Bainbridge: Does What "Elite Professors" Think Matter?
And
Are Philosophers Experts About the Existence of God?
I.
Via Instapundit there's this by Stephen Bainbridge.
I've gotta say I'm torn on this one. If all I knew about proposition p was that more academicians than non-academicians believed it, I'm not initially certain whether I'd bet on its truth or not. Bainbridge is right that it'd be a good bet if we knew that p fell within area of expertise A, and that experts in A believed p at a higher rate than the rest of the population--e.g. if p was a proposition about economics, and more economists believed it. But as for an arbitrarily-selected p...man, I dunno...
Academicians often strike me as a fairly loony lot...and academicians at more "elite" institutions--if by that we meen Ivy League types--often strike me as being on the loonier end of the curve. It might be relevant that folks who are able to snag such jobs are usually from very privileged backgrounds, so they start life being a little nutty and out of touch with reality. They've often never had real jobs, never had to worry about making a living. Most of them have never dug a ditch, baled hay, fixed a car. Most of them have never had a shitty job, been broke, been in a fist fight. They've lived in a very atypical world. There are exceptions, of course, but they're on average a pretty unaverage lot. So if the p in question turns out to be about some practical matter of actual life in the, ya know, world...well, it wouldn't be smart to be with the pointy-headed intellectuals.
Then you throw in the fact that, in many disciplines, you don't really have to be very smart to succeed. In order to avoid an avoidable controversy, I won't list the list here, but let's just remind ourselves that not every discipline is as demanding as physics. Hell, not every discipline is as demanding as history. In fact, IMHO, not every discipline is as demanding as plumbing. Even at the "elite" institutions. You probably have to be smarter to teach, say, math at a community college than you have to be to teach, say, speech communications at an Ivy League school.
And an inordinate number of academicians--especially in the humanities and social sciences--at elite schools are nutty lefties. Way far left of your garden-variety liberals.
Though, come to think of it, lots hangs on what we mean by "elite schools" here. Perhaps it just means something like the country's top thirty or fifty schools. If that's what's meant, then the stuff above is rather less true of the such folks.
On the other hand, academia does wash out most of the very stupidest of the stupid and most ignorant of the ignorant. You'll find virtually no religious fundamentalists, radical nationalists, alien abductees, folks who call the psychic hotline, racists, homophobes and suchlike.
Soooo...on balance, if I had to bet on the truth of proposition p without knowing anything about it other than that academicians were more likely than non-academicians to believe it...I'd be very unhappy. But I'd probably cross my fingers and bet on p.
For a similar bet replacing 'academicians' with 'academicians at elite institutions'....I'd still probably bet on p, but, to be honest, I'd be a little more worried about it.
And
Are Philosophers Experts About the Existence of God?
I.
Via Instapundit there's this by Stephen Bainbridge.
I've gotta say I'm torn on this one. If all I knew about proposition p was that more academicians than non-academicians believed it, I'm not initially certain whether I'd bet on its truth or not. Bainbridge is right that it'd be a good bet if we knew that p fell within area of expertise A, and that experts in A believed p at a higher rate than the rest of the population--e.g. if p was a proposition about economics, and more economists believed it. But as for an arbitrarily-selected p...man, I dunno...
Academicians often strike me as a fairly loony lot...and academicians at more "elite" institutions--if by that we meen Ivy League types--often strike me as being on the loonier end of the curve. It might be relevant that folks who are able to snag such jobs are usually from very privileged backgrounds, so they start life being a little nutty and out of touch with reality. They've often never had real jobs, never had to worry about making a living. Most of them have never dug a ditch, baled hay, fixed a car. Most of them have never had a shitty job, been broke, been in a fist fight. They've lived in a very atypical world. There are exceptions, of course, but they're on average a pretty unaverage lot. So if the p in question turns out to be about some practical matter of actual life in the, ya know, world...well, it wouldn't be smart to be with the pointy-headed intellectuals.
Then you throw in the fact that, in many disciplines, you don't really have to be very smart to succeed. In order to avoid an avoidable controversy, I won't list the list here, but let's just remind ourselves that not every discipline is as demanding as physics. Hell, not every discipline is as demanding as history. In fact, IMHO, not every discipline is as demanding as plumbing. Even at the "elite" institutions. You probably have to be smarter to teach, say, math at a community college than you have to be to teach, say, speech communications at an Ivy League school.
And an inordinate number of academicians--especially in the humanities and social sciences--at elite schools are nutty lefties. Way far left of your garden-variety liberals.
Though, come to think of it, lots hangs on what we mean by "elite schools" here. Perhaps it just means something like the country's top thirty or fifty schools. If that's what's meant, then the stuff above is rather less true of the such folks.
On the other hand, academia does wash out most of the very stupidest of the stupid and most ignorant of the ignorant. You'll find virtually no religious fundamentalists, radical nationalists, alien abductees, folks who call the psychic hotline, racists, homophobes and suchlike.
Soooo...on balance, if I had to bet on the truth of proposition p without knowing anything about it other than that academicians were more likely than non-academicians to believe it...I'd be very unhappy. But I'd probably cross my fingers and bet on p.
For a similar bet replacing 'academicians' with 'academicians at elite institutions'....I'd still probably bet on p, but, to be honest, I'd be a little more worried about it.
II.
The Bainbridge piece also prompts the following question: are philosophers experts when it comes to the question of the existence of God?
I think the answer has to be 'yes', since philosophers have, on average, thought about the relevant arguments in much greater depth and at much greater length than most people.
Incidentally, philosophers are far less likely to believe in God than the average American.
Make of that what you will.
posted by Winston Smith at
10:59 AM
14 Comments:
Learning and intelligence are not synonymous with wisdom. It takes a lot of highfallutin thinking to arrive at world-class error. I'm in sympathy with William F. Buckley's sentiment that he'd rather be governed by the first 3000 names in the Boston phone book that by the faculty of Harvard.
That said, Aristotle derived some sort of God, although a rather uninvolved one. Aquinas, following him, made it his life's work to reconcile relelation and reason. But Leo Strauss, whom I also enjoy, thought they were irreconcilable, altho created a healthy tension.
But the moderns discard much thought of God at all, although I ran across this quote from the quite skeptical David Hume:
"As every enquiry which regards religion is of the utmost importance, there are two questions in particular which challenge our attention, to wit, that concerning its foundation in reason, and that concerning its origin in human nature."
...but he follows:
"Happily, the first question, which is the most important, admits of the most obvious, at least, the clearest, solution. The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author; and no rational enquirer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion."
Now, one can place all burden of proof on the theist, and no doubt win the debate in fine courtroom fashion as God will remain unproved to his satisfaction, but he also takes himself out of the inquiry and thereby denies his own humanity, as it is in our nature to inquire about such things.
On that gossamer thread I'm quite content, outside theological discussions with members of my cult, to leave it, in the province of "general revelation," as Aquinas called it ("special revelation" being the Bible and Christology, etc.), the thought that reason might lead one to the doorway of faith.
BTW, even the most Enlightened of the Founders were there---their God had no name or book, but was providential, which is to say active in the affairs of men to some degree, and His favor was dependent on the rightness of intention and action.
In the context of our times, I would find that sufficient.
Tom, you have an incredible talent for saying almost nothing with a whole lot of words and in the company of a whole lot of smart people. The reason the burden of proof should not be on the theist is because it robs us of our humanity? Why? Because you say so? My humanity is fine, thank you. Winston at least makes the point that he's thought about this a lot. Your point is what? I'm serious. I can't tell from your post what the hell you're trying to say. English please.
Sorry, becca. The shorthand that politeness requires of a comments section doesn't always allow starting from the beginning. But it has also been my experience on the internet that when someone writes they don't understand what I'm saying, they understand perfectly what I'm saying.
In short, to address what I think is your salience,
The reason the burden of proof should not be on the theist is because it robs us of our humanity?
If this is a debate or a trial, I already admitted that you win. Nolo contendere.
I think it's human nature to muse on, or wonder on, the possibility of God. Mebbe I'm wrong. Some people think it's a "meme," a superstition, a defect in our thinking, if not our nature.
I have nothing to say about God to you at this point. Wouldn't know what to say. But I don't believe you have closed your inquiry on the subject, or else your tolerance would require you to allow me to continue in my folly.
I've had people tell me they've been abducted by aliens. I mean, what, am I going to start a fight?
But Tom, nobody's talking about the burden of proof here.
Or, rather, until you brought it up.
Peirce contends that there IS no burden of proof in philosophy, and I'm currently intrigued by that position.
As you note, if there IS a burden of proof in the God debate, then the atheist wins, hands down: we do not have sufficient reason to believe that God is real. When you had to be a Christian to get published, to get read, and, ya know, not to get killed, then most philosophers were Christians, or at least Deists, or at least said they were. Pretty much as soon as people became free to think and write and study what they wanted, the majority of philosophers admitted that the arguments for the existence of God didn't work. Hume himself shreds the Argument From Design, the Cosmological Argument depends on the unproven Principle of Sufficient Reason, and the Ontological Argument...jeez, don't even get me started on that one.
On top of that, it's actually the Jesus part of Christianity that is least plausible. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that that part's false (even though Jesus was probably an actual, real man), for reasons too familiar, I'd guess, to enumerate here. (For one thing it brings to the forefront the incoherent ideas of original sin, and of clearing up someone else's moral debts by dying for them.)
BUT...I don't think we can claim to know for certain that there's nothing vaguely god-like about the universe. Peirce has some very interesting arguments for viewing the universe as something vaguely mind-like (in a very attenuated sense of 'mind'). He admits that it's a speculative hypothesis, but it explains a lot, and I think it's worthy of serious attention. It takes a lot of work to even understand what he's saying, and to understand why it isn't crazy...and it sounds so crazy on its face that I certainly wouldn't expect anybody to take my word for it.
But, in case anybody's interested, my judgment is that some highly, highly, highly attenuated version of something vaguely resembling a god hypothesis is still a live and important option.
Don't throw the baby of the god hypothesis out with the bath-water of Christianity, I'd say. Still, be fairly suspicious of it, I'd say.
Incidentally, as for Buckley's point about wanting to be governed by the first 3000 names in the Boston phone book rather than by the faculty of Harvard:
The scary thing, man, is that I'm in no way sure that he's wrong about that...
Your comment about most philosophers being agnostic is statistically misleading: the title "philosopher" is strongly selective for agnostic (or atheist.) For believers who make a profession of studying existential questions, the term of choice is "theologian". I suspect if you took a census you would find that, indeed, most theologians are believers.
Make of it what you will
-mac
I doubt that's right, mac, but maybe.
What I meant was: professional philosophers. That is, people in university philosophy departments. Theologians aren't merely philosophers who are theists.
We don't select for atheists or agnostics in phil. departmens, though it's probably true that some theists who might have gone into philosophy go into theology instead.
The really important fact though, is this:
Very few people start out as atheists but turn into theists on the basis of the strength of the arguments, whereas very many people start out as theists but become atheists on the basis of the strength of the arguments.
That's just a corollary of the fact that the arguments FOR the existence of God (i.e. the Abrahamic conception of god) don't work, whereas there are strong arguments AGAINST the God hypothesis--there is no clearly sound response to the problem of evil in particular.
Oh, I dunno, once they assume the burden of proof, if the arguments against are any more successful.
The question of who's who in philosophy, is of course the matter here. I have no doubt that Elizabeth Anscombe, who legendarily kicked CS Lewis' ass in a debate, could have handled the antitheists as well.
Among those in the know, she was one of the most brilliant of 20th century philosophers, but as it is a scandal she was a Catholic, is often left out of the club. This is her most famous monograph, Modern Moral Philosophy, which made a big splash upon its publication, and is finding an audience even now as postmodernism, having proved insufficient for man's needs, crashes and burns.
I never read the Anscombe-Lewis debate, though I have to say I kind of like Lewis's mind more than I like Anscombe's. I mean, the good Lewis of chapter 1 of _The Abolition of Man_, not the intellectually dishonest Lewis of e.g. _The Screwtape Letters_.
Personally I wouldn't count Anscombe as "one of the 20th-century's most brilliant philosophers." In fact, I can't see calling her brilliant at all. In fact, I don't think she was very good. Famous, yes. Pretty good, I guess. Brilliant, no.
MMP is, like Anscombe herself, o.k., but not brilliant. Few read it anymore, and it'll be little more than a curiosity in 50 years, I'd bet. The fact that the PoMos like it is condemnation enough...
Could Anscombe have "handled" an atheist in a debate? Not if "handled" means "beaten," and not unless she had some super-secret arguments for the existence of God that she kept secret from everybody even 'til death.
But inquiry isn't debate, and I hate it when people try to make inquiry into a competitive sport.
Indeed. But I don't see antitheism as any more provabale than the converse. At its heart is nothing, and you can't prove nothing, either. At the heart of the theistic inquiry is the simple question, why is there something instead of nothing?
As noted above, my own approach is not to pump Lewis' Mere Christianity on people. That's walking through the door. But I do think The Abolition of Man can lead one up to the doorway, which is why I often post a link to it (free!), even tho it's unlikely anyone will use it.
As for Anscombe, she has much to say to you.
Well, Abrahamic theism is only one possible answer to the question "why is there something rather than nothing?" One tiny speck in the conceptual space of possible answers to that question.
Even if we could prove that there was a being such that its nature explained its existence, there's no way to get from there to "that being is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent."
And, although I think Leibniz showed that it's not IMPOSSIBLE for evil and a perfect being to co-exist, it's still extremely unlikely.
Which means, basically, that:
There's no particularly strong reason to think that the Abrahamic god exists, and there's fairly strong reason to believe that he doesn't.
So that's not proof beyond any logically possible doubt, but it's enough to make belief in such a god (pretty damn) irrational.
Unless, of course, we're missing something.
Now, we're probably missing something...in fact we're probably missing a lot...but what we're missing is just as likely to make the existence of god *less* likely as it is to make it *more* likely. In fact, given what we know now, it's *more* likely to make it less likely than it is to make it more likely.
However, if one sees the various versions of Abrahamic theism as relatively primitive attempts to grasp at some more complex truth, then the terrain changes and becomes more interesting.
But since that forces the Abrahamic theist to admit the literal falsehood of his position, most don't want to go that way. This is why religion progresses, if at all, much more slowly than science. The scientist is supposed to explicitly recognize the fallibility of his theory, whereas that's anathema to most religions.
If all there is to man is his reason, then you're correct.
But if experience tells us that St. Augustine is right when he says, our hearts are made for Thee, speaking of God, of course, then the inquiry must remain open, and the brute tool of reason may be insufficient except to bring us to that doorway.
Reason and philosophy have a language, but they lack a certain je ne sais quoi
.
(Trying to speak English, here, becca, but you see the problem. It's like tryin' to tell a stranger 'bout-a rock'n'roll...))
I am to some degree tempted to agree that the heart has its reasons that reason knows not of...
But that doesn't help the Abrahamic theist...the relevant sentiments don't point us to the Abrahamic God. Not many of us, anyway.
Oh, this thread is getting buried, but if you ever want to revisit this, our colloquy has sparked a few more thoughts. (Which is exactly why I hang around here, WS, for the spark.)
As a teaser, Sartre said that being an atheist was very hard work. A beautiful day, sunshine on your shoulders as it were, and you find yourself wanting to thank someone or something...
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