Chris Mooney doesn’t get it.
A focus on spirituality, then, might be the route to finally healing one of the most divisive rifts in Western society — over the relationship between science and religion. We’ll still have our evolution battles, to be sure; and the Catholic Church won’t soon give up on its wrongheaded resistance to contraception. The problems won’t immediately vanish. But each time they emerge, more and more of us will scratch our heads, wondering why.
[From Spirituality can bridge science-religion divide – USATODAY.com]
He wants us to believe that content-less spirituality—”That feeling of awe and wonder, that sense of a deep unity with the universe or cosmos…. It’s about emotions and experiences, not premises or postulates”—is destined to overtake and replace religious belief. He bases this on a couple decades’ worth of change in the Western world; apparently he has not been informed of the massive growth of Christianity in the global south and east. So his prediction is sociologically and historically naive, the problem of a secular wishful thinking.
Somehow, too, he takes it that the Catholic Church’s opposition to contraception illustrates the rift between science and religion. I’m scratching my own head over that one: just what exactly is unscientific about not using contraception?
The real rift is not between religion and science. It is between religion and philosophical naturalism masquerading as science. Or in some cases it’s between thoughtless religion and science. Biblical Christianity properly interpreted and applied is perfectly consistent with good science.
Hat Tip: Albert Mohler
New and improved atheistic naturalism – now with twice the spirituality of leading religions! Let the power of content-free, dogma-free, reality-free naturalism change your life!
So Tom: where do you stand on geocentrism?
http://www.galileowaswrong.com/galileowaswrong/
After all, the Bible is quite clear on the subject, and that pesky heliocentric theory or (shudder) nothing-centric expanding universe stuff is so blatantly naturalistic…. [ducks]
Geoff, before I answer that, would you like to provide some historical/theological support for “the Bible is quite clear on the subject”? I mean, why would you expect anyone to answer a question based on such a flimsy premise? (Or were you just having fun with people who tend toward irrational beliefs? It is, after all, kind of a fun game to play…. [feels no need to duck]).
Yes, I’d love to see clearly-referenced citations from the Bible that support Geoff’s categorical “quite clear” assertion regarding geocentrism… or, failing that, at least an example of Geoff’s Biblical hermeneutic that supports his accusation with reasoned, sound arguments.
Likely, we’ll get the same disordered and dishonest helicoptering in (like Olorin), and then running away. Perhaps we’re expecting too much from atheists, after all: this is coming from a guy who, on his site, eviscerates all meaning from the word “spiritual” to suit his personal emotional needs: on Pink Floyd’s Umma Gumma album: The first disc is a spiritual experience. And I’m an atheist. Wow, man, that’s like deep stuff: do-it-yourself antimonies!
And the reference to the group of anti-Galileo wacko’s? Typical modus operandi for extremists of any stripe–in particular atheists: find a wacko fringe group so as to implicate and condemn the whole community. There’s a fallacy-app for that! Too bad the atheist won’t admit to fallacious reasoning. Ya think?!?
They walk among us, ladies and gentlemen.
I forgot about that WSJ article, Tom! Ironic, eh?
Steve,
Actually, not that ironic if you take the view that athiesm is really a theoretical belief. In real life, everyone believes in something and everyone has a god of some sort. It isn’t a question of whether you believe in a god, only what god you believe in. For some it’s power or pleasure or beauty or fame. For others it’s science or rationality or freedom. The truth is everyone worships something and when you deny God you don’t escape the need to believe you just substitute some other god in its place.
Cue the old response that if atheism is a religion, bald is a hair color. But really: do you really want to water down the meaning of “god” to mean “any old object of belief”? I’d expect that to be more insulting to theists than to atheists….
Geoff, he didn’t say religion, he said “theoretical belief.” And then in case you are going to say atheism isn’t even a belief, I will cue my standard answer to that.
I’m intrigued by your supposition that theists would be insulted by watering down the meaning of “god” that way. He didn’t say it of God, YHWH, the God of the Bible. What did you think would be the problem?
Tom:
You’re asking Geoff to clarify yet another incorrect (and dumb) assertion when he hasn’t responded to your previous request regarding an earlier unsupportable (and dumb) assertion?
A rebuttal unanswered is a successful rebuttal, even if it’s phrased as a question. Even if it’s an easy question, as in this case. If Geoff will not support his claim when he is asked to do so, then we have reason to doubt he has any support for it.
Really, Geoff, are you going to let us off this easy on both these questions?
What claim? I asked a simple question (where do you stand on geocentrism), and instead of answering you chose to debate my motivation for asking the question. That’s your right, of course, but you can’t be surprised that my reaction is “*SHRUG* I guess Tom’s not interested in answering my original question.”
“What claim?” Geoff, really now, again. What you’ve said here is just too obviously wrong. You didn’t just ask a simple question, you made a claim:
And this part of my response was not a debate on your motivation:
(Even the rest of it wasn’t a “debate,” it was speculation in the form of a question, to which you had every opportunity just to say “no” and settle the question.)
Tell you what: I’ll jump process for you. If you want to know where I stand on geocentrism, that’s easy. I don’t believe it.
Now, it’s your turn. You have two sets of unsupported assertions out there. If you want to support them, fine. It’s your choice.
Since you’ve answered the question, this is of academic interest only, but my original comment would have been better expressed thus:
So Tom: where do you stand on geocentrism?
http://www.galileowaswrong.com/galileowaswrong/
After all, ACCORDING TO THE ~25 MILLION US CHRISTIANS WHO BELIEVE IN IT [source: Wikipedia], the Bible is quite clear on the subject, and that pesky heliocentric theory or (shudder) nothing-centric expanding universe stuff is so blatantly naturalistic….
Wikipedia would be a better source for you…
1. If you told us where you found that article in Wikipedia
2. If you clarified the antecedent of “it” (the way you’ve constructed your sentence, “it” could be pointing either toward “geocentrism” or “the Bible,” and that makes quite a difference to your claim)
3. If Wikipedia were a more trustworthy source in general
As it stands now, all we have is your word as authority, which is no better than where we started.
Meanwhile your assertion regarding the Bible’s being clear on geocentrism is (a) unsupported and (b) silly.
I would be glad to support (b), but since you started the discussion with an unsupported assertion, and that assertion remains unsupported, it’s still your turn. After all, I could just stand on (a) alone, since so far you haven’t given us any reason to believe your claim in the first place.
But if we get that far, I would be glad to demonstrate (b) for you. Along the way, I would also show that such outrageously uninformed, stereotyped, and bigoted misconceptions as you are trying to foist on us here have much more than academic implications.
By the way, I think it’s most honorable how quick you were to acknowledge the error you made in comment #11, and to offer a suitable retraction/correction.
😉
Tom:
You’re asking and expecting Geoff to actually challenge his own unsupportable, presupposition? Really? Isn’t that unfair to ask of an atheist?
(This, like my previous point was rhetorical and sarcastic, i.e., I get your very important point. I was glad to see it articulated.)
I’m asking, expecting, and even hoping. Or, if he should find a way to support his presupposition, that would be very interesting and very much welcomed too.
I had intended to include the link to the Wikipedia page, but it was temporarily inaccessible. Here it is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_geocentrism
Per Gallup, 18% of US respondents believe that “the Sun revolves around the earth”, so we’re talking about a belief that’s held by many millions of people. And it seems that most of those who openly espouse the position do so on the basis of their interpretation of religious scriptures, whether Christian, Jewish or Islamic.
From my (admittedly naturalistic) perspective, the epistemology that underlies modern geocentrism seems very similar to that which grounds most forms of creationism, from YEC to ID. An explanation of the distinction between the two – why naturalism trumps Biblical authority in one area but not another – would make it much easier for me to understand the claims in the original blog entry (about the relationship between religion and philosophical naturalism).
And if such a dialog could be accomplished without Houlo’s sneering ad-hominems, that would be even better.
Geoff, from the link in that article I see that Gallup also found:
There are considerably more evangelical Christians in America than in either Germany or Great Britain, and considerably more Americans got the right answer (79% of Americans, 74% of Germans, 67% of Britons). So if you’re going to tie this to Christianity, you’ll need considerably better empirical support than you have provided so far.
I freely grant that some modern geocentrists find support for their position in the Bible. They’re misreading it, of course. That happens, and it’s unfortunate. It does not mean that geocentrism is taught in the Bible. The Bible uses phenomenological language just as you and I do.
The last paragraph of your response is the interesting one, isn’t it. You write:
How is this different from the statement:
or
A (simplified) version of the naturalist critique would be that as soon as you admit non-naturalist elements such as textual authority into your epistemology, things will inevitably devolve into an argument about what constitutes “misreading”. So if you claim that geocentrists are misreading the Bible, and they claim that they’re not, what is the intersubjective way of resolving the disagreement? Argument from authority? Revelation? Help me out here….
He wants us to believe that content-less spirituality—”That feeling of awe and wonder, that sense of a deep unity with the universe or cosmos…. It’s about emotions and experiences, not premises or postulates”—is destined to overtake and replace religious belief.
Actually, I think Mooney is wishing and hoping more than claiming on that front. And really, I suspect that the goal is not and has never been to divest people of belief in God or their religion in the abstract (I repeat again how Coyne, and apparently Dawkins, both regard deism as compatible with science – so much for the “supernaturalism” issue), but more along the lines of what you noted re: Contraception. It’s about the social and political policies in large part. Notice that Mooney throws in that usual cry about intelligent design “undermining science” (by changing the definition of science, in large part) – meanwhile Hawking just wrote a book advocating the rewriting of the definition of science so as to include “theories” which have (in the words of Penrose) not a single piece of observational evidence in their favor. Apparently, it’s only undermining science if your extra-scientific beliefs are in the wrong place.
Can any of you recall why Dawkins condemned “liberal” Christians and religious believers? It had surprisingly little to do with the content of their own beliefs, even if they were supernatural.
Oh, and as for “Galileo Was Wrong”, I’ll throw in this tidbit: It’s funny, because I’ve engaged with a Sungenis admirer here and there in the past (to their credit, the ones I spoke with were ridiculously polite – I say ‘ridiculously’ because they were repeatedly blasted and called names while I spoke with them, and never responded in kind.) The Sungenis position is not one of proving that geocentrism is correct, but arguing that claims about geocentrism being demonstrably false are untrue, and that it’s possible in principle for geocentrism to be correct after all. And if I’ve taken Sungenis right on that, he’s setting the bar ridiculously low. I don’t agree with the man, but I also know better than to argue with someone who grants themselves that kind of home-field advantage.
Granted, this does place Sungenis in the position of advocating a theory that has no observational evidence in its favor, possibly has no realistic way for it to be tested (If there is more ‘stuff’ beyond our observable universe, how do we know what the center is?, for example), and is motivated more by philosophy and theology than anything else. Which apparently means that Sungenis is behaving like a theoretical cosmologist.
So if you claim that geocentrists are misreading the Bible, and they claim that they’re not, what is the intersubjective way of resolving the disagreement? Argument from authority? Revelation? Help me out here…
Geoff, have you even read Sungenis’ book? The man invests shockingly little in his reading of the Bible. For him, this is all about papal bulls, despite their being non-binding. Read up on his views and you’ll see this for himself.
This isn’t about “Misreading the Bible” for Sungenis, but his particular view of Catholic teaching authority – a view which places him in the minority even among traditionalists. (His claims on Catholic teaching are harder to defend than his very low-bar argument on “geocentrism”.)
Geoff,
Your prior assertions were:
(1) Geocentrism is clearly taught in the Bible.
(2) Watering down the meaning of “god” to mean “any old object of belief” could be expected to be more insulting to theists than to atheists….
You introduced Wikipedia in support of (1). I responded that Wikipedia provides no empirical support for it, and you have neither acknowledged nor responded to that point. I have pointed out that responsible biblical scholarship contradicts (1). You have responded with a set of comparisons leading to your conclusion,
But that doesn’t explain how you concluded (1), does it? If you really believe that, in fact, it ought to be impossible for you to affirm (1), since (1) could be true only if something were clearly taught in the Bible, which you seem to have denied just now.
So before we go baying off into the woods following the rabbit trail of naturalist critiques, how about if we stick with the question at hand?
I don’t really care about (2), though I’ll note that it is hanging there unsupported.
Don’t stop at their misreading of the bible, Geoff. This group also claims to read the scientific data correctly. Why do you cherry pick, and choose to focus only on the religious kookism?
It’s interesting to me, by the way, that in comment #20 you found only one paragraph of my prior comment interesting. The rest of it you treated with equal attention to other arguments I’ve raised countering yours.
Here’s how it looks from here, Geoff.
You assert A
I counter with not-A, supported with arguments
You ignore not-A and assert B
I counter with not-B, supported with arguments
You ignore not-B and assert C
I counter with not-C, supported with arguments
You ignore not-C and assert D
…
It’s an interesting game you’re trying to play, but it’s becoming clear enough what’s going on. I’m not going to follow you to D, E, F, G…; the futility of which ought to be clear enough. I’m going to focus us back on A.
The topic of the original blog entry was (really) about epistemology. How do we establish what is true and what is not? What decision-making processes do we accept, what kind of evidence do we need to support our truth-claims, what is the status of the results that we arrive at, what kinds of arguments can we use? A naturalist critique of Sungenis is easy, but for those who reject naturalistism…
I guess I’m asking how you come up with a non-naturalistic epistemology that doesn’t open the door to crackpots like Sungenis.
As for Hawking, I’ve only just got the book, and I’m not going to comment until I’ve read it.
Tom: I’m trying to focus on your original thesis. It feels strange to be berated for that… 😉
Re: #26, Are you then conceding you were wrong in asserting (1) and (2)? Or are you trying to steer us to D?
Your attitudes toward (1) and (2) are crucial even to what you’ve just said here in comment 26; for they display a very marked ignorance of biblical teaching and/or a seriously prejudiced bigotry.
And frankly, Geoff, having just completed a round on another blog with someone who kept changing the subject at every turn, I’m weary of that kind of discussion. I’d like to have some confidence that if I say something on this thread, you will actually display some evidence that you’ve read it before you answer. If you won’t do that, I won’t consider it worth wasting my time writing again.
Geoff, in response to #27, I don’t see any evidence that you’re concentrating on anything. All I see is A followed by B followed by C, disregarding whatever is said to you between.
A naturalist critique of Sungenis is easy, but for those who reject naturalistism…
…It’s still easy. Hence the large number of people who believe in “supernaturalism” who can and do argue with Sungenis. The man is in a minority even among his niche of niche peers.
Are you honestly suggesting that the only “crackpots” – even “scientific crackpots” – are religious? Or that “making critiques” itself is somehow difficult for anyone at all?
One last thing: The simple claim of geocentrism is not “non-naturalist”, anymore than phlogiston or miasma theory was “non-naturalist”.
Wait!
We’re not disputing some less-than-critical misinterpretations of Scripture occur. We’ve asked that the following categorical, broad-brushing assertion by GEOFF be supported with reasoned argumentation and supported clearly with verifiable references: “the Bible is quite clear on the subject [of geocentrism]”.
He has not done that, and in fact this time is deflecting away from backing up his nonsense by going off in another direction… “intentionally”. Cue: Monty Python’s King Arthur: “RUN AWAY!”
And the laughable misunderstanding-animated-by-ignorance view of authority and revelation looks even dumber in light of the recent nonsense by Hawking. No authority figure there, heh?
A wonderfully entertaining exhibition of atheist “thinking”, this.
Hi Geoff,
I just wanted to add my thoughts here:
There are many theories out there: reliabilism, infallibilism, skepticism, the list goes on. Individual positions on this question are interesting, although I don’t quite see the centrality of this issue to the topic of the blog post.
Regarding evidence, first-person reflection (subjective experience) and objective (e.g., methodological naturalism) seem like valid sources of knowledge to me, there are others probably. Regarding argumentation, most everyone employs deductive and inductive, right?
Ah, so this seems to be the crux of the matter for you. Now I need to ask: what makes Sungenis a crackpot – because he [purportedly – I guess this is under debate] is a geocentrist, or because he has a certain non-naturalist epistemology?
If it’s the former, then maybe I could agree with you, although perhaps Sungenis is pretty sharp and reliable in other fields (and maybe a nice guy to boot). But, if it’s the latter, you run right into the problem of defending your epistemology over his.
Now regarding non-naturalistic epistemologies, I doubt it’s possible to develop one without “opening the door to”, by which I take you to mean “allow for the possibility of”, Sungeniss’ geocentrism. Personally, I’m interested in maximizing the number of truths I know, and not necessarily maximizing the ratio of truth to error. If you think about it, I think you’ll find that a focus on the latter rapidly shrinks the available universe of propositions for you to contemplate.
Moreover, I’m actually extremely surprised you would take the opposing view here. For the opposing view to “geocentrism is possible” is “geocentrism is not possible”. Now see how strong of a statement that is – geocentrism isn’t even possible(!). How in the world could you know this? I would be fascinated to see an argument that concludes geocentrism is necessarily false.
Interesting response, Reidish – thanks. (This is indeed what I thought we were talking about.) I’ll respond at more length when I get home from work, but in the meantime I’ll refer you to this piece on the topic of “possibility”:
http://geoffarnold.com/?p=3903
Geoff,
I keep up with Common Sense Atheism as well (I comment there infrequently too). Luke is very ambitious, but unfortunately I think on this issue [bringing philosophy “up to the standards” of science] his ambition has run amok.
Philosophy is the foundation for scientific inquiry. A host of philosophical assumptions need to be made before science can get off the ground. So because of this, science, as a method of inquiry that is a subset of philosophy, by definition has “higher” bars over which a claim must jump to count as knowledge. For example, a scientific claim needs to be repeatable. It also needs to be observable from the third-person point of view. Given just those criteria, a large swath of beliefs cannot rise to the level of scientific knowledge (for example, the knowledge of which body in the room is my body).
The point is that, by definition, science already has narrowed down to a subset those propositions it is willing to engage, so it should not be surprising that it has “higher standards” than simple philosophy. But I don’t see at all how that entails that there is something wrong with philosophy per se.
So I think my original observation is warranted – arguing for the impossibility of geocentrism (ie, the door is not open to it) is really, really hard. It is so hard that I’m not sure it’s worth believing.
I shall continue to berate (see #27 above) sloppy atheist “thinking” (and expect another “run away” non-response:
Ignorance of philosophical terms that animates a disordered worldview: epistemology is NOT about “establishing” what is true and what is not: to not understand this principle is to play a dangerous, dangerous Idealistic game. (And, no, I will not accept the deflection that “establish” here is being used in a more benign way–it most certainly is not.)
Epistemology is the study of what we can know and how we it. Of course, the rigorous definition is important, but not to the immediate point. We are NOT the measure of reality, our thinking about things doesn’t actualize them, equations don’t “govern” anything, etc. ,etc. Geoff’s disordered view is so characteristic of the backdrop to secularist thinking about science… and reality in general. Only one blatant example of unscientific, nonsensical pronouncements is Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal of Great Britain who “noted that it is not necessary to observe other universes to gain some confidence that they may exist.” [29 Oct 2002, NYT] In other words, all we need to do is think about things and enslave our thinking to mathematical formalisms to know them… or to have them do our thinking for us, like Hawking has.
Birds of an atheistic feather flock… err, crash and burn… together.
Like you, though in a different sense, I have been wondering how my original post’s topic got turned into epistemology. I thought it was on Mooney’s misunderstanding of religion/spirituality and of the relationship between religion and science. Sure, that has epistemological implications, but that is just one category among many that are involved in it.
Bringing philosophy up to the standard of science?? I didn’t know philosophy could be tested and verified via any thing resembling the scientific method. Actually, I’m kidding, I do know…it can’t…but Geoff (and poor Luke) can’t seem to grasp that so they foolishly write blog posts about it.
And Geoff, here are “what I can imagine” topics that you should find laughable:
– naturalism is demonstrated by the sciences
– atheism is demonstrated by the sciences
– multiverses probably exist
– creation of something from nothing probably occurred or is possible
– naturalistic Darwinism has been shown to be true
– genuine moral progress can occur in the context of naturalism
Off topic but nicely highlighting the ignorant anti-faith bigotry of Geoff, Olorin, DL, olegt and others is an article by Frank Furedi appearing in Spiked Online: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/9582/.
Last week must have been galling to Brit expats DL and Geoff.