I want to recap and systematize some things we’ve been saying in recent posts, especially this one.
doctor(logic) has staked a claim that atheism is more reasoned and rational than Christian theism. In this he joins the major New Atheists, among them Sam Harris, founder of the so-called Reason Project. (The same Sam Harris who evaded and side-stepped William Lane Craig’s rational/logical arguments in debate, and offered emotive ones in return. Yup, that very same example of “reason.”)
In our recent discussions doctor(logic) has said that Christianity’s big rational flaw is that it offers no protection against human confirmation bias. He tells us there are methods we ought to adopt to make sure that we are not being unduly influenced by our psychology, and Christianity will not subject itself to those methods. It is therefore highly prone to undetectable false positives, which makes Christian belief irrational.
This needs exploring. There are basically four options regarding belief in God and the truth of that belief. (Note that we are not talking about some generic God here, but the God of historic orthodox Christianity.) The four possibilities are:
| I believe in God. God exists. True Positive Belief |
I believe in God. God does not exist. False Positive Belief |
| I do not believe in God. God exists. False Negative Belief |
I do not believe in God. God does not exist. True Negative Belief |
doctor(logic) tells us Christianity is unduly at risk of the False Positive outcome represented in the upper right quadrant. (His point could be disputed, but for my purposes here there is no need to do so.) Because Christianity has zero protection against a False Positive (he says) it is therefore impossible to know if one’s belief represents a False Positive, and it is therefore impossible to know if one’s belief in God is true or not. That makes it irrational, in his view.
It’s worth emphasizing that what makes Christian belief irrational, in doctor(logic)’s view, is that it is impossible in principle to know whether or not it is true, because it is impossible to distinguish a True Positive from a False Positive Christian belief.
So doctor(logic) goes on to say that we ought not to believe in the Christian God unless his reality can be demonstrated by means that are reasonably immune to bias-confirmation error. In his mind, that means that God’s activity must be detectable through some kind of empirical probabilistic/predictive protocol. He has offered examples such as:
- Prayers being answered at a statistically detectable level
- Lightning flashing at him whenever he blasphemes
it would of course be necessary in every case of this sort to apply some sort of statistical/experimental control to the study (otherwise prayer answers, for example, could be faked); and it would be necessary for God himself to submit to the research protocols. Otherwise the results would be erratic and difficult to interpret at best.
Recall, now, that the question concerns the God of historic orthodox Christianity. Historic Christianity has always conceived of God as sovereign Lord, the one to whom all creation submits, who does not (except on his own terms) submit to demands from his creation. Historic Christianity has also always conceived of God as revealing himself to those who come to him with open and humble hearts, willing to accept his lordship over their lives, accepting God’s demands and gifts without making demands back upon God. Further, historic Christianity has always conceived of God as the initiator in the knowledge relationship. Not only does God have the ability to make himself known reliably, according to Christianity, but only God can do that. If he does not do that, then we will not know him; and his willingness to do that is associated with each person’s willingness to humble him or herself and submit to God.
That’s all very important to the next step in this analysis. The previous paragraph provides the definition of the question, of the entity whose reality (or not) we are trying to discover. If we were to devise some test or system that might be sensitive to some other God’s existence or reality, that would be of no interest in this case. We need a test that answers the question we’re asking: Does the God of historic orthodox Christianity exist?
Keep in mind as we proceed that doctor(logic)’s diagnosis of irrationality is based on Christians’ putative inability to detect falsehood in their belief, if it is in fact false. Let us now consider whether doctor(logic)’s approach does any better. He insists that God can be known to exist just if God will submit himself to his predictive/probabilistic knowledge protocol. He insists that if no evidence is found of God doing that, then the only reasonable conclusion to draw is that there is no God. Having adopted the Negative position (obviously hoping that it is the True Negative), his choice precludes him from being found either in the True or False Positive position. That covers all the quadrants except the False Negative. How does his position fare with respect to that one?
The answer is that if the God of Christianity exists, and doctor(logic)’s actual position is that of the False Negative, then he has no way to know it. The only method by which he says he could hypothetically conclude there is a God is a method that systematically and intentionally excludes the God of Christianity, for it can only detect a God (if there is one) who would reliably submit himself to doctor(logic)’s predictive/probabilistic protocols, which by definition is not the God of Christianity. So doctor(logic)’s approach is absolutely, firmly, and in principle, wide open and vulnerable to producing an undetectable False Negative.
His approach exhibits the fallacy that goes like this: in order for the Christian God to exist and be known, he must be a God different than the Christian God; or, I will believe in your Christian God if he proves to me he is not your Christian God. In outline form (where A represents Christian Theism and B represents “is reliably detectable by a predictive/probabilistic protocol.”)
1. A should be believed to be true only if B is found to be true.
2. A by definition excludes B.
3. B is not found to be true.
4. Therefore A should not be believed to be true.
Clearly that fails. Even though the Conclusion (4) follows validly from Premises 1 and 3, Premise 2 contradicts Premise 1. If Premise 2 is true, then Premise 1 is false, which renders the whole thing unsound. (Whether Premise 3 is true or not is irrelevant to the soundness of this argument; it’s unsound if Premise 3 is true and also if it is false.) In this case we have indeed defined A (the God of historic orthodox Christianity) to exclude B (is detectable by probabilistic/predictive protocols); so with full confidence that Premise 2 is true, we can reject Premise 1 and thus also the Conclusion (4), “A should not be believed.” The person who accepts Premise 1 does so irrationally; and it is irrational to draw any conclusions from it!
Christianity is irrational, says doctor(logic), because it offers no protection from the False Positive. His own position, though, is fallacious, and the effect of this particular fallacy is that his approach has no protection from the False Negative. He concludes A (Christian Theism) is false, but he does it through the fallacious method of requiring A to exhibit B, when A actually excludes B by definition. He comes to his Negative conclusion through invalid means, so he ought not to trust that he has come to a sound conclusion. He has no grounds for any assurance that his Negative is not a False one.
Recall now what I said above: “What makes Christian belief irrational, in doctor(logic)’s view, is that it is impossible in principle to know whether or not it is true, because it is impossible to distinguish a True Positive from a False Positive Christian belief.”
But if I am right (and I have demonstrated it validly, I am quite sure), then doctor(logic)’s position is equally unprotected from a false outcome, the False Negative. There is in principle no way for him to distinguish a True Negative from a False Negative belief. So there is parity here (if each of us is right in our assessment of the other’s position). Why then call Christianity more irrational?
But that’s not all. Note in just what way each position is unprotected from error. Christianity is subject to a psychological flaw, confirmation bias. doctor(logic)’s approach exhibits a logical fallacy. Theism’s fault, if it exists, is a fault of human psychology, while the other is one of reason and logic. Christianity’s error (if it is an error) is that it is psychologically naive. doctor(logic)’s error (and it is one) is that he relies on demonstrably fallacious reasoning.
Yet he says he is more rational. Isn’t that label itself irrational?
If doctor(logic) wants to show that Christianity is less rational than his atheism, he’ll have to measure it on some other metric. The one I’ve discussed here is, unfortunately for doctor(logic), the only one that he has offered, at least recently. Meanwhile we theists in this discussion been offering another metric of comparison, which is the ability to proceed through an argument coherently and without fallacy. On that point, the atheists on this blog have not been faring at all well.
Now some disclaimers:
To those who are uncomfortable about my seeming too willing to accept doctor(logic)’s assumptions: be assured that I am just trying to make a point that doctor(logic) ought to be able to see on his own terms, without expecting him to accept more than he might reasonably be expected to accept.
To those who are uncomfortable about my taking such a rationalistic approach toward Christianity: I wrote last time about the volitional aspect, and I have written both here and previously about God’s initiative. Note that all I was trying to accomplish here was to show that doctor(logic)’s claim to superior rationality is clearly false.
To those, including possibly doctor(logic), who think I’m trying to rationally argue him into becoming a Christian, and who might even think this is a singularly poor way to accomplish it: I’m not trying to argue him into anything. I’m trying to argue him out of being a smug atheist. My prayer would be that with that prop of false pride properly kicked out from under him, he might become more open to God’s work in his life. The rest is up to God and to the good doctor.
To those who think I’m being smugly triumphal here: I believe my analysis is correct. I think it’s okay to offer a correct analysis, even one that shows that one’s opponent is wrong. I’m open to being corrected if I’ve missed some important point of fact or logic. And I am ever constantly aware of what I have said myself in this very post:
Historic Christianity has always conceived of God as sovereign Lord, the one to whom all creation submits, who does not (except on his own terms) submit to demands from his creation. Historic Christianity has also always conceived of God as revealing himself to those who come to him with open and humble hearts, willing to accept his lordship over their lives, accepting God’s demands and gifts without making demands back upon God. Further, historic Christianity has always conceived of God as the initiator in the knowledge relationship. Not only does God have the ability to make himself known reliably, according to Christianity, but only God can do that. If he does not do that, then we will not know him.
I am very aware that that applies to me as much as anyone.
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Possibly related posts (automatically generated):
I want to throw this in: There’s another kind of confirmation bias a person can have: A bias about what they would expect (particularly, mindless) nature to have accomplished and be capable of.
Should we expect nature to have immutable laws? Should we expect the quantum world? Consciousness? Should we expect comprehensibility out of nature? And this list goes on.
Again I point to PZ Myers, because he’s just such an apt example here. For Myers, no evidence for God is possible – he’s utterly gotten rid of it with his worldview. I think that much is clear, and most people (even Coyne) seem willing to admit that Myers is flat-out biased against God.
What I think is less appreciated is this: Myers is not only biased against God given his stance. He’s biased in favor of mindless nature. Anything that happens, Myers will see as either compatible with out flat-out confirming the powers of said nature. That’s a point which has not been developed enough, and I think stands as a considerable problem in these discussions.
There is also the confirmation bias to which the atheist can be susceptible: the desire for there not to be a God. It is quite susceptible to producing an undetectable False Positive for atheism.
Tom,
I’m pretty happy with how things were left on the other thread. I think your statements are unambiguous there, and I have little to add.
As for your latest post, it’s not working either.
First, every atheist is atheist about some gods and agnostic about others. Atheists are agnostic about the god who uses his powers to hide himself completely, and atheists are atheist about the god who makes himself completely obvious. That is, they positively believe the latter does not exist. For that matter, you, too, are atheist about the god who makes himself obvious to everyone.
Your post assumes that at the end of every line of inquiry, I must positively conclude a god exists or does not exist. That is, you assume agnosticism isn’t allowed, not even within any single line of inquiry. This is nonsense. If prayers and miracles don’t meet a rational standard of evidence, i.e., bias and false reports overwhelm the signal, that means that we have to be agnostic about god who rarely answers prayer, and atheist about the god who frequently answers prayer.
Christians don’t do this. They believe that anecdotes and personal experiences are conclusive evidence for answered prayer, and this is utterly irrational. And Christians receive plenty of encouragement for this sort of irrationality from their leadership. Honestly, I was shocked when I first heard you talk about answered prayers. I never figured you for a superstitious person until I heard that.
Tom,
Second, to your mind, there’s only one possible god, and so it looks like atheists are special pleading so they don’t have to believe in god. Not so. Your god is not the only god ever conceived of. For example, the god of the Jews does not answer prayers. I never met any Jews who were taught that God will grant their wishes (although I’m sure some superstitious Jews exist). They pray, but not with superstitious expectations. Jews don’t believe prayers work, and they still believe in God.
Suppose there is no god. In that case, there will still be phenomena that we cannot explain, and there will still be false reports of answered prayers and supernatural occurrences. This is the baseline against which we judge whether God exists. It’s straightforward Bayesian reasoning.
The Christian god is alleged to act in a fashion similar to his non-existence. Christians invite people to give up their rational standard of inference, and look for patterns in the noise. Not surprisingly, people who do so see what they’re expecting to see. That’s not a rational epistemology.
Tom, in fact, this situation is exactly the opposite of the way you describe it. Here’s how you are reasoning:
1. A should be believed to be true only if B is found to be true.
2. A by definition excludes B.
3. B is not found to be true.
4. Therefore A should be believed to be true.
Atheists didn’t define your god to be undetectable. You did. And that was no accident.
What happened to the religious sects who guaranteed that God would cure diseases or protect crops better than chance? Yeah, they got tarred and feathered and run out of town. Who was left? Believers in gods like the Christian God who looks just like no god at all unless you bias yourself in a way guaranteed to see him.
Actually, the way you are reasoning is like this:
1. If G is true then we will observe A.
2. If G is not true then we will observe A.
3. We observe A.
4. Therefore, G.
This is a logically inconsistent way of reasoning. And it does no good for you to complain that G looks just like ~G with respect to A. If that’s the case you ought to be agnostic with respect to A.
Oh, doctor(logic), really. This business of bringing other gods into the discussion is irrational. You have said that I am irrational to believe in the God I believe in. That’s the God we are discussing. Remember I wrote,
You are parrying me just by pointing to what you consider my irrationality. Did you notice that nothing in my post contested that possibility? Did you notice that my conclusions did not depend on showing that Christianity is rational? What I said was that regardless of that, your own approach is irrational on similar grounds. You say Christianity is irrational because it’s unprotected from a False Positive. I showed that you are unprotected from a False Negative. I showed that you beg the question besides.
And as far as I can see, you didn’t even notice that was the main point of the blog post! Where is your vaunted rationality, doctor(logic), if you can’t even catch see (much less answer) the central point of an argument?
You wrote,
I’d like you to show me where I assumed that. I wrote,
That wasn’t an assumption (you still don’t seem to know what the word means). It was a conclusion based on what I have observed you writing here. If you’re changing your mind now, that’s progress.
Let me simplify it for you. The form of the argument I made was this:
1. (doctor)logic claims that Christianity’s epistemology is subject to irrationality on grounds G.
2. (doctor)logic’s epistemology is subject to a related and similarly severe irrationality on grounds G’.
3. (doctor)logic’s epistemology exhibits additional irrationality I.
4. Thereby doctor(logic)’s claims of superior rationality are defeated.
Your response was to reaffirm (1). Thank you, but that was redundant. Now I ask you, is there anything in your comments to me that actually responded to the argument? Did you notice what I was arguing? Would not superior reasoning have done so?
In case you’re wondering, G is the error of the unprotected False Positive, G’ is the error of the unprotected False Negative, and Irrationality I is the fallacy of begging the question. I also drew an informal comparison of the reasons your approach and mine are subject to G: that in my case, the charge that can be made is error springing from psychological naivete, whereas yours springs from a clearly definable error in logic, doctor(logic).
Is that clear enough now?
Let’s add a misrepresentation/straw man to your list of irrational approaches, while we’re at it:
We never said God was undetectable. We only said that God was undetectable under standards that require him to submit to research protocols; for he is God, not part of his creation and not subject to it. This is at the core of historic Christian theology. You defined that as undetectable. (This ties into what I have already clearly described as your question-begging, of course.)
Excellent post Tom. It is telling, to me at any rate, that the good doctor doesn’t even try to answer it.
I don’t know if he understood what he was answering. I wasn’t that unclear, was I? I mean, for someone who claims to practice superior rationality, and who uses a name like doctor(logic), anyway.
He knows, Tom. It’s pathetic how desperately dl avoids the issues you clearly pose. Atheism in action…
Reminds me of Greg Koukle’s example of the atheist professor who had a similar problem understanding how to think clearly. Good post, Tom.
You’re making this much more confusing than it needs to be.
Suppose your hypothesis is that the platypus is warm-blooded. The test you propose is placing the platypus in the oven at 100F for six hours, and testing whether the carcass is at 100F. If it is, then you think the platypus is warm blooded. Meanwhile, I’m saying that the carcass is going to be at 100F whether the platypus is warm-blooded or cold-blooded. In other words, the oven test isn’t a test at all. Whether one positively concludes that the platypus is warm-blooded or cold-blooded, one is irrational to get a conclusion either way based on the oven test. It’s simple Bayes.
Well, your anecdotes and personal experiences are an oven test for God, yet Christians are thrilled to conclude that God exists because prayers “work” for them. That’s irrational.
The atheist concludes NOTHING based on your oven test for God. It’s neutral. Personal reports would exist whether or not God exists and whether or not he is answering prayers. This is the agnosticism that you pooh-poohed in your response.
What the atheist can say, however, is that prayer studies have found no benefit to praying. That means that if God does exist, he either doesn’t answer prayers during the study, or he curses some people at the same rate he cures people in order to keep any signal from appearing in the experiments. In other words, your God looks just like no God at all.
This is not something necessary in any picture of God. You choose to worship a God who hides because the alternative, worshiping a God who’s visible isn’t open to you.
This isn’t much different from the search for the Higgs boson, or a search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Our experiments are only sensitive to local civilizations. Not finding a signal doesn’t prove there are no civilizations, it just proves that any civilizations that do exist are either no transmitting signals, or not local. What would be irrational would be to positively conclude that the local civilizations do exist, but only when we’re not turning our antennas to them.
And what would be CHILDISH is countering your objections to my belief in nearby civilizations with the claim that you’ve designed your SETI methodology to exclude my nearby civilizations.
And that’s just the kind of irrationality you peddle. You’re saying that the only way to get a platypus is by way of a 100F oven, and yet you KNOW that they are warm-blooded anyway. That’s irrational. I would only be as irrational as you if I claimed I KNOW they are cold-blooded. But that’s not what atheists are saying. Atheists are saying you can’t possibly know.
You’ve put yourself into a mental box where belief in your God is a foregone conclusion. And now you want to imprison other people in that same box. “Just believe God exists, look for ‘signs’ and you can take those signs to the bank as evidence that God exists. Oh! But don’t try to see if this is just your mind playing tricks on you in just the way that psychological experiments say it will. If you try to see if you’re fooling yourself, the effect will go away because God doesn’t want to be tested!”
All those words, DL, and you never rebutted Tom’s main argument against your fallacious reasoning , or even tried to. I’d really like to hear you address the actual argument that Tom has put together here.
Can we expect that from you anytime soon?
DL has said several times that this is Tom’s advice:
Is it? Has Tom said it even once?
You’ve joined the vaulted ranks of Matzke, dl: you’re an idiot. Tom just got through saying (which SteveK and Charlie just highlighted), “no, it’s not A as you claim, but B because of this, this, this, and that reason”; you effectively come back, “it’s A because that’s the way I see it and that’s the way it is, i.e., God MUST perform the way I tell Him to… or He’s not there.”
It IS scientism for you: you claim science = rationality, yet amazingly you can’t get out of the your disordered gerbil wheel vision to understand such an assertion is itself not scientific. You embrace and celebrate the fallacy of circularity… and seek power over truth.
Amazing. Atheism = brain death. Ugly, festering, self-immolating brain death.
dl,
Your platypus example, and the great majority of the rest of your recent comment besides, amount to another affirmation of what I labeled as point 1 in my last comment. It is again redundant. You are affirming what I was willing to grant in this argument. You can keep trying to talk me into it if you want, but for purposes of the current discussion it is just a parrying maneuver again.
You are now holding up agnosticism as your defense from the charge of smug irrationality that I’ve made here. You’re sounding irritated as you do so. I don’t deny that I have been trying to put you under pressure. Whether your irritation is a result of that pressure making an impact on you, or just your being annoyed, or whatever, is up to you to decide.
Anyway, here’s my response to your agnosticism answer. First, I see it as progress. I don’t think I’ve heard you much describe yourself as agnostic before. I suppose it’s consistent with your position to some extent, though it’s not just any old everyday agnosticism, as we’ll see in a moment.
Your agnosticism won’t rescue you from the irrationality of your position. Let me show you why. The God of Christianity is, as defined in the text of the post, a God who takes the initiative in revealing himself. You say now that lacking any knowledge of God on a predictive/probabilistic basis, one should be agnostic.
This is not a mere occasional agnosticism. It is dogmatic. Its position is not the False Negative of “I believe the God of Christianity does not exist, because he is not detectable by predictive/probabilistic protocols.” It is instead its close relative, “It is absolutely irrational (and therefore wrong) to believe the God of Christianity exists, because he is not detectable by predictive/probabilistic protocols.”
Your protocol entails this: To answer the question whether the God of Christianity exists (who if he does exist is the Lord of all creation, the source of all meaning, the sum of all power and wisdom, and the creator of communication itself), we must look for him as one who cannot impart meaning or knowledge of himself through personal communication, but only by submitting himself to a research protocol.
In other words, in order for us to conclude rationally that A exists, A must be not-A; and the reason we must avoid concluding that A exists is because we have looked for not-A and we have not found it.
Your agnosticism would be more rational were it not so dogmatic. It is not so very different after all from the undetectable False Negative belief, is it?
But then there is a sense in which you believe not-A is the only thing we can rationally look for. This is your question-begging in action: for it assumes that we cannot know God except on our own terms, whereas the one who wonders whether there is a God ought also to be wondering whether that God can make himself known on his own terms.
The existence of God is a common sense conclusion that we need to make. Everything exists because of something before it. Either we have an infinite self sustaining first cause or we have an infinite regress of dependency.
Which is it?
Wow. Deflect much DL. Is it too much to ask for a discussion? One person brings up a point and the other person discusses that point. You bring up a point, Tom discusses that point, then instead of you responding, you bring up another point. Classic deflection and, sad to say, typical for someone who is wrong.