Matt and I just listened to it and we both thought it was worth sharing as Copan really handled himself well and very clearly articulated his position on the hyperbolic reading of the Canaanites (a position he has co-authored with Matt on). The interaction between Copan, Bacrac and the show’s host Justin Brierly was very good too.

Listen here: Unbelievable? 9 Apr 2011 – Is God a Moral Monster? Paul Copan & Norman Bacrac
[If the link will not load the Copan v Bacrac debate directly go to the Unbelievable? page then locate the 9 April 2011 episode ]

The blurb from the show is:

Richard Dawkins describes the Old Testament God as “a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser” (among other things).  Paul Copan is a Christian apologist and has written a book, ”Is God a Moral Monster?” aiming to show why God’s actions in the Old Testament are not immoral when taken in context.

Norman Bacrac is an atheist humanist and part ot the South place Ethical Society. He believes that Old Testament morality was barbaric and we don’t need a God to tell us how to behave.  He holds that God’s morality is called into question if we take the Old Testament literally.

So how do we interpret passages where the Israelites were commanded to wipe out whole towns including women and children?

“The blog of Matthew and Madeleine Flannagan in New Zealand” rates a mention from the host, Justin Brierly, about 38 mins in

In it Paul alludes to an argument advanced by C S Lewis, Alvin Plantinga, Michael Rea, Victor Reppert and also alluded to by Patrica Churchland, Thomas Nagel, William Whewell and Friedrich Nietzche. The argument is that if our cognitive faculties evolved by natural selection, unguided by God, then our cognitive faculties cannot be rationally relied on to give us truth. The literature on this argument is interesting but I won’t comment on that here.

What interests me is the comment Dawkins made in the MP3 which got the applause of the audience. Dawkins appears to not grasp the point of the argument and takes it to be asking for a reason why he supports “scientific rationalism”. He said he believes in scientific rationalism because it “works”. He then provided an example of how it “works”, it is that “science flies us to the moon, while religion flies planes into buildings.”

Much could be said here but I want to limit myself to a single point, the evidence Dawkins cites that science works and religion does not. Dawkins offers that science has done good things such as getting us to the moon; religion has done bad things like destroying the World Trade Centre on 9/11. In other words, the positive things science does commends it as a something we should trust whereas the negative things religious does commends it as some thing which we should not trust.

So let’s look at the claim Dawkins made that “science” got us to the moon. Now how does a subject, get us to the moon? Presumably what he means is that it was through science that we developed the rocket propulsion technology which enabled us to get to the moon.

But here is the problem. If the fact that science developed the propulsion technology that got us to the moon means that science is responsible for the flight to the moon, and can take credit for it, then science must be responsible for the flight into the World Trade Centre; science developed the propulsion technology of aeroplanes, hence, it should be science not religion that is blamed.

Moreover, rockets are used for other things apart from space and air travel.  The first country that flew to the moon has used rockets many times to kill people. So if science is responsible for getting us to the moon, the same reasoning suggests it is also responsible for everyone who is killed in combat by rockets.

On the other hand, if science is not responsible for the World Trade Centre attack because science only developed the technology and the people who did it were motivated by ideals, vision and motivation over and above the technology used to carry it out then science is not responsible for getting us to the moon; it was not merely technology that got us there, it was also people with certain ideals, vision and motivation.

The point is that one cannot credibly give science the credit for something when scientific technology, like rocket propulsion, is used for good purposes and claim this as evidence that science “works” and yet not also give science credit when rocket propulsion is used for negative purposes and not concede this as evidence science “does not work”.

The reality is that the benefits science gives us are not just the result of technology but also the use of that technology by people with certain vision, ideals, motivation and so forth. Questions of how we should live? what is right and wrong? what sorts of purposes should we pursue? are philosophical and theological questions which science cannot, by itself, answer. In the same way the evils done in the name of religion are the result of not just certain religious values but also the use of scientific technology – often technology researched and developed precisely for the purpose of killing people.

The point then is that, both science and religion cause harm and both cause benefit. Technology benefits us when it is used by people who have certain moral and spiritual orientations, who harness science to good. Science will not save us from those of bad character, it will simply give them the tools to do more evil. Similarly, the correct spiritual and moral orientation, by itself, will not benefit people much without the tools to do so.  Both forces are at play in every achievement and lack of achievement of mankind. Neither “work” or fail to “work” in the sense Dawkins mentions. Dawkins’ comments on scientific rationalism may work when it comes to getting the crowd to laugh but that’s all.

Skeptic: Science is BS. Physicists believe in these things called “quarks,” which are little flavored particles that spin around and work like magic charms. Their evidence is that they read about them in a James Joyce novel. Some of them think the universe is made up of tiny shoelaces tied together, though they admit that they have no evidence for this and have to take it on faith. Einstein said morality is all relative – which is why he stole his ideas from this guy who worked in a patent office, and why Richard Feynman stole atomic secrets during WWII. Meanwhile, the chemists contradict the physicists and believe instead in little colored balls held together by sticks. Biologists believe monkeys can give birth to human beings. What a bunch of crap! It’s child abuse to teach kids about this stuff in schools.

Scientist: Are you joking? If not, I suggest that you actually read some science before criticizing it.

Skeptic: I’ve already read a lot about it, in blog comboxes like this one. And why should I waste my time reading anything else? I already know it’s all BS! Didn’t you hear the examples I just gave?

Scientist: No, you’re missing my point. You’ve completely distorted what scientists actually say. It’s not remotely as silly as you think it is. In fact it’s not silly at all. But you need to actually read the stuff to see that.

Skeptic: So you deny that physicists believe in quarks? What flavor are your quarks, chocolate or vanilla? Do you deny that they think we came from monkeys? Which monkey was your mother?

Scientist: No one says that monkeys gave birth to humans. That’s a ridiculous caricature. And of course I don’t deny that physicists believe in quarks, but you’re badly misunderstanding what they mean when they attribute “flavor” to them. They don’t mean that literally…

Skeptic: Oh so it’s just empty verbiage, then. See, you’re just proving my point for me.

Scientist: No, it’s not empty verbiage. It’s technical terminology.

Skeptic: I see, like magic spells. That’s why they talk about “charm.” Really, you’re just digging the hole deeper.

Scientist: Actually, it’s you who is digging your own hole deeper. That’s not what they mean by “charm.” If you knew anything at all about physics, you’d realize that.

Skeptic: See, every time I debate people like you, you always whine about how everyone misunderstands what you mean. You always say go read this shelf of books and come back when you know what you’re talking about.” It’s like one of the naked emperor’s sycophants telling the kid who sees that he’s naked that he needs to read the learned works of Count Roderigo concerning the fine leather of the emperor’s boots, etc.

Scientist: What a ridiculous analogy. You’re just begging the question. Whether science is really comparable to the naked emperor is precisely what’s at issue.

Skeptic: OK, I’ll bite. Explain it to me, then. Prove to me here and now in this combox that science is worth my time, as opposed to being the tissue of superstition, lies, and bigotry that I already know it to be. And don’t get long-winded like you people tend to do, or start throwing around references to this scientist I should know about or that book I should have read.

Scientist: What is this, an invitation to the Star Chamber? How am I supposed to explain fields as complex as quantum physics, or evolutionary biology, or chemistry to the satisfaction of someone as hostile to them as you are in a combox comment, or even a blog post or series of blog posts? Besides, there are so many things wrong with what you’ve said I don’t even know where to begin! And if I keep it short, you’ll tell me that I’m dodging whatever issue I don’t address, while if I respond at greater length you’ll tell me I’m a windbag. I can’t win! But why are you wasting time in a combox anyway? Why don’t you just read the work of some actual scientists? It’s right there in the library or bookstore if you really want to understand it.

Skeptic: I knew it. You won’t defend yourself because you know you can’t. But then, arguing with people like you just gives you credibility. That’s why you uneducated, irrational fanatical bigots need to be shouted down by reasonable, open-minded, well-read, tolerant people like me. Science is BS, and you know it. It’s just so obvious. So why don’t you go back to eating your tasty flavored quarks and tying your vibrating 11-dimensional shoestrings over at your Uncle Monkey’s house, OK? I’ll be here in the reality-based community reading my copy of The Science Delusion.

Naturally, a Dawkins or Myers would be appalled at our Skeptic. And rightly so. But replace terms like “science,” “physicists,” “quarks,” etc. with terms like “theism,” “philosophers,” “God,” etc. and you’ve suddenly got in our Skeptic a typical Dawkins or Myers fan – indeed, you’ve got someone pretty much indistinguishable from Dawkins or Myers themselves.

[Read more →]

Enjoy.

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Fairies Leprechauns, Golden Tea Cups and Spaghetti Monsters
Richard Dawkins and Open Mindedness

In my first post, Epistemology 101: Science, Faith and Authority Part I, I set out some basics about epistemology, I now want to turn to one particular way we know things: testimony. Nicholas Wolterstorff defines paradigmatic cases of testimony as: believing X on the say so of someone else Y. There is a highly influential tradition of epistemology which is sceptical or critical of beliefs based on testimony.

Testimony
In his Essay on Human Understanding John Locke argued that one had a duty to not believe any proposition merely on the authority of another person. One should trust the testimony of another only if one has:

(a) good reasons for thinking that the testifier is reliable; or,
(b) good reasons for believing the truth of the proposition itself.

Taking another persons word for something in the absence of independent evidence is irrational. Locke hinted that such gullibility was socially dangerous, tied up with intolerance, authoritarianism and oppression.

Something like this lurks in contemporary culture and is often encapsulated in quotes such as “think for yourself.” The problem is that a little reflection shows that this view of testimony is mistaken.

CAJ Coady summarises the problem, if one is going to have evidence for the reliability of a testifier then this evidence will either include some other testimony or it will be based upon sources apart from testimony. The first option is obviously a non-starter, any evidence based on testimony will have to, by Locke’s position, be shown to be reliable by further testimony and so on, ad infinitum, until we reach some non-testimonial source. However, if we embrace the second option and we exclude what we know by way of testimony from our evidence base then we will have so little to go on that such grounds will be almost impossible to come by.

To demonstrate this consider an example from Greg Dawes in a paper he wrote on faith,

Very many of our beliefs are held on the basis of testimony. (In this context I shall sometimes refer to these as beliefs held on the basis of authority.) Does e=mc2 represent the rate at which matter can be transformed into energy? I believe so, although I would not have the faintest idea how to demonstrate its truth I have it on good authority that it is true…Of course, there is a sense in which I do believe this on the basis of evidence. I have reasons to believe in the trustworthiness of the sources from which I gained the information.[1]

Like Locke, Dawes suggests that a non-physicist such as himself can rationally believe e=mc2 because he has reasons to believe that his sources are trustworthy. I believe this last comment is incorrect. Consider, for example, what reasons he could offer for believing that the source of his information was reliable? Presumably, it would be because the author of the book where he read it or the person who told him the information was a physicist. Nevertheless, how does Dawes know this? He could have read the person’s qualifications off a faculty list, off the dust-jacket of the book or have been told them by the person in person but in each case he is relying on testimony and so, in the absence of further reasons, he cannot believe these sources. Suppose, however, Dawes was to investigate thoroughly and locate the address of the university where the degree in physics was claimed to be awarded in order to travel there and personally check the original records. Yet again, he will be relying on testimony in the form of an address list and records. He also would have to have trusted the testimony of maps and road signs in getting to the institution in question.

Consider then what Dawes would have left to go on if he did not use testimony. He could not rely on any information that he himself did not observe first-hand. This would exclude any information about events prior to his own lifetime, any events in his own lifetime that he did not remember witnessing first-hand and any event that happened in a place other than where he was at the time. Nothing read in journals, books, heard in lectures, taught to him by his parents or teachers could be used. Nothing heard on the news, read on the computer, told over the phone or reported on in the media could be included. Almost everything he had learnt through his entire education would be excluded because nearly all of it is based on testimony. It seems, then, that if Dawes were really to comply with the epistemic standards that he laid down, he could not rationally believe in e=mc2. It appears he is mistaken in thinking that one needs to have reasons for thinking a given authority is reliable in order to be warranted in believing in testimony.

I think this example shows that this is not isolated. What we know, by way of being told by others, accounts for a huge and pervasive amount of what we believe. Everything I know about other places, other times, everything learned at school, university, from my parents, friends, books, newspapers, television, etc is based on testimony. If I were to try to verify any of these beliefs without first relying on some other piece of testimony, I would be unable to. The kind of critical attitude where one deplores believing things on faith or on the say so of others is un-viable. As social beings with a limited perspective in time and space, and with limited areas of speciality, we need to trust the testimony of others for most of what we know.

Testimony Beliefs as Basic Beliefs
For this reason the idea that one cannot accept something on the say so of testimony until it is verified is problematic. Instead I am inclined to accept a different picture of the role that testimony and faith in authorities should play in our knowledge. The picture that testimony beliefs are properly basic beliefs.

To see what I mean by this consider the following point by Roy Clouser,

If everything needs to be proven then the premises of every proof would need to be proven. But if you need a proof for every proof, you need a proof for your proof, and a proof for your proof of a proof and so on-forever. Thus it makes no sense to demand that everything be proven because an infinite regress of proofs is impossible.[2]

Clouser notes that the appeal to evidence, in the form of premises from which one infers a conclusion, have to terminate somewhere if we are to avoid being sceptical about everything.

The terminus is a set of ultimate premises called basic beliefs, which are those beliefs that form the foundation of our knowledge. We are justified in believing them independently of any argument or proof for them.

If this seems counter-intuitive consider that there are plenty of things we believe that are not based on arguments. Our belief in the existence of the past or our belief that it is wrong to rape women or our belief that other people exist or that basic axioms of logic are true are not based on inferences to the best explanation so that they are rationally believed because they explain some phenomena better than all alternatives. It is rather that these beliefs are part of the background data that we use to assess proposed explanations against.

Usually basic beliefs are grounded in some form of experience. We recognise these as true because we experience or see them to be true. For example, I see that the basic axioms of logic are self-evident, I remember the existence of a past event, I intuitively see that rape is wrong and think anyone who does not see this is simply morally blind. I see the chair in front of me, I hear the car outside and so on. These beliefs function as fundamental premises that we argue to other theories from.

It is important to note that while we are justified in believing basic beliefs in the absence of evidence for them, their justified status can be defeated if we gain good reasons for rejecting these beliefs. For example, on a Tuesday evening I have a vivid experience of my brother entering my room, I form the basic belief that “my brother is in my room.” The next morning I hear that my brother was out all evening. I also discover that the medication I took the night before has hallucinatory side effects. The basic belief, grounded in my perceptual experience of observing my brother entering the room on Tuesday night is defeated. There are two ways basic beliefs can be defeated, undercutting defeaters involve a reason a person acquires which, when added to their stock of beliefs, gives them reasons for thinking that the source of the basic belief is unreliable – my discovery of the hallucinatory side effects is an example of this. Rebutting defeaters, on the other hand, are reasons one acquires for thinking the belief itself is false. My discovery that my brother was not home is a rebutting defeater, if he was not home then he was not in my room.

The picture I want to suggest is that in many circumstances beliefs held on the basis of testimony function as basic beliefs. When a person, whom we take to be a competent authority, affirms a proposition P then in the absence of defeaters we are rational in accepting P. We do not need to prove that what the person says is true before we can accept it and nor do we have to prove that they are a reliable authority before we have to accept it. We do, however, have to take seriously any purported defeaters we are confronted with. We have to take seriously evidence we have that the authorities in question are not actually a reliable guide in the area in which they are speaking and we have to take seriously arguments given against what we accept.

Translating this into a current context, contrary to what is often thought, most of our knowledge of scientific facts is, in fact, on the basis of testimony. As a child I ask questions, why does this happen? what caused this? and so on, my parents tell me answers and I believe them. I go to school and I am taught science and later physics and chemistry, I go to university and attend lectures, I read text books, I might do some experimental work myself but it is in the context of what I have already learned from testimonial sources. I read about studies scientists have done in journals and I believe what is written in these journals. Despite the bravado of self-professed free thinkers, our  acquisition of scientific knowledge is pervasively shot through with faith – faith in authorities, faith that others are being honest to us and are trustworthy and so on. It can be no other way. Hence, to believe some fact about the world merely because another has told you it is true is not irrational but in fact a sensible thing to do.

Consider an example, I am in my car listening to the radio and Keisha Castle-Hughes is on air talking about climate change. The media are praising her for her brave efforts to educate the public. How should I respond? In this instance I am inclined to think that I face some defeaters. I know Castle-Hughes is an actor and has no real expertise in the area in which she is talking. I also know that actors are good at being very convincing at playing a role, which is not real. I know Castle-Hughes is quite young and is unlikely to have had a very substantial science education, much less time to specialise in climatology. I know the media are notoriously unreliable, journalists tend to be very political, their deadline give them limited time to research and they are not experts in science at all. In this instance, I think that I have real reasons to be sceptical of what Castle-Hughes is saying. Even if what she is saying, in fact, is true, I should not believe it just because she says so.

Here is another example. I read a book by Richard Dawkins. He claims that the evidence quite conclusively suggests there is no God. Now in some places Dawkins offers arguments and I can assess these using my ability to reason deductively but in other places he simply tells his readers things. He puts forward various arguments for God’s existence, which he says these are representative of the case for theism, he attributes these to Thomas Aquinas, talks of first-cause arguments and the like. This is a bona fide, scientist with a professorship at Oxford. His specialty is zoology.

However, accurately representing Aquinas’ arguments for God requires knowledge not in zoology but in medieval philosophy. A knowledge of what arguments have been put forward for theism, which are the most representative, which are the best, requires knowledge of a discipline called philosophy of religion. Dawkins’ position as a zoologist means his knowledge is in a very different field. Hence, his being a scientist gives me no reason to accept his work on Aquinas.

This underscores an important point. If a person has some bone fide authority in a field it means he has authority in that field, it does not mean he or she has any authority in another field. Scientists qua scientists are experts in science, not morality, public policy, law, ethics, theology and what have you. Similarly, pastors are trained in biblical exegesis and theology, their knowledge, therefore, is in those fields and not science. One of the problems with the rise of the Internet is that people can get information on any subject any where from any source. In this context it is important to examine carefully whether we have good reasons for questioning whether the source is authoritative.

It is not a bad idea to make our starting place be that we will accept what we are told by authorities but we should not always end there.

In my final post in this series, Part III, I will look at what we should do when authorities clash.

[1] Greg Dawes, “Faith and Reason”, a paper presented to the University of Otago Theology and Religious Studies Faculty. This is contained in Dawes, Philosophy of Religion (so far unpublished) 34.
[2] Roy Clouser  Knowing With the Heart (IVP: Downers Grove, 1999) 69.

RELATED POSTS:
Epistemology 101: Science, Faith and Authority Part I
Epistemology 101: Science, Faith and Authority Part III

Here is a pic of the first one.

Here we are told one million kiwis are good without God because the census says so. This, however, is fallacious. What the census shows is not that one million kiwis are good without God, it shows that one million kiwis are good (although this is granting a lot for the sake of argument) without believing in the existence God. But to say one can be good without believing in God is not the same as saying one can be good without God. Many people throughout history have been able to live and breath without believing in the existence of hydrogen and oxygen atoms, it does not follow that they could live without water.

Moreover, it is hard to tell what the point of this sociological fact is anyway. Why does the fact that people do not need to believe in something to do good deeds mean that the belief is false? For centuries people have done good deeds and lived good lives without believing in evolutionary theory or quantum mechanics, should we conclude that these theories are therefore ‘probably false’? Surely these atheists are not suggesting that our beliefs should be based on what is useful or helpful as opposed to what is true or false?

Perhaps the atheists here mean to convey something else. Some Christian thinkers such as William Lane Craig, Robert Adams, Stephen Layman, Alvin Plantinga, John Hare, Philip Quinn have argued that moral properties such as right and wrong depend on God for their existence. Atheist writers such as Paul Kurtz and Christopher Hitchens retort that this claim is falsified by the existence of morally upright atheists. I suspect something like this is behind the slogan on the billboard, it repeats Hitchens and Kurtz’s retorts as though they said something insightful or clever.

The problem is, as any one familiar with this discussion should know, this retort misses the point (as I pointed out in On a Common Equivocation). Craig, Adams, et al are not claiming that one needs to believe in God to be good (a point made several times in the literature and particularly made so many times to Kurtz that it beggars belief that he keeps repeating it) rather their claim is that moral properties, such as right and wrong, depend on God for their existence.

This is a fairly basic and elementary distinction in the literature. How exactly expressing a common philosophical confusion counts as reason for thinking “there probably is no God” is hard to see.

Let’s look at the next one.

What is asserted here? That man created God. This, however, is clearly absurd. God is typically defined as an all-powerful, all-knowing, immaterial, necessarily-existent being who created the world. Now if one is going to claim that humans actually created an all-powerful, all-knowing, immaterial, necessarily-existent who created the world, then they are contradicting themselves.

Humans are part of the world and therefore cannot have created the being that created the world – otherwise humans would have to exist prior to their own existence.

Similarly, one cannot create a necessary being, this would entail it is possible for a necessary being to not exist, in which case it would not be a necessary being. Taken in a straight-forward, literal manner (the way freethinkers are so fond of taking every passage in the Bible) this billboard simply asserts contradictions.

Of course, the authors of this billboard probably do not mean to say humans actually created God, they do not think he exists after all. Their claim is that humans created the idea or concept of God and developed it. This is undoubtedly true. Of course, humans also invented the idea or concept of atoms as well, ancient Greek philosophers came up the basics of this concept millennium ago. This trivial fact tells us nothing about whether or not the idea or concept humans developed actually corresponds to anything in reality. To assume that it tells us something about whether the idea or concept is true or false is a fairly obvious case of the genetic fallacy.

So the second billboard either asserts a contradiction or it is a clear case of a logical fallacy.

The last one is my favourite.

I am inclined to think the argument on this sign is invalid. To see why let’s take out the term “God” in the sign and replace it with some other term such as “non-Christian perspective.” When we do this we get: “We all reject most non-Christian perspectives, some of us just reject one more.” This argument has true premises, do we now have, a knock-down argument for Christianity?

Similarly, an analogous argument form with true premises gives us an argument for nihilism, the total denial of the existence of morality. “We are all nihilists about some conceptions of morality, some of us are just nihilistic about one more.”

The same argument for also furnishes a refutation of secularism, “we all reject some secular perspectives on reality, some of us just reject one more.” I could go on.

Taking a stand on any issue of philosophical substance, whether by affirming, denying or simply being sceptical of it, is to put oneself in opposition to any number of other people and groups who take a contrary stance. That is life. Such pluralism hardly provides a reason for thinking “there probably is no God” any more than it gives us a reason to doubt any other perspective on the world.

So what do the atheist billboards do? Well the first one tells us that some atheist groups conflate basic philosophical distinctions and don’t really understand the debate they are contributing to. The second shows us that these groups think contradictions and obvious fallacies are some how savvy and smart. The last shows us that they think that invalid argument forms, forms from which you could infer the denial of anything and everything by substituting one true premise with another, are avant-garde.

All in all, pretty accurate advertising for these groups.

Hat tip: MCAS

Now Dawkins is a Zoologist and I, not being a Zoologist, would not presume to assess his work on Zoology. What is interesting, however, is that much of Dawkins’ most famous work is not on Zoology; it is on Theology and specifically Philosophy of Religion. That field of Philosophy which critically analyses religious questions, such as, the veracity of arguments for and against God’s existence. Having some background in these fields I find it a little surprising that an Auckland University publication would contend that his work is open minded because it is evidently not.

In The God Delusion Dawkins’ main argument against the existence of God alludes to Fred Hoyle’s famous claim that the probability of something as complex as life evolving by blind chance was less likely than a fully-functional Boeing 747 being created by a hurricane blowing parts around in a junk yard. Dawkins writes, “However statistically improbable the entity you seek to explain by invoking a designer, the designer himself has got to be at least as improbable. God is the Ultimate Boeing 747.” Dawkins has made the same line of argument elsewhere “God, or any intelligent, decision-making calculating agent, is complex, which is another way of saying improbable.” In The Blind Watchmaker he argues,

Once we are allowed simply to postulate organized complexity, if only the organized complexity of the DNA/protein replicating machine, it is relatively easy to invoke it as a generator of yet more organized complexity”. But of course any God capable of intelligently designing something as complex as the DNA/protein machine must have been at least as complex and organized as that machine itself.

This argument contains three premises. First, that theism (belief in God) is justified by “postulating” God to explain the existence of organised complexity. Second that the God appealed to by theists is complex. Third, that the existence of complex beings are highly improbable. These lead to the conclusion that “God is the Ultimate Boeing 747” and hence “almost certainly does not exist”. The problem with this argument is that all three premises rest on caricatures and misunderstandings of contemporary theology and ignorance of contemporary philosophy of religion. I will explain.

Dawkins contends that God is postulated to explain organised complexity. There are two problems with this contention. First, Dawkins assumes that God is rationally believed only if his existence is inferred by some kind of argument for the best explanation of a given phenomenon. However, not all beliefs are justified on the basis of some kind of argument of this sort. Our belief in the existence of the past, our belief that it is wrong to rape, our belief that other people exist or that basic axioms of logic are true are not based on inferences to the best explanation. It is not that they are rationally believed because they explain some phenomena better than all alternatives, it is rather that these beliefs are part of the background data that we use to assess proposed explanations against. These things are true because we immediately experience them as true. I have the experience of remembering the existence of a past event. I intuitively perceive that rape is wrong. I experience the basic axioms of logic as self-evident and so on. Such beliefs are called properly-basic beliefs.

Since the late 1970’s an extremely important movement within Philosophy of Religion, known as the reformed epistemology movement, has offered detailed and rigorous defences of the contention that, for theists, belief in God can be properly-basic. This position has been defended by leading philosophers of religion such Alvin Plantinga, William Alston, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Peter Van Inwagen and others. Now, of course, it is possible that this movement is mistaken but Dawkins surely owes us an argument to this end as opposed to his simply assuming it and ignoring the counter evidence.

Second, among those theists who do defend God’s existence on the basis of some argument for the best explanation, very few do so on the basis that God explains “organized complexity”. Richard Swinburne, the leading proponent of such arguments, argues that God explains the existence of laws of nature, religious experience, the origin of the universe and the continued existence of the universe. Swinburne does not postulate God to explain “organised complexity”. Similarly, William Lane Craig, a leading defender of theism, suggests that God explains the origin of the universe, the existence of morality and the fine tuning of the laws of nature. Again, Craig makes no appeal to “organized complexity”. In 2009 The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology was published which contains the most up to date versions of the 11 most definitive arguments used to defend the existence of God in the literature today. Not one of them involves an appeal to “organised complexity”. While the cogency of arguments for the existence of God that do not involve “organized complexity” remains open to substantive debate, it is undisputed that these arguments exist. Dawkins’ picture of God as a postulate to explain organised complexity is a crude caricature of theistic scholarship.

To be fair Dawkins attempts to address some of these other arguments elsewhere in the book. However, here again much of his writing consists of caricature. He attacks five arguments proposed 800 years ago by Thomas Aquinas as being representative of the current case for theism and completely ignores the vastly more sophisticated and vigorous versions being defended in the literature today. Ironically, Dawkins quite severely misunderstands Aquinas’ arguments and attributes to him a position no Aquinas scholar would accept as accurate. However, even if his account were accurate, critiquing theism by attacking the arguments of one 12th century theologian is a bit like me attacking evolution on the basis of the evidence for it gathered in the 12th century and ignoring any of the scientific developments of the last 800 years. Such ineptitude would not be tolerated in the scientific world and should not be seen as de rigueur just because the topic is religion.

Dawkins’ second contention fares little better. Dawkins states that “A God capable of continuously monitoring and controlling the individual status of every particle in the universe cannot be simple” this seems to be because,

The corners of God’s giant consciousness are simultaneously preoccupied with the doings and emotions and prayers of every single human being—and whatever intelligent aliens there might be on other planets in this and 100 billion other galaxies.

There are several problems here. First, as Craig has noted, this confuses whether what God thinks about is complex with whether God himself is complex. Second, as Plantinga has noted, in The Blind Watchmaker Dawkins states that something is complex if it has parts that are “arranged in a way that is unlikely to have arisen by chance alone.” However, the concept of God employed by most theists is of an immaterial being that does not have material parts so by Dawkins’ own definition God is not complex (unless one assumes that God is a material being but theists almost unanimously maintain that God is an immaterial being).

This misrepresentation is made all the more pertinent by the fact that for centuries theists have been offering rigorous and sophisticated arguments that God is not in fact complex but is simple. While these arguments may not be successful, Dawkins still needs to actually provide reasons for rejecting them. To simply assert that God is to be conceived in a way that no one conceives Him and to ignore the numerous arguments to the contrary seem more like a child who asserts his position and then puts his hands over his ears and repeats “I am not listening” than it does a serious critical evaluation of another’s position.

Dawkins’ final contention, that the existence of complex beings is improbable, is similarly confused. Suppose one grants that God is “the Ultimate Boeing 747” and that God’s existence is as statically improbable as the complexity it is invoked to explain. Little in fact follows from this. This is because what is improbable in the Boeing 747 analogy is that the plane came into existence by chance. If God is “the Ultimate Boeing 747” then the conclusion to be drawn is only that it is improbable that God came into existence by chance. This, however, provides us with no reason for thinking that God does not exist. No theist holds that God came into existence by chance, theists hold that God is eternal. Here, again, Dawkins attacks a concept of God nobody holds to and hence is caught jousting with a straw-man.

On examining Dawkins’ central argument what one discovers is not an open-minded, informed, careful examination of the contemporary debate over the existence of God. Nor does one find a carefully researched assessment of theism. Instead one finds Dawkins simply ignoring what theists mean by God. He ignores how they conceptualise God and ignores the arguments and discussions they have actually made. The theism Dawkins dismisses apparently assumes that God is a material being with parts, that He came into existence by chance and is postulated merely to explain organized complexity. The actual arguments proposed in defence of theism that have been put forward in the literature are not addressed at all.

Some Auckland University academics might consider such tactics to count as open-minded but I do not. In my view an open-minded honest assessment of religion requires accurately representing what theologians say and teach. It means endeavouring to read and understand their position and offer informed and critical responses to these positions. Ignorance and caricature is not open-minded scholarship.

I write a monthly column for Investigate Magazine entitled Contra Mundum. This blog post was published in the May 10 issue and is reproduced here with permission. Contra Mundum is Latin for ‘against the world;’ the phrase is usually attributed to Athanasius who was exiled for defending Christian orthodoxy.

Letters to the editor should be sent to: editorial@investigatemagazine.DELETE.com

RELATED POSTS:
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Contra Mundum: Secular Smoke Screens and Plato’s Euthyphro
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Contra Mundum: God, Proof and Faith
Contra Mundum: “Bigoted Fundamentalist” as Orwellian Double-Speak
Contra Mundum: The Flat-Earth Myth
Contra Mundum: Confessions of an Anti-Choice Fanatic
Contra Mundum: The Judgmental Jesus

In the first hour the speakers addressed four issues:

1. Should a working scientist operate as a methodological atheist or, in other words, does the scientific project necessarily exclude God? – Dr Jeff Tallon
2. Scientific beliefs are based on measurable, verifiable evidence, is belief in God any different? – Dr Matthew Flannagan
3. Does evolution threaten belief in God? – Dr Neil Broom
4. Science and free-will. – Dr Robert Mann

The second hour consisted of questions from the audience.

Hat Tip: Thinking Matters

The second and final event in this series, Christianity on Trial, is on at Auckland University tonight at 7pm.