposes that the "regularity of nature," the fact that we can rely on the laws of nature to behave consistently enough for memory and reasoning to be useful, has no natural explanation. "David Hume and Bertrand Russell, as good secular men, were troubled by the fact that we haven't got the slightest idea of why nature-regularity is happening now, and moreover we haven't the slightest rational justification for assuming it will continue tomorrow. If someone would say, 'Well the future has always been like the past in the past,' Hume and Russell reply that you are assuming the very thing you are trying to establish. To put it another way, science cannot prove the continued regularity of nature, it can only take it on faith." He considers this "a clue for God".
So. Many. Problems. First off, if Hume, Russell, or Keller seriously thinks that they "haven't the slightest rational justification for assuming" that the laws of nature will apply tomorrow, then I don't want to talk them out of it. I just want to offer them several large bets, at lucrative odds, about the sun rising tomorrow.
Children will occasionally annoy an adult with a string of "Why?" questions following each answer they get to the previous "Why?" (I approve of this, and think that adults could use more such challenges.) Very similarly, one might continue asking, "What makes you think that?" until eventually the harassed answerer is stuck saying, "It has always worked that way."* The fact that this chain of known answers must reach an end point does not impugn that end. (Just like the fact that your ignorance of a prior cause for the first thing you know about does not impugn that first thing.) I don't personally know why "It has always worked that way" works, but I have plenty of evidence that it does, and no evidence that this is subject to change. (This constitutes rational evidence that it is not subject to change. See "absence of evidence is evidence of absence" in chapter 6.)
* "Cartesian demons," "The placebo effect," "Government mind control rays," and "Omniscience" are also valid answers.
Note that Keller abuses the word "faith" here. To "take it on faith" is to believe something without evidence. This is the opposite of the "faith" that one holds in something that has already been tested and found true countless times, which might also be called "rationally justified confidence".* Keller is misusing the word in order to take a dig at science by equating it with religion.
* Precision in language can save lives. ("Your overconfidence is your weakness." "Your rationally justified confidence in your friends is yours. Hmmm. You know what, Vader, get my shuttle ready.")
Also, as we have already covered, "I can't explain it" does not imply god.
Finally, aren't miracles the exact opposite of the "regularity of nature"? If the fact that the laws of nature remain constant and reliable is evidence for god, then miracles, by contradicting that fact, should be evidence against god. I doubt that this is a position which Keller wishes to take.
pp. 132-135. Keller argues that the experience of beauty creates a feeling that there must be a god, because a fictional teenager said so, and because Leonard Bernstein once used the phrase "the stuff from Heaven" when referring to Beethoven's abilities. He then argues that this feeling, though it may not automatically be correct, constitutes a desire. He cites St. Augustine in reasoning that a desire for something, whether fulfilled or not, implies the existence of that thing. His summary differs from his argument, referring to beauty evoking an unfulfillable desire, which implies the existence of something outside of the world that can fulfill this desire, which in turn is "a major clue that God is there".
There is not a single plausible or even coherent step in either version of his logic. Hence, I don't think that any of his particular errors in this section are worth addressing. Others may disagree, though, so let me briefly say: I have experienced profound beauty, with no corresponding feeling, belief, or desire regarding god. The desire for sublime beauty can be, and often is, satisfied in the real world with no recourse to the supernatural. If you wish to expand your experience of beauty, learn science.
pp. 135-139. Keller mentions that evolutionary biology has been used to explain religious feelings as adaptive rather than true (for example, our ability to spot patterns is powerful enough to indicate patterns that aren't really there), and that animals have evolved the capacity for useful self-deception. He then argues that since evolutionary biology tells us that we sometimes believe false things, it therefore tells us that we have no reason to believe in evolutionary biology, or science in general. "It seems that evolutionary theorists have to do one of two things. They could backtrack and admit that we can trust what our minds tell us about things, including God. If we find arguments or clues to God's existence that seem compelling to us, well, maybe he's really there. Or else they could go forward and admit that we can't trust our minds about anything."
Keller has taken a huge, unsupported logical leap from "there are certain ways in which we are sometimes mistaken" to "we can't trust our minds about anything". He asks why a fallible mind should trust science, when in fact science is a method designed to work around our fallibility, in the search for truth.
He cannot have thought through the consequences of his preferred alternative. If we treat all beliefs as true, that doesn't just allow us our unsubstantiated "clues to God's existence". It gives the same allowance to such ideas as "Humans lived happily in the Olive Garden of Eden until the Flying Spaghetti Monster caused a global flood in a cooking accident," "I can prove these shoes are fireproof," "I'm immortal," and of course "Christianity is a fraud perpetrated by religious leaders in order to gain money and power". Keller's suggestion would have those all be regarded as true and trustworthy beliefs.
pp. 140-141. Keller asserts that if god exists, then all of the "clues" he has mentioned make perfect sense. "The theory that there is a God who made the world accounts for the evidence we see better than the theory that there is no God."
Theism doesn't explain anything. It has no predictive power, and invoking it confers no useful information. When you say, "It's magic," or "It's emergent," or "God did it," or "Spirits did it," you haven't given an explanation. If anything, you've dismissed it as inexplicable.
Try a little experiment: Assume something that is the opposite of reality, and apply your theory to it. (e.g., "People are immune to bullets because of God.") If it still fits, then your theory has no explanatory power.
Next week: Keller claims atheists just don't know that they believe in god.
The whole series.
Standard disclaimer: This, despite being a public post, is not an invitation for a religion debate with strangers. Been there, done that, still jaded.
Last week: In the intermission, Keller made claims about his epistemology.
In which Keller tries to give evidence for the existence of god.
(Page numbers are from the hardcover version of the book.)
pp. 128-129. Keller argues that the universe could not have created itself (at the Big Bang); therefore something supernatural, outside of the universe, did it.
The main fallacy here is the usual "I don't understand it; therefore it was god/spirits/supernatural whatever" idea. I haven't gone into this fallacy in depth before, so I will take this opportunity to point out that it requires a tremendous degree of arrogance. The statement "If I don't understand it, then it is not natural" is precisely equivalent to the statement, "If it is natural, then I understand it." This is a claim that you cannot reasonably make unless you understand literally everything about the natural universe. A rational reaction to not understanding something would be curiosity and investigation, rather than dismissing that thing as supernatural. That dismissal seems to be a defensive, closed-minded way to avoid acknowledging gaps or errors in one's own understanding.
Another problem with this argument is that it can be made equally against any theory, regardless of that theory's accuracy. "What was the prior cause of the first thing you know about?" is an impossible question to answer, no matter what beliefs you hold. You can't know what came before the first thing you know about; otherwise, that predecessor would then be the first thing. For example, you could ask any theist, "Who or what created god?" and never get a satisfactory answer. (God can't create himself without preceding himself. You could invoke time travel, but even Skynet technology traveling back in time to inspire its own existence doesn't answer the question of who designed it, or why the timeline didn't lack Skynet entirely.)
pp. 129-132. Keller presents the "Anthropic Principle": The idea that life is extremely improbable, requiring many physical constants to be within certain narrow limits, so those constants must have been set by a deity specifically aiming to create us. He presents a very weak version of a counter-argument (portraying this universe as one of many, each with different properties), then offers that counter-argument against other improbable events (such as a poker dealer dealing himself four aces twenty times in a row) to show how it would never be accepted.
First, and less importantly, I will address Keller's counter-counter-argument. If there are billions of universes, one or two of which happen to contain life, those rare life forms may exclaim, "How extremely unlikely! This universe must have been made for us!" Because they have no experience of the billions of other universes, they suffer from an extreme form of salience bias. Salience bias will happen any time that you are more likely to notice an event happening than not happening (or vice versa). (It's like when you think you always get stuck at a particularly long red light, when really, you just fail to notice the times you don't, because those times, it doesn't annoy you into noting it.) The universes without life have nobody in them to say, "Boy, it sure is probable and unremarkable that I don't exist!" to balance out the occasional outlier who, due to their limited viewpoint, says, "I exist! It's a miracle!"
Twenty straight hands of four aces, dealt fairly, are improbable enough to be considered impossible for all practical purposes. But in that case, there is no salience bias preventing people from noticing (and collecting their winnings from) the dealer's losing hands. Additionally, there is a known mechanism (cheating) by which such hands may otherwise occur, which creates an alternative explanation much more likely than a particularly lucky dealer. Conversely, no ways of manipulating physical constants are known, or even suspected. For both of these reasons, the two situations (improbably lucky life forms and an improbably lucky dealer) are incomparable.
My book club friend points out that the analogy to the poker dealer is begging the question by assuming a creator (the dealer) who can engineer the situation. Of course people will conclude that the dealer is involved, if we start the story with a dealer.
The other problem with the Anthropic Principle is that it only addresses life as we know it. Our entire concept of life is limited by our experiences with life on Earth, in this universe. Even here, there are forms of life that we would not be aware of without technological aid (microscopy). Would you recognize a plasmoid life form? How about a life form that arose from, and depended upon, a different set of physical principles? I sure wouldn't. That doesn't mean it cannot arise. Such an alternate-universe life form might well say, "Boy, we sure are lucky that gravity overcomes magnetic force at short range! Otherwise, life would be impossible!"
There doesn't have to be design for us to fit our universe. Either some kind of life works in the universe (and wonders at its luck and the unlikely conditions that created it), or it doesn't, in which case the universe comes and goes with nobody noticing. Our existence just happens to indicate the former case.
p. 132. Keller proposes that the "regularity of nature," the fact that we can rely on the laws of nature to behave consistently enough for memory and reasoning to be useful, has no natural explanation. "David Hume and Bertrand Russell, as good secular men, were troubled by the fact that we haven't got the slightest idea of why nature-regularity is happening now, and moreover we haven't the slightest rational justification for assuming it will continue tomorrow. If someone would say, 'Well the future has always been like the past in the past,' Hume and Russell reply that you are assuming the very thing you are trying to establish. To put it another way, science cannot prove the continued regularity of nature, it can only take it on faith." He considers this "a clue for God".
So. Many. Problems. First off, if Hume, Russell, or Keller seriously thinks that they "haven't the slightest rational justification for assuming" that the laws of nature will apply tomorrow, then I don't want to talk them out of it. I just want to offer them several large bets, at lucrative odds, about the sun rising tomorrow.
Children will occasionally annoy an adult with a string of "Why?" questions following each answer they get to the previous "Why?" (I approve of this, and think that adults could use more such challenges.) Very similarly, one might continue asking, "What makes you think that?" until eventually the harassed answerer is stuck saying, "It has always worked that way."* The fact that this chain of known answers must reach an end point does not impugn that end. (Just like the fact that your ignorance of a prior cause for the first thing you know about does not impugn that first thing.) I don't personally know why "It has always worked that way" works, but I have plenty of evidence that it does, and no evidence that this is subject to change. (This constitutes rational evidence that it is not subject to change. See "absence of evidence is evidence of absence" in chapter 6.)
* "Cartesian demons," "The placebo effect," "Government mind control rays," and "Omniscience" are also valid answers.
Note that Keller abuses the word "faith" here. To "take it on faith" is to believe something without evidence. This is the opposite of the "faith" that one holds in something that has already been tested and found true countless times, which might also be called "rationally justified confidence".* Keller is misusing the word in order to take a dig at science by equating it with religion.
* Precision in language can save lives. ("Your overconfidence is your weakness." "Your rationally justified confidence in your friends is yours. Hmmm. You know what, Vader, get my shuttle ready.")
Also, as we have already covered, "I can't explain it" does not imply god.
Finally, aren't miracles the exact opposite of the "regularity of nature"? If the fact that the laws of nature remain constant and reliable is evidence for god, then miracles, by contradicting that fact, should be evidence against god. I doubt that this is a position which Keller wishes to take.
pp. 132-135. Keller argues that the experience of beauty creates a feeling that there must be a god, because a fictional teenager said so, and because Leonard Bernstein once used the phrase "the stuff from Heaven" when referring to Beethoven's abilities. He then argues that this feeling, though it may not automatically be correct, constitutes a desire. He cites St. Augustine in reasoning that a desire for something, whether fulfilled or not, implies the existence of that thing. His summary differs from his argument, referring to beauty evoking an unfulfillable desire, which implies the existence of something outside of the world that can fulfill this desire, which in turn is "a major clue that God is there".
There is not a single plausible or even coherent step in either version of his logic. Hence, I don't think that any of his particular errors in this section are worth addressing. Others may disagree, though, so let me briefly say: I have experienced profound beauty, with no corresponding feeling, belief, or desire regarding god. The desire for sublime beauty can be, and often is, satisfied in the real world with no recourse to the supernatural. If you wish to expand your experience of beauty, learn science.
pp. 135-139. Keller mentions that evolutionary biology has been used to explain religious feelings as adaptive rather than true (for example, our ability to spot patterns is powerful enough to indicate patterns that aren't really there), and that animals have evolved the capacity for useful self-deception. He then argues that since evolutionary biology tells us that we sometimes believe false things, it therefore tells us that we have no reason to believe in evolutionary biology, or science in general. "It seems that evolutionary theorists have to do one of two things. They could backtrack and admit that we can trust what our minds tell us about things, including God. If we find arguments or clues to God's existence that seem compelling to us, well, maybe he's really there. Or else they could go forward and admit that we can't trust our minds about anything."
Keller has taken a huge, unsupported logical leap from "there are certain ways in which we are sometimes mistaken" to "we can't trust our minds about anything". He asks why a fallible mind should trust science, when in fact science is a method designed to work around our fallibility, in the search for truth.
He cannot have thought through the consequences of his preferred alternative. If we treat all beliefs as true, that doesn't just allow us our unsubstantiated "clues to God's existence". It gives the same allowance to such ideas as "Humans lived happily in the Olive Garden of Eden until the Flying Spaghetti Monster caused a global flood in a cooking accident," "I can prove these shoes are fireproof," "I'm immortal," and of course "Christianity is a fraud perpetrated by religious leaders in order to gain money and power". Keller's suggestion would have those all be regarded as true and trustworthy beliefs.
pp. 140-141. Keller asserts that if god exists, then all of the "clues" he has mentioned make perfect sense. "The theory that there is a God who made the world accounts for the evidence we see better than the theory that there is no God."
Theism doesn't explain anything. It has no predictive power, and invoking it confers no useful information. When you say, "It's magic," or "It's emergent," or "God did it," or "Spirits did it," you haven't given an explanation. If anything, you've dismissed it as inexplicable.
Try a little experiment: Assume something that is the opposite of reality, and apply your theory to it. (e.g., "People are immune to bullets because of God.") If it still fits, then your theory has no explanatory power.
Next week: Keller claims atheists just don't know that they believe in god.
The whole series.
