Chapter 5
Finding Purpose in a Godless World
by Ralph Lewis
Please discuss Chapter 5 of Finding Purpose in a Godless World by Ralph Lewis in this thread.Finding Purpose in a Godless World
by Ralph Lewis
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Why does the anthropic principle count as a scientific explanation at all if it is essentially nothing more than a truism?So then he goes on to cosmology, where my real disgust comes about. The tangled tales of multiverses which he presents as a better alternative than the "fine tuning" argument are the clearest evidence yet available of people's willingness to be just as silly in opposition to theism as theists are in support of it. He gives about one paragraph to the anthropic principle, which settles the issue from a scientific perspective: if we were not in a universe with the parameters "fine tuned" to make life possible, then we would not be here to tell about it. My friend pointed that out to me in middle school. Some may insist that it doesn't matter, and fine-tuning gives "evidence" of a purposeful creator, but that is simply their take on the Big Question involved, and neither proves anything nor suggests any further hypotheses.
Well, I for one don't think it does count as an explanation. But it does point out the futility of the question from a scientific perspective. What mechanism can one possibly imagine for the selection of the parameters of physical forces (e.g. the ratio of strength of the strong force to strength of electrical force)? If they someday tumble out of an equation relating even more fundamental things, we will still be left with the question of why things work the way they do at the more fundamental level. Science is about uncovering the mechanisms by which things work, not about telling where it all ultimately came from.ant wrote:Why does the anthropic principle count as a scientific explanation at all if it is essentially nothing more than a truism?He gives about one paragraph to the anthropic principle, which settles the issue from a scientific perspective: if we were not in a universe with the parameters "fine tuned" to make life possible, then we would not be here to tell about it. My friend pointed that out to me in middle school. Some may insist that it doesn't matter, and fine-tuning gives "evidence" of a purposeful creator, but that is simply their take on the Big Question involved, and neither proves anything nor suggests any further hypotheses.
This tickled my memory of Y.N. Harari asserting that Naziism is a "natural law" religion in the same category with Buddhism and Taoism (!). Harari, who is given to convenient oversimplification for the purpose of making a rhetorical point, points to the eugenicist arguments (unnatural selection, basically) behind the Nazi proposals for large-scale ethnic cleansing. So much for reason, and pretending that emotions are not involved in our "purely rational" processing of political issues.Robert Tulip wrote:In the section titled The Historical Decline of Religion and the Modern Erosion of Faith in Chapter Five, Lewis presents a short account of core issues in the history of thought, asserting that modern progress toward a more rational society is purely good.
Well, I think this sets out the issue to be sorted out. I am becoming increasingly confident that Lewis will not engage it deeply enough to structure a sound discussion of the matter. But of course that doesn't stop us from discussing it.Robert Tulip wrote: This assertion, despite its surface plausibility, shows how modern rationalist atheists deal with religion in a polemical, simplistic and unbalanced way. Lewis is drawing a populist caricature of religion by asserting that the dominant literal claims of the church represent the original ideas of faith, while ignoring the weaknesses of modern rationalism. Too often his argument involves superficial and arrogant assumptions, taking statements that may be reasonable philosophically but then failing to explore how they become problematic when they influence mass political movements.
Putting on my Marksist hat, I might suggest that the old order was crumbling for economic reasons, as the pace of human advance picked up and the value of knowledge for its own sake began to be recognizable. Thus the traditional authorities (which were not all that old, really, having been cobbled together from the time of Charlemagne with concepts whose reach and legitimacy were never settled and were already being seriously called into question at the time of the Reformation) had substituted the cross and the threat of Hell for the Roman social technology of mass torture (on, of all things, the cross) but were losing the power to reinforce that system with claims of absolute authority. Kant, and his like-minded cohort of Voltaire, Locke, Smith and the others, did us a great favor by fleshing out how reason might guide a system structured democratically. But as the teachers say, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.Robert Tulip wrote:Kant’s philosophy is closely related to the politics of the French Revolution of 1789. His focus on rational autonomy had a modern rational liberating purpose, challenging traditional authority of church and king. In this modern theory of history, Kant’s maxim ‘Dare To Know’ is the decisive advance of modern logic over medieval superstition. That challenge had much merit as a critique of the corrupt irrationality of the older society, but looking at the practical application, Lewis is not justified in suggesting Kant’s philosophy supports his atheist attack on religion.
Interestingly, Lewis is trying to "supervise" our thinking. Obviously the critical issue is whether that supervision takes place by force, as when the government of North Carolina ruled six years ago that coastal planning could not take into account any issues more than 30 years forward in time, nor examine projections of issues such as storms and sea levels not based entirely on historical data. The case illustrates the obvious, which is that refusing to allow evidence to be considered can be assumed to be corrupt, which NC's policy certainly was.Robert Tulip wrote:Lewis agrees with Kant’s assertion that having guardians who supervise our thinking is generally a sign of immaturity (translated at the link above as ‘nonage’). Kant’s line here is obviously attractive as a modern scientific liberal ideology, promoting the autonomy of the rational individual against old methods of control such as the medieval systems of serfdom, hierarchy and enforced agreement to a creed. Autonomy is a great moral ideal, but history since Kant has shown how reason can be twisted into its opposite under the fallen forces of human depravity.
The idea is that autonomy is the backstop. As Churchill observed, democracy is the worst form of government ever devised by humanity, except for all the others. Democracy prevents systems of exploitation by force (looking at you, Putin) from growing up, but it does not by itself provide good connections between wisdom and policy. If intellectual leadership does not take seriously the process of communication and guidance, pursuing personal career goals at its expense, for example, then it becomes more likely that popular forces will set its leadership aside in favor of the parochial goals of the "average voter."Robert Tulip wrote:Irrational beliefs can be cloaked with rational argument, and people can be given autonomy in ways that are destructive. As Kantian autonomy engaged with the realities of politics, it became the basis for steadily degenerating popular lines of thinking.
The current failures of liberalism are not easy to attribute to excess individualism, although the social media role may represent a possible route for such an effect, and the flight from dealing with the environment could represent another. I would argue that the main problem with overreliance on rational autonomy has been the abdication of responsibility at the leadership level, a moral failure. First we had the 2008 catastrophe, and now the 2016 catastrophe.Robert Tulip wrote: rational autonomy also became the basis for an extreme version of individualist politics in western liberal thought, as capitalism celebrated the liberty of the entrepreneur against the combined political action of the working class.
So here's my question. If the intellectual leadership does not have a vocabulary for talking about how to do social policy both effectively and ethically, how will they be able to talk to truck drivers and housewives about it? There should be general agreement on what works and why, and how to test the principles agreed on. And if there isn't, then intellectual leaders should go hide in their debating forums, rather than trying to settle their issues in a freewheeling and increasingly irresponsible "marketplace of ideas."Robert Tulip wrote:The problem with the Kantian faith in rational autonomy as presented by Lewis is the need to properly address the irrationality of human psychology, such as with the need for most people to hand their autonomy over to leaders whose authority they accept. The ideology of secular reason assumes that seemingly rational ideas are more mature than the obviously irrational ideas of supernatural faith, but such questions are often ambiguous, since faith can conceal a deeper wisdom that is not obvious to scientific investigation, and maturation is a gradual process.
Yes, we would all like new technologies to have no complex, unforeseen effects. It is heavily ironic that the political party devoted to stories of "unintended consequences" 40 years ago has now become the party of "please don't look at the unintended consequences behind the curtain."Robert Tulip wrote:Any idea once it becomes simplified and accepted by a mass movement acquires the quality of a myth. Like Christianity, secular humanism has equivalents of angels and demons in its unquestioned assumptions, its saints and heretics. Kant’s politics of autonomy is not such a simple advance over medieval control as presented in the enlightenment story. A prime example is the construction of individual identity in modern capitalism, where personal identity is separated from social context as part of a political, economic and cultural story.
Oh, we are way past that point. Politicians now piss on their mother's grave for the camera to show how bold they are. I agree with you that claims of absolute knowledge, based on nothing more than the preferences of donors, have become a staple of political "discourse." Clearly a large part of the electorate has been seduced into ignoring inconvenient truth for the sake of their own wounded pride.Robert Tulip wrote:Politicians tend to claim to understand things as they are, discarding philosophical doubt, since such absolute claims help in persuading and simplifying for a mass audience. Philosophers may believe that there are no absolutes, but such ambiguity is generally unacceptable in popular ideology.
What you are really talking about is the psychology of manipulation. Persuasion means that people understand the reason for their choice. Proper persuasion means they will not be regretting it soon for reasons of having let themselves be persuaded in someone else's interest rather than their own.Robert Tulip wrote:By sorting perceptions under concepts, knowledge treats observations through a lens of ideology, always bringing an intrinsic selection and distortion of actual unknowable reality. People routinely pretend in making myths that their perceptions of appearance are actual knowledge of reality, in order to have the confidence and certainty required to convince others. The psychology of persuasion takes over from the philosophy of pure knowledge as ideas move into the marketplace of culture.
That's a pretty interesting perspective. I agree very much about the first two sentences. I am not so confident about a synthesis.Robert Tulip wrote:So when Lewis cites Kant to say that scientific enlightenment is more mature than Christianity, he is making a modern myth. We should really look at this argument through a hermeneutic of suspicion, in terms of whose interests are served and what the likely consequences of this meme might be. In terms of the Hegelian dialectical triad of the evolution of cultural memes, through thesis, antithesis and synthesis, the bigger framework here is that faith was a thesis to which reason was the antithesis, meaning we now need to develop a new integrating synthesis of faith and reason.
I have read on a bit in Jung. He presents the interesting argument that God represents anything ultimate in life: ultimate origins, ultimate implacable fate, ultimate destination, etc. (I think even from his collective unconscious analysis this neglects the true operation of the "hieros gamos" in which the soft embrace of the mother archetype unites with the hard strength and determination of the father archetype, but that is a separate issue.) But it raises the distressing (for me) prospect that mythical forces can only be uncovered by trial and error, and never by reason and intent. Jordan Peterson is a crank, essentially, as was Joseph Campbell. And our next mythology will come from some crank, but there is no guiding the process.Robert Tulip wrote: Lewis presents a misreading that in more populist hands can lead to bigoted ignorance of the moral lessons of the Bible, wrongly presenting the narrow ignorance of the church as intrinsic to Christian faith.
I have tried to recap the high points of what I think was a very helpful as well as heartfelt inquiry into the faith/reason tension. I made my comment on its dialectic before, and have refrained from commenting on the problem of the ignorant version, combining literalist pretense to certainty with tribalist interpretation in terms of tension between "us" and "them" based on the social system into which the beliefs are woven.Robert Tulip wrote:Lewis is drawing a populist caricature of religion by asserting that the dominant literal claims of the church represent the original ideas of faith, while ignoring the weaknesses of modern rationalism. Too often his argument involves superficial and arrogant assumptions, taking statements that may be reasonable philosophically but then failing to explore how they become problematic when they influence mass political movements.
Lewis agrees with Kant’s assertion that having guardians who supervise our thinking is generally a sign of immaturity (translated at the link above as ‘nonage’). Kant’s line here is obviously attractive as a modern scientific liberal ideology, promoting the autonomy of the rational individual against old methods of control such as the medieval systems of serfdom, hierarchy and enforced agreement to a creed. Autonomy is a great moral ideal, but history since Kant has shown how reason can be twisted into its opposite under the fallen forces of human depravity. Irrational beliefs can be cloaked with rational argument, and people can be given autonomy in ways that are destructive. As Kantian autonomy engaged with the realities of politics, it became the basis for steadily degenerating popular lines of thinking.
Politicians tend to claim to understand things as they are, discarding philosophical doubt, since such absolute claims help in persuading and simplifying for a mass audience. Philosophers may believe that there are no absolutes, but such ambiguity is generally unacceptable in popular ideology.
The psychology of persuasion takes over from the philosophy of pure knowledge as ideas move into the marketplace of culture.
So when Lewis cites Kant to say that scientific enlightenment is more mature than Christianity, he is making a modern myth. We should really look at this argument through a hermeneutic of suspicion, in terms of whose interests are served and what the likely consequences of this meme might be. In terms of the Hegelian dialectical triad of the evolution of cultural memes, through thesis, antithesis and synthesis, the bigger framework here is that faith was a thesis to which reason was the antithesis, meaning we now need to develop a new integrating synthesis of faith and reason.
Standing with Kant on one side of the antinomy of faith and reason, modern secular culture is restricted to a partial and inadequate view. Lewis presents a misreading that in more populist hands can lead to bigoted ignorance of the moral lessons of the Bible, wrongly presenting the narrow ignorance of the church as intrinsic to Christian faith.
History has demonstrated the weaknesses of individual autonomy as a framework of human identity. Kant’s ideas of autonomy were formative for both the communist idea of reason and the capitalist idea of liberty, both of which have had problems when taken to extremes. New forms of human identity are needed that learn from the failings of past forms of collective politics, for example in taking combined action to deal with the politics of climate change.
He not only expresses well the role of faith, bringing out the aspects that are better experienced with the right-brain process of poetry than with some kind of dialectic, but he is aiming for actual objective truth, in the sense that it is true for everyone in a real sense.Richard Beck wrote:"So from what I can tell, you are a hard-core Christian. Why?"
One of my students had come by my office to chat with me, to ask a lot of questions, but this was one of them. He was a skeptic, and confused about why someone who seemed so intelligent would be a "hard-core Christian."
I answered, "Yes, totally. I'm a hard-core Christian."
"But why?" He still looked confused.
"For three reasons," I responded.
"First, there is a sacred, hallowed texture to life. There is a spiritual backdrop to life that makes it human and meaningful. This sacred, hallowed texture is what makes values values, the beautiful beautiful, the good good, the evil evil, the wonderful wonderful, the meaningful meaningful, the human human. That this sacred texture exists is the most obvious and practical fact of our lives. And yet, search as the materialists might, this sacred texture will never be spotted in the Periodic Table, in the equations of particle physics, or in the telescopes of the astronomers.
In short, if you watch how humans live--their joys, their sorrows, their art, their values, their dreams, their loves--you'll easily see how this sacred texture is the most obvious fact about the world, more factual than anything Stephen Hawking ever described and more practical than anything Steve Jobs ever created.
"Second, religion is the science of this sacred, hallowed texture, the repository of all our discoveries and the techniques of our investigations. In this, religion is the most factual and practical of all the sciences.
"And third, I must be 'hard-core' about these investigations because, at any moment, the sacred texture is not obvious to me. I lose track of it due to my hurry, laziness, selfishness, ignorance, inattention, and emotions, succumbing to anger or fear. Consequently, noting and discerning the grain of the sacred texture in any moment requires focused attention, vigilance, discipline, training, practice, knowledge, accountability, and commitment. Only the 'hard-core' will be able to see and pick up the thread in the hurry, confusion, chaos, and noise. If you aren't 'hard-core' you'll be jerked around by your desires, ignorance, stress, and the powers-that-be like a puppet on a string, like a leaf blowing in the wind."