“I think you forget what you yourself have said. You said that we should have a discussion of whether or not religion is child abuse. If that’s not policing, I don’t know what is.”

I never said “we should have a discussion about child abuse”. I said it is a legitimate discussion what constitutes child abuse and it should be OK to discuss it. That itself implies nothing about policy or implementation, let alone policing. What I am advocating is that we can discuss difficult topics without people throwing temper tantrums and assume the intention is to send everybody to jail. It’s radicalizing the discussion before it was even had.

But yes, I see this a lot. People jump to fatalicing conclusions. Just because Dawkins raises the issue does not automatically mean that parents will be policed any more than they are policed now. Just like the discussion of slapping children never meant that all parents should go to jail who have slapped their child. But we no longer have those discussions without some infused drama.

On mockery, who will be the judge when mockery is OK and when it isn’t? No need to answer, but it’s the core of what you try to delineate. Also note that there is a huge difference between mocking and demeaning. Mocking an idea is not the same as demeaning a person. I am against the latter. But if an idea cannot withstand mocking it may well not be a good idea.

“I’m saying the genre of metaphysics deserves to be part of the canon, because it has formed the world we live in, even if you disagree with it.”

To me that’s a non-nonsensical statement. The atomic bomb has shaped the world we live in. That doesn’t mean that we have to consider nuclear bombing of civilians to be “canonical” (whatever that means in this context). If you are trying to say that history informs us how we got here, well yes, but that is no defense of metaphysics.

“Again, that is a metaphysical position, saying basically that anyone that doesn’t buy that metaphysical naturalism are sissies who want to “feel good.” There’s a lot more involved in that discussion than simply shouting down your opponent.”

Well I didn’t put it that way and I don’t like it characterized that way. How else are we going to have the discussion why people want to believe that they are attention of deities that their planet is the center of the universe etc etc, if saying this implies a “shouting down”. I’m sorry but this is an appeal to emotion that is untenable and goes back to the point about mocking. But even more, to say that people invent things to feel good about themselves does by no means even need to imply (or wanting to imply!) that people who hold it are “sissies”. I certainly do not hold this. We are all human and that’s OK.

That showing vulnerability, errors, misconceptions is judged badly is a flaw of our society, not a flaw in the argument. Heck I am full of all those things. But we again want to be or give the impression of being pristine. And when that is criticized we “shout down”. I think it misunderstands the argument when phrased in those terms.

Let’s get the easy stuff out of the way first.

“I don’t think that liberal Christianity has a monopoly on the “truth”.”

Is “truth”-with-magic-quotes different to truth-without-magic-quotes?

I agree that liberal Christianity doesn’t have “a monopoly” on truth. That won’t surprise you. But I would also say that atheism doesn’t have “a monopoly” on truth. Because we are all fallible. I just think I’m right; I don’t claim to know for a fact that I’m right. That just means I’m prepared to defend an argument, it doesn’t mean I think I have a monopoly on truth.

“I do think that liberal Christianity is objectively superior to fundamentalist Christianity, because fundamentalist Christianity holds tenents that are known to be false– the age of the Universe, evolution, etc. (It’s also just bad theology to try to read the Bible literally, in my view– that is, it’s not just bad for scientific reasons.)”

Sure. And of course nobody does read the Bible literally, even if they think they do. You don’t get literalists so much as inerrantists. But anyway, let’s keep in mind your point about certain religious beliefs being known to be false.

So although you are saying that other religions are not wrong, from your point of view, you are nevertheless prepared to say that particular beliefs are wrong, if they contradict the findings of science.

That seems important, since you also say that “religion is not science”. Well, I guess it isn’t, per se. But you recognise that particular religious beliefs could fall foul of science, even if in general terms you’re not prepared to say that the generality of a particular religion is wrong.

In that context, I was interested in this remark:

“That’s the thing about religion — it’s not science, and it’s possible for multiple seemingly conflicting ideas to all be right, in their own way.”

To me, that rings logical bells rather than specifically scientific ones – principle of contradiction for example. Contradictory statements cannot be truth at the same time and in the same respect. I would say that applies to religion too. Jesus cannot be the son of God and also not the son of God, for example. But as you’ve written it, it’s ambiguous. You *could* have come straight out and claimed that, in religion, contradictory ideas could all be right. I think that would be illogical. But you didn’t quite say that. You said “seemingly conflicting” (is “conflicting” synonymous with “contradictory”? I feel not.), and you said “in their own way.” So you actually seem to be saying that the contradictions are only apparent, and could be resolved somehow, not that the contradictions are real yet simultaneously all true. In which case, I don’t think you’ve said anything interesting or helpful.

As for “other ways of knowing”, to be honest I think the phrase is ambiguous. It might mean “other ways of obtaining knowledge” or “other ways of talking about knowledge”. I don’t think I was explicit in my previous posts, though I’d hoped it was implicit, that I agree with you that science and reason are not synonymous. I would say that science – meaning perhaps the experimental sciences – uses certain tools of thought in order to test ideas, root out error, and try to establish knowledge. Other subjects use some of the same tools, but may use others. I agree with you that “science isn’t the be-all and end-all of human intellectual effort”, and that not everything we know is known because of specifically scientific method.

But I don’t think your comments are clear enough. For example:

“What decides the great masters of music or art? Not science. And, yet, scholars find something worth studying in what they did beyond psychology or social science trying to figure out why certain works of art resonated with certain societies.”

Scholars do indeed find Bach or Da vinci or Shakespeare worthy of study. And I agree that science doesn’t have a way to establish that such people are indeed “great masters”. To the extent that the list of “great masters” can be defended objectively, you’d have to use the tools of literary or artistic analysis. But what is the “other way of knowing” here? We all have subjective aesthetic appreciation. But I wouldn’t describe my love of a particular painting or piece of music as “knowledge” – other than self-knowledge.

But your point is misdirected. The argument, such as it is, is not that science is the only thing worth having. There aren’t many – if any – people who would take that view. There might be more people prepared to argue that science is the only way to achieve knowledge – but I’m not one of them. I might say that the most certain knowledge we have is generated by the highest quality scientific research, but that’s not quite the same thing. As I’ve said, I think history and literature and so forth are capable of discovering knowledge. But I don’t think the way they do it is outside reason. If you don’t use reason, then you won’t approach knowledge, whatever your field. Knowledge is not revealed.

You say:

“yes, faith is a way of knowing. You don’t think it’s a valid one, and that’s fine, but you go much too far when you seem to think that science is really the only way of knowing.”

As I say, “way of knowing” is ambiguous. When you say “faith” is such a way, I wonder what you mean. Is it a body of knowledge, or is it a method of gaining or testing knowledge? Or both? I’ve said “knowledge is not revealed”, perhaps faith is knowledge you would say is gained by revelation? Or not? Anyway, I hope I’m now clear that I don’t think science is the be all and end all.

You said, and I agree, that reason and logic apply outside of science. Do they apply in faith?

I think that question has bite, because you say

“I think that liberal Christianity is the best religion *for me*. I don’t think it’s the best religion for everybody.”

You’ve said that reason and logic apply outside of science, and you’ve said that faith is a “way of knowing”. If your liberal Christianity is reasonable and logical, as you imply, and if it also constitutes knowledge, then I wonder if it is really so easy for you to say that it is “best” (does that mean “true”, or is it just an aesthetic preference?) for you but not for everybody? That is, if your faith is a form of knowledge/way of knowing? If it’s really knowledge, and not just self-knowledge or a personal preference, then it must be true for everyone, mustn’t it?

Now, orthodox Jews can consistently say that their faith is best for them but not for others. No problem there, because of the nature of their beliefs.

You identify as Christian, not just as a theist. A theist might say that every religion has a core of theist truth. But it’s hard to see how a Christian can be quite so accommodating. As I pointed out, Jesus cannot have been both God’s son and not God’s son. I presume you as a Christian believe at least that?

Now, you might say that others have their own way to truth, or some such.

But that’s difficult, theologically, surely? A Christian, I take it, believes that God sent his only son to earth to be crucified to death. I presume that is what you think. I presume you believe in a God.

So are we to take it that the God in which you believe suffered, through the crucifixion of his only son, in order to demonstrate love and forgiveness, but it doesn’t really matter if you think that Jesus didn’t die on the cross and wasn’t God’s son.

That just doesn’t seem credible. God sacrificed his only son, taking on the sins of the world, but if you want to dedicate yourself to achieving Nirvana, then that’s right as well. I don’t think you can consistently take the position you claim to take.

Dan

I don’t see any policing.

I think you forget what you yourself have said. You said that we should have a discussion of whether or not religion is child abuse. If that’s not policing, I don’t know what is.

You are fine to believe in metaphysics, but y0u cannot demand to be free from criticism or mockery.

I am with you on the criticism part. But not entirely on the mockery part (which as I wrote above, often comes from a place of ignorance about religion). Mockery *can* be part of a good reasoned discussion, especially about important, and especially about life or death issues, but it gets to be quite different when you’re aiming to socially ostracize and isolate holders of certain ideas from polite society. In these cases, as Alan Wolfe argues (singling out Sam Harris for criticism on this count) you start to drift away from the liberal tradition.

Skeptical and critical inquiry gives a method of looking at the invented wheel and make it better, and discard wheels that don’t work well, are obsolete or never worked.

You’re misunderstanding what I’m saying. I’m not saying there should be no criticism. I’m saying the genre of metaphysics deserves to be part of the canon, because it has formed the world we live in, even if you disagree with it. If nothing else, it’s a rich enough genre to have done some important work in history. Alan Wolfe quotes “man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun.” (And as I said above, I have respect for the Burkean view that we should be careful before we just drop kick ideas that have persisted for centuries.)

But because we like to claim beautiful emotions to be transendent, we invent metaphysics.

Again, that is a metaphysical position, saying basically that anyone that doesn’t buy that metaphysical naturalism are sissies who want to “feel good.” There’s a lot more involved in that discussion than simply shouting down your opponent.

“I generally resist the idea that scientific types should come in and “police” people who hold metaphysical and religious beliefs. Science people often don’t know as much as they think they do, and if there are any bright lines that liberalism draws, a big one is peoples’ right to individual conscience. And not respecting that not only blurs those bright lines, but also can create a backlash which is bad for everyone. Isn’t there something more constructive for intelligent types like New Atheists to do?”

Perfectly encodes your position and I dare say your prejudice. I don’t see any policing. I see people have opposing positions and expressing them. That isn’t policing. You are fine to believe in metaphysics, but y0u cannot demand to be free from criticism or mockery.

The only way to be say a Huxleyan agnostic can defend his position is to criticism metaphysics. There is nothing “better” to do, on the one hand critique metaphysics on the other hand proceed to produce good outcomes through epistemology. That you don’t like that is your problem and many believer don’t like it. I think you have exactly carved out why there is such as resistance to New Atheism. People don’t like their position.

As for reinventing the wheel, it’s another mischaracterization. Skeptical and critical inquiry gives a method of looking at the invented wheel and make it better, and discard wheels that don’t work well, are obsolete or never worked.

We praise tradition, but noone even knows the wheel anymore. Should one wear a hat, have a beard, wear head scarf, be circumcised, uncircumcised? Eat pork or not? Fish? Cows?

See many of these things may have had very good reasons in its time. Dogma is to stick with an old idea without reflection, inquiry is to have ideas up for improvement.

Far from reinventing the wheel we can actually be constructive in keeping the good and improving the rest. This is why the method of inquiry is superior.

As for the aesthetic attack on epistemology to rescue metaphysics. Well aesthetics is a human condition, it is not metaphysical. But because we like to claim beautiful emotions to be transendent, we invent metaphysics.

But yes metaphysics is old and I would take Aristotle as a starting point for an epistemic/aesthetic view. This idea that we need authority to arrive at a solid view is an authoritarian flaw that I kind of reject.

So… I guess I don’t see the problem here. You do admit that there are forms of knowledge that are not scientific? That science isn’t all there is? That there are in fact other ways of knowing?

BEN ROGERS: What drew you to philosophy?

CHARLES TAYLOR: I guess I just got angry. I studied history at McGill University, in Montreal, and then I came to Balliol, Oxford, to do PPE and I thought it was going to be mainly politics. But it was the fag end of a kind of post-positivist era in which—unluckily for me—there were two very tired dons who were fed up with the subject, and who gave lectures sub-sub-sub-Hume in a bored tone of voice. I thought: this can’t be what it’s all about, so I began to move around and get into other reading. I read Merleau-Ponty, and I took off from there. It was kind of reactive.

…

AC GRAYLING: Your acceptance of those [religious] views must have been prepared by some sort of antecedent mindset. It was surprising that you didn’t choose the Voltairian.

CT I don’t understand it now; I certainly didn’t understand it then. I guess I have a more coherent story now—that there is some very profound level of human life and human potential transformation which the Voltairians had no clue about. When I read Hume or Gibbon now, I’m very beguiled by the style and so on, but then I think: how can you so totally miss the point of what you’re discussing? Take Hume on miracles: he really seems to think that the human approach to the world is that of a detached observer counting up the likelihood of the evidence—which, of course, is true of his epistemology too.

AG But isn’t it possible that when you are planting a garden, so to speak, you have to do some clearance work first? To deploy a good argument against the rationality of faith or belief in miracles might be part of the clearing. Then there comes the planting, and the very rich tradition of what you might call realistic thought since antiquity has been more or less ignored because it hasn’t been the majority position in history. That’s a much less discussed resort for thinking about the sources of the good and about ethics, and you’re dismissing it. But thinking that Gibbon and Hume are giving us the whole story and not just part of it misses the big point.

CT You see them as ground-clearers. Who are the planters?

AG Well, we could begin with Aristotle and we could trudge on through Stoic ethics. There’s a very profound tradition of humanistic ethics. Why doesn’t that catch your imagination?

CT It does, but I see it as a very different universe from Hume. For instance, Aristotle has an understanding of us as embodied minds, embodied agencies that Hume has been “Cartesianised” away from. In other words, the Humean idea that I could object to faith with my understanding, with some inner intensive mentoring, is un-Aristotelian and un-Stoic.

I think it’s more along the lines of not wanting to have every generation to reinvent the wheel, but whatever.

Hitch: I argued that your claims to the utility of metaphysics doesn’t hold when you also insist that metaphysics is not in the realm of scientific testing.

OK, I have here a quote from a neuroscientist doing brain scans on religious practitioners, then I have a few points to make afterward:

Late night television comedian David Letterman occasionally does a sketch called “Is This Anything?,” where he and sidekick Paul Schaffer jokingly debate whether some bizarre stage performance is “nothing” or “something.” By analogy, neuroscience has confirmed that mystically oriented practices are “something.” However, as in the comedy sketch, “nothing” isn’t really an option.

We can currently evaluate comparatively mundane aspects of mystically oriented practices. Are practitioners subsequently less distracted or anxious? Does a given practice increase antibody titers, or decrease inflammation? Are practitioners better at spatial reasoning or math? Such things are measurable. Some such findings may prove useful to society, but will likely not take a side in the worldview debates.

There are more deeply philosophical reasons why neuroscience will stay out of metaphysics. For instance, neuroscience may never solve the age-old philosophical puzzle of how primal our subjective experience is. This is my second disagreement with Brooks. He says, “God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at [mystical] moments, the unknowable total of all there is.” I am sure that some people have these deeply meaningful experiences. However, it is pointless for neuroscience to update a term (God) that in conventional parlance refers to the ultimate power that rules the universe.

First, it seems like it’s challenging to determine what the collected data means. I, for one, am not even convinced that the mind is even completely contained in the organ called the brain. You’ve got other nerves, endocrine system, etc. How do you even know that a brain event completely corresponds to what’s happening in a salutary religious subjective experience? You don’t.

Relatedly, these experiences seem quite complex and someone has to decide how they’re going to measure them. Someone has to set the parameters of the experiment. Do I trust say, Daniel Dennett, or someone like him, to set these parameters in a way that will richly describe what is happening? Apparently, Dennett doesn’t even appreciate what Berlin talks in the second part of the essay I linked to above (see his quote on Naturwissenschaften above), why would I think that he’d take pains to study human beings in a carefully chosen way?

And related to this last point, why assume that the naturalistic way of explaining phenomenon coming out of the experiment will be a satisfactory one? Something can have explanatory power, and even gain currency, but also be too simplistic, even impoverished. (This issue has actually been a major focus of Charles Taylor’s career by the way.) So conceivably a metaphysical explanation could better, more useful if you will, than a naturalistic one, even though the naturalistic one might *appear* more utilitarian.

Actually, this last part ties into what’s being discussed in the comments above. Naturalistic explanations of phenomena, like math, are human creations. Nature always gets the last word and often knocks down our models, because the models are our constructions and are only as good as we make them (see Berlin’s discussion of Vico in the essay I linked to above).

I think this is where I come in with my argument for traditional philosophical/political liberalism. Criticism of fundamentalists and true wackos aside, I generally resist the idea that scientific types should come in and “police” people who hold metaphysical and religious beliefs. Science people often don’t know as much as they think they do, and if there are any bright lines that liberalism draws, a big one is peoples’ right to individual conscience. And not respecting that not only blurs those bright lines, but also can create a backlash which is bad for everyone. Isn’t there something more constructive for intelligent types like New Atheists to do?

Let me explain: Our exchange started off with: “Riemannian Geometry exists itself without being subject to the rules of evidence for science.” To which I reacted: “If a computation using Riemanian geometry would give the wrong curvature of a real-life smooth object (or the trajectory of space flight for example) it is an issue for mathematics. Hence yes it is in a rather direct sense subject to rules of evidence.” Now you come back: “Math *can* be seeded by and subject to evidence in the natural world, but it does not have to be.” which is exactly the point I made. But instead you claim I supposedly hold a more extreme position as you claim that I hold the totalizing position: “you were asserting that math is tested against real-world observational results” which I never held and in fact do not hold. If you read my original response carefully you will find ample evidence for that.
The flaw is your use of the word “math” as monolith.

I’m not going to argue in defense of a position I never held and don’t hold.

Science is the process of attempting to understand the natural world by building models and testing predictions of those models against observations or experiments performed on the natural world.

Math *can* be seeded by and subject to evidence in the natural world, but it does not have to be.