Naturalisms, Method vs Metaphysics: My answer to John Loftus

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's been a while since I spared with my old friend John "buy my book" Loftus, yet I found him on the Dangerous Idea Blog spouting stuff about methodological naturalism, so I thought it would be fun.Loftus distinguishes between Methodological naturalism and Metaphysical.

Paul de Vries described the difference between “methodological naturalism,” which is a disciplinary method that says nothing about God’s existence, from “metaphysical naturalism,” which “denies the existence of a transcendent God.” [Paul de Vries, “Naturalism in the Natural Sciences,” Christian Scholar’s Review 15(1986): 388–96]. The method of naturalism assumes that for everything we experience there is a natural explanation, whereas metaphysical naturalism is a worldview that denies the supernatural realm exists. [1]

He writes a piece intended to move the reader from commitment to one to acceptance of the of the other. There is significant commitment among theists to Methodological naturalism because that is nothing more than the approach that says only deal with natural causes in scientific statements. Then we are supposed to see the consistency of metaphysical naturalism and feel cognitive dissonance and go "O well I accept it as a method I guess I should ,make it my metaphysic's." Since it is such a transparent approach the answer should be transparent too, but we will get there in a minute.

He establishes the importance methodological naturalism (MN) in science: "Methodological naturalism is the backbone of science. We cannot have science without it. To see this, just think of the extreme position where every question is settled by saying “only God knows,” or “the Bible says it; We believe it, that settles it.” But this importance only emerges as a methodology, whi9ch assumes it's special use contextually. The context we are talking about is science. As long as we can maintain a distinction between science and metaphysics or science and the rest of reality we can maintain the distinction. That's the real problem because the ideology of atheism seeks to reduce knowledge to one thing, their spin on science.

 

Loftus says:

The question of naturalism only arises when it comes to the gaps in our knowledge. Why does it only apply to the gaps? There are many thousands of scientific experiments taking place every single day. In previous centuries those experiments would’ve been testing something on the cutting edges of the science of that day. But because the science of today is considered normal science (ala Thomas Kuhn) Christian defenders don’t raise the question of methodological naturalism about them. [2]

We don't raise it because we have settled the issue. We understand the distinction between methodology for science and metaphysical/ontological understanding and it's a problem for us. It only entails gaps where atheists fail to understand that if you allow other kinds of knowledge everything is not a struggle with scientist ideology. He's ignoring theology as always so he has no idea of reasons exists for other views. Ironic that he appeals to Kuhn because he somewhat misuses the allusion. It is not that Kun considered science in this age in particular "normal science" as in exemplary form of Science. The science in any age ,however primitive. is "normal science." For Kuhn science is a social construct and works by paradigm shifts so it's not going to supply any kind of metaphysical truth.

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Lofuts,,,, ,,,,,,,,,vs,,,, ,,,,,Meta
 

Loftus makes the assertion that early scientists were Christian:b "Most early scientists were Christians and they used this method in order to discover the facts about the world. Ronald L. Numbers tells us:"

"By the late Middle Ages the search for natural causes had come to typify the work of Christian natural philosophers. Although characteristically leaving the door open for the possibility of direct divine intervention, they frequently expressed contempt for soft-minded contemporaries who invoked miracles rather than searching for natural explanations. The University of Paris cleric Jean Buridan (a. 1295-ca. 1358), described as “perhaps the most brilliant arts master of the Middle Ages,” contrasted the philosopher’s search for “appropriate natural causes” with the common folk’s erroneous habit of attributing unusual astronomical phenomena to the supernatural. In the fourteenth century the natural philosopher Nicole Oresme (ca. 1320-82), who went on to become a Roman Catholic bishop, admonished that, in discussing various marvels of nature, “there is no reason to take recourse to the heavens, the last refuge of the weak, or demons, or to our glorious God as if He would produce these effects directly, more so than those effects whose causes we believe are well known to us.

Enthusiasm for the naturalistic study of nature picked up in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as more and more Christians turned their attention to discovering the so-called secondary causes that God employed in operating the world. The Italian Catholic Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), one of the foremost promoters of the new philosophy, insisted that nature “never violates the terms of the laws imposed upon her. [3].

Loftus should stop here and consider this a good reason to think that science and religion are compatible. Why should there be any further discussion? Because the ideology atheist fundamentalism can't rest until it's the only outlook in the world. Orwellian atheism must conquer all. It is this telos that drives John to ask silly questions: "Why would God create a world where scientists must adopt such a method in order for us to discover the facts of science, which would in turn eventually lead them to think the only causes that exist are natural ones, that supernatural explanations are unnecessary?" Because God never meant for science to be the only form of knowledge?" Perhaps because God is not obsessed with science. If God created us with brains to think and curiosity to spur discovery why would he then turn around and make they job too obvious? That would cheat humanity out of the experience of growth as a species. In fact the rational for my theodicy argument would also answer this question. God wants us to make a personal search for truth so we cam internalized the values of the good.[4]

At this point Loftus falls back on the notion that there is no empirical evidence (he says "objective"). "Even with methodological naturalism God could still overcome it with sufficient objective evidence. The problem is that the evidence doesn’t exist. Christian defenders refuse to admit this."[5] That's a deceptive argument. There is no direct scientific evidence that "proves" God or "disproves" God. In fact it's not clear such evidence would be possible. Any evidence that pointed to God would contradict metaphysic naturalism and thus if method supposedly leaded to meta then no such science evidence for God would ever be coherent. That is not the same as saying there is no evidence for God. There is it just requires a different paradigm. I hate to say it but my book (buy my book) offers that approach and data.[6] [7]

He tries to rub a little salt in the wounds saying "Just think of the failed repeated attempts to test prayer." I've never seen an atheist answer the empirical evidence of Lourdes. That's been reinforced over the years by new academic work.[8][9] We knew the double blind approach was wrong for the question because you can't control for outside prayer but the empirical approach has not been answered.

 

Then he tries to turn the alleged problem into an overall paradigm indictment of faith:

This point is extremely important for to see. Just think if there existed sufficient objective evidence to overcome the method of naturalism and it's clear this is what they are doing. Their problem is that this kind of evidence does not exist, and it should. So in order to maintain their faith, Christian defenders have to complain about it even though scientists have amassed a massive amount of knowledge from using it, knowledge that changed our world. [10]

To overcome the method of naturalism. "The Method" like there's only one. See the bait and switch? He starts out talking about two methods and now it's one. Somewhere along the way you are supposed to  do this black is white slide where Methodology becomes metaphysics. But he has not justified collapsing method into metaphysics for the reasons ai spelled out above. In a metaphysical frame work that is not limited to the ideology of science as the only knowledge there other reasons to believe in God and reasons to understand the major questions about God, reality existence, and knowledge as transcending. This is why it is a true black is white slide because Method and Meta have one thing in common ( both about science) but they are really opposite ends of a spectrum.

 

The view from within the ideology looks very different, as Loftus says:

It's knowledge gained about things that were once on the cutting edges of science, about things that, if Christians defenders were alive in a previous era, they would've complained how methodological naturalism doesn't leave room for faith, in those very areas where science rolled over faith-based thinking.[11]

Obviously not true since it did. Methodological naturalism left room for faith in Newton's day and Newton's life. He never made such a complaint. The difference is in John's world there is just one form of knowledge, science viewed through atheist lens. In my world there is a large framework that allows for many forms of knowledge and science is in come compartment and in that compartment Methodological naturalism works fine. But it's limited to that compartment. In that sense it helps provide some evidence that ,while it doesn't  "prove God," does offer rational warrant for belief.

 there were comments on DC I will answer a couple in the comments here.

 

Humean Ideology in Science.

 

 In the last installment I was making the point that the validity of lack of validity in God arguments depends upon perspective. I was interested in a certain kind of God argument That stems from realizations about the law like nature of the universe, and it's "behavior." One such example is design arguments, even the fine tuning argument. I will deal with specific examples on either friday or Monday. I don't have a film to review on Friday. Today I'm going to finish the discussion about the two schools that argue between laws of nature and phsyics are merely descriptions of behavior vs. they are actual laws.

It is understandable that naturalistic thinkers are uneasy with the concept of miracles. So should we all be watchful not to believe too quickly because it is easy to get caught up in private reasons and ignore reason itself. Thus has more than one intelligent person been taken by both scams and honest mistakes. By the same token, however, it is equally a danger that one will remain too long in the skeptical place and become overly committed to doubting everything. From that position the circular reasoning of the naturalist seems so reasonable. There’s never been any proof of miracles before so we can’t accept that there is any now. But that’s only because we keep making the same assumption and thus have always dismissed the evidence that was valid.

            Of course in the nature of scientific realism we see ideology at work on both sides. They are not arguing about the empirical data suggesting how the workings of the physical world proceed. They are not arguing about a big pile of facts that are totally factual and do not require any sort philosophical component. These things are part of the discussion but the frame work of the discussion for both sides is clearly philosophical and thus ideological as well. Scientific realism in many of its versions distinguishes between ontological and epistemological views. In the world of Roy Bhaskar’s realism there are commonalities with the Frankfurt school that is with neo-Marxist social and political criticism.[1] So for, it is anti-realists who are working from a postmodern reading of constructivism. Whichever school prevails, science has to make the assumption that our observations really tell us what’s there, if they want to rule out God and religion and other “primitive” things as “unscientific.” It wouldn’t really work to assume that the objects of scientific understanding are just “constructs” and then try to use them to rule out the reality of other ideas such as God. They have to make an assumption of a realist nature at some point. They can argue that assumption as a theoretical one, thus allowing a constructivist to remain a constructivist and still assume the reality of objects of scientific scrutiny. Otherwise we can’t assume string theory or mutliverse, or that there’s solidity at the basis of matter. To dismiss belief on the basis that we are just imposing patterns is also to dismiss the ability of science to predict the workings of natural world.

            We can go all the way on assuming Humean view (description only) if we are prepared to be solipsists in the end. We can go to the other extreme and assume law like regularity if we are prepared to impose our own ideas. The only logical way out is to be consistent and follow what works, but that might just mean having to refrain form ruling out some version of SN. What works is the assumption that our perceptions are real. We don’t play on the freeway on the assumption that our perception of patterns is just imposed and all that oncoming traffic is not real. Solders on the battle don’t stand in the line of fire on the premise that bullets are just theoretical constructs. We go with what works and what works is to assume that when our perceptions of regular, consistent, and shared (Inter-subjective) they are worth heeding. One of the areas in which we should make such assumptions is in the assumption that order and regularity is indicative of prescriptive laws of nature, and in turn prescriptive laws are indicative of the will and ordering of mind.

            Order bespeaks mind in that mind is the only example we know of purposive ordering. As Vera Kistiakowsky stated, “The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine….I am satisfied with the existence of an unknowable source of divine order and purpose.” [2] This quotation shows us that it was not that long ago that it was understood in science to view order as indicative of prescriptive laws at least in the sense of being a creation of mind. I use the word “purposive” and that’s a key because it is the hint of purpose that makes us think of mind. Why assume there’s a purpose? The whole atheist concept of answering final cause and design arguments is to divorce the universe form purpose. “Things are just here” they tell us, “there’s no ultimate reason, there’s only the descriptions of physics.” The problem is the description describes perfect order and absolute regularity. These aspects fit the need to produce a life bearing universe. That hints at purpose. Purpose hints at mind. The fact that it’s bankable, it’s always there, it’s relentless order makes it seem prescriptive. The concept of cause and effect seems a prescriptive concept.

            Systems analysis approach to the question of laws raises the possibility of mind:

Other aspects of the systems approach have made philosophers wary. Some argue that this approach will have the untoward consequence that laws are inappropriately mind-dependent in virtue of the account's appeal to the concepts of simplicity, strength and best balance, concepts whose instantiation seems to depend on cognitive abilities, interests, and purposes. The appeal to simplicity raises further questions stemming from the apparent need for a regimented language to permit reasonable comparisons of the systems.[3]

            Cause and effect might be taken as an example of prescriptive laws. In spite of the descriptive nature of physical law in modern scientific outlook, cause and effect is not made obsolete but still bears a crucial place in human thought. Some argue that cause and effect is outmoded due to quantum theory. Quantum theory (QM) posits acausal happenings such as the appearance of quantum particles. That has been discussed in chapter 8, “disprove God,” In connection with Krauss’s book. QM doesn’t replace cause and effect in all of science. It’s only under very specialized conditions that it can be assumed to be acausal and it’s only in connection with a certain theoretical outlook. Of course the question of laws is very complex now. We are not sure we know what laws are. The idea that the universe contains a law of some sort in some heavenly realm and natural processes obey that law is ninetieth century, no one really thinks that way now.[4] We can speak of general principles or “universals” of some sort. There certainly do seem to be principles that are generally active and keep the universe running along certain lines. We can see these are “organizing principles.” Calling them laws is sort of one sided because it conjures up images of a celestial legislator. The term too directly links to the watch maker, law implies Law giver. Organizing principle could imply any sort of origin source, personal or impersonal, purposive or not. One such principle is cause and effect.

            Descriptive physical laws do not undermine the notion of causality. As James Franklin puts it:

The notion of Cause remains crucial to science, even though the most general physical laws do not mention causes. No physical laws or interpretations of those laws call into question such facts as that some diseases are caused by viruses...every technological application of science requires the notion of an intervention that will effect change...That physical laws are descriptive does not undermine the notion of causality. The motion of billiard balls in interaction is described and predicted by purely descriptive of conservation of momentum and energy, for example. That does not in any way supersede our understanding that one ball hit another and caused it to go flying off." The laws just describe the course of the causal interaction." It's a description complete in one way but partial in another, in the same way as a complete description of a person's actions without reference to their motivations...[5]

Nor is causality equal to determinism. Determinism is often confused with cause and effect but conceptually they are not the same and one does not necessitate the other. The fact that they can get mixed up with each other raises an important issue: the nature of cosmological issues as inherently philosophical. None of the issue addressed so far can be resolved by just observing facts; they all require philological investigation, and that means that ideology can’t be far behind. Not that philosophical thinking is inherently ideological, but it’s constantly opening the door. Ideology is like a leach that seeks to attach itself to philosophical thinking every chance it gets. The relative nature of prior probability of God based upon one’s personal search, the nature of laws, the nature of purpose and order, the problem of descriptions and how they very according to empirical observation, the acceptance of strange phenomena (miracles), all the things we have touched  upon so far require philosophical thinking, thus run the risk of ideological connotation.

            This raises major conceptual problems for atheism. First because atheists tend to be determinists to a large extent, but also because the naturalistic reading of the universe (that’s just the way it happened) usually entails the implication that this is the only way it could happen. “This is just the way things happen,” it’s not amazing nor does it suggest purposes because they had to happen this way due to cause and effect. The implication is they really couldn’t happen in other ways, but such is not the case. Nature is all about contingency and naturalistic being is contingent being. Even Karl Popper tells us so; "Empirical facts are facts which might not have been. Everything that belongs to space time is a contingent truth because it could have been otherwise, it is dependent upon the existence of something else for its' existence going all the way back to the Big Bang, which is itself contingent upon something."[6] Paul Davies tells us:

Some scientists have tried to argue that if only we knew enough about the laws of physics, if we were to discover a final theory that united all the fundamental forces and particles of nature into a single mathematical scheme, then we would find that this superlaw, or theory of everything, would describe the only logically consistent world. In other words, the nature of the physical world would be entirely a consequence of logical and mathematical necessity. There would be no choice about it. I think this is demonstrably wrong. There is not a shred of evidence that the universe is logically necessary. Indeed, as a theoretical physicist I find it rather easy to imagine alternative universes that are logically consistent, and therefore equal contenders for reality.[7]

If true this would mean the universe is contingent. That is to say it is dependent upon some ontologically prior condition that makes it as it is. That condition would have to entail some form of organizing principle that makes for order and precision. The best thing we know for organizing is mind. Davies begins to wax eloquent about efficiency and sufficiency of the laws of physics, affirming their reality and then links to God:

Now you may think I have written God entirely out of the picture. Who needs a God when the laws of physics can do such a splendid job? But we are bound to return to that burning question: Where do the laws of physics come from? And why those laws rather than some other set? Most especially: Why a set of laws that drives the searing, featureless gases coughed out of the big bang, towards life and consciousness and intelligence and cultural activities such as religion, art, mathematics and science?...You might be tempted to suppose that any old rag-bag of laws would produce a complex universe of some sort, with attendant inhabitants convinced of their own specialness. Not so. It turns out that randomly selected laws lead almost inevitably either to unrelieved chaos or boring and uneventful simplicity. Our own universe is poised exquisitely between these unpalatable alternatives, offering a potent mix of freedom and discipline, a sort of restrained creativity. The laws do not tie down physical systems so rigidly that they can accomplish little, but neither are they a recipe for cosmic anarchy. Instead, they encourage matter and energy to develop along pathways of evolution that lead to novel variety-what Freeman Dyson has called the principle of maximum diversity: that in some sense we live in the most interesting possible universe [8]

This does leave the atheist in a pickle. I hesitate to evoke this argument because it’s a double bind and I don’t like double binds, I think they are often phony. Yet this one is problematic either way. If the universe just has to be this way then it’s bound to be prescriptive with respect to physical law. Thus it’s a contradiction to say laws are only descriptions. Thus a descriptive universe must also be a contingent universe. That much is true, but we can’t push it and say “either way it has to be God” that would mean either prescriptive or descriptive is an implication of God, that’s a double bind. It seems more honest to just say that what is described is order, and that even though “laws” or organizing principles may be compelling they don’t make a necessary universe, but they are aspects of a contingent universe that is none the less ordered and prescribed by some higher principle. Then of course the argument centers around weather or not that principle is mind. In any case the contingent nature of the universe lends itself to several God arguments hat involve the ordered nature of the universe.

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[1] Bhaskar, R.A., Philosophy and the Idea of Freedom, London: Blackwell. 1990

[2] Margenau, H and R.A. Varghese, ed. 1992. Cosmos, Bios, and Theos:Scientists Reflect upon Science, God and the Origins of the Universe…  La Salle, IL, Open Court, p. 52. qjoting Vera Kistiakawsky: bor in 1928, Professor of physics at MIT, she served as president of the Association for Women in Science in 1980-1981.”She had been a staff member of major research installations and had combined teaching with basic research in nuclear physics both at Columbia and Brandeis Universities before joining the faculty at MIT in 1963, and rising in 1972 to the rank of Professor of Physics.  She is now professor emerita there.” From her webapte at Mt Holyoak college (she went to school there—class of 48): URL: https://www.mtholyoke.edu/175/gallery/vera-kistiakowsky  visited 2/8/13

[3], John W Carroll, "Laws of Nature", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = . Carrroll cites D. Lewis, , “New Work for a Theory of Universals”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, (1983) 61:367

[4]Santo D'Agostino, op cit.

[5] James Franklin, What Science Knows and How it Knows it. Jackson Tennessee:Encounter books 2009, 64-65. Franklin teaches at University of New South Wales, he’s a mathematician who publishes on History of Ideas.

[6] Karl Popper quoted in Antony Flew, Philosophical Dictionary, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979, 242.

[7] Paul Davies, “Physics and the Mind of God, The Templeton Prize Address,” First Things. (1995). Davies was born in 1946, he is recipient of the Templeton prize, the largest monitory aware for scientific achievement, In the past he has taught at University of Cambridge and is currently director of “BEYOND” center for fundamental concepts in Science.

[8] Ibid.

Rationalizing Faith or Rationalizing Doubt?

 On CARM, (message board) Derrick writes:

It is my opinion that it is rationalizations based upon my perspective of the facts. When a Christian encounters a ridiculous amount of suffering in their life they interpret this through their beliefs that god loves them and is disciplining them, etc. This to me is rationalizing, which does not speak to whether or not it is true, but simply plausible to the person experiencing the suffering.

Tralala writes: "What bad things did god do to you? All of them? Just certain ones? How do you know which is which?Could something bad have happened just by chance with no meaning what so ever?."

I've seen these two statements put over in a thousand different says in a thousands different venues. It's quite common to hear this, when good stuff happens we just credit it to God regardless of the evidence for that, when bad stuff happens we refuse to ever blame God. As though blaming God is a real option if you believe he exists. Let's stop and think about the question begging going on in these statements. Look at the loaded nature of Tra's statement "what bad things did God do to you?" Even though she's supposed to believe there is no God of any kind, she wants us to blame God for the bad things that happen. Is that rational? Or if she's just making the point that crediting God with the good  requires that we balance it out by blaming God for the bad, that makes about as much sense as blaming our parents for misfortune. Before we go any further it's important to point out that I have what I feel is a rather air tight answer to the problem of pain. So there is no logical reason to blame God.

There's nothing illogical about refusing to blame God. Calling it rationalization is just a propaganda ploy. The obvious truth is that the one saying that we should blame God is the one doing the rationaling. Look if I feel that I know God is real and that he is loving, if I feel that I have air tight reasons for such notions what kind of sense would it make to blame him for the misfortunes that befall us when in fact Jesus warns that we will have tribulation in the world? "I tell you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world," (John 16:33). That would be the essence of irrationality to say "Ok I know God is loving and would never just whip upon me for no good reason, but I'm going to chuck that because it must be rationalizing and I'm going to take the bad as a sgin that there is no God or that God is a big meanie." That makes no sense at all. Moreover Tra's statement is so loaded she needs to be careful where she points it. That's like asking "are you still beating your wife?" What bad stuff has God done to you? Fraught with silly assumptions. Why should I blame God when I know better? That is not only begging the question but also rationalizing.

Obviously the doubters are the ones doing the rationalizing. They are rationalizing the witness of good things that happen and trying to force an erroneous conclusion that we not to accept for the bad things. I know my own life, why should I accept their appraisal of it? They were not there when I had a single one of my experiences of God, where do they come off assuming that my experience is just my hysteria and their silly little bitter doubt is the right way to look at it? Derrick tells me "I was so spiritual. I was really serious firebrand for God, I knew the bible and I studied Greek." That all may be true but he didn't know God. He knew what to say in a church to sound right but he didn't know God. If he knew God he would not be denying God. If he had the experience of being born again and baptism of the Holy Spirit he could not deny that reality, unless his experiences were superficial and he didn't bother to cultivate the reality of it. Then to assume that his doubt sweeps away my reality and thus my faith has to be the rationalization is merely begging the question.

It is not logical to deny what I know. Given the primes I maintain, that God is real and God is good, that there is a logical reason  for God's allowance of pain  in life it is ratioanl, not rationalizing to credit God with blessings and refuse to blame him for crap that happens. I don't believe in God because good stuff happens. That's not my original basis for bleief. If it was they might have a point. Since it's not, financial windfall and escaping wrecks and so forth, that is just icing on the cake. I am grateful for icing, I love the icing. But it's not my reason for belief in the first place. So there's nothing inconsistent about refusing to blame God for the trammels and trials that come my way. The good stuff is confirmation, especially when it comes in answer to prayer. That's another piece of the puzzle they seek to avoid thinking about. That's a huge aspect of rationalization. Their reasons for dismissing prayer and answers to prayer is purely ideological. They have no proof that prayer doesn't work, they weren't there when my prayers were answered and they don't know the circumstances. The only reason they object is becuase it disproves their world view and their ideology tells them they must reject it out of hand without even knowing the facts.

Talking of rationalization hit the atheists with evidence of miracle and watch them come up with infinite reasons to doubt it. Meet every standard of proof they bring up and watch them continually raise the bar to ridiculous levels. Start with the general miracle claims they say there's no scientific evidence. Would Xrays be scientific evidence? No Xrays can be faked. Well what if you had Xrays of lungs ravages by TB and the new Xrays taken the very next day showed a new pair of lungs, you could guarantee it was valid Xray of the same guy really taken the next day? The only thing in the mean time that changed was prayer? That's impossible, no such case has ever been recorded. Yes I'm afraid it has, Charles Anne had such an experience in the 1920s. Xrays didn't exist then. Yes they did, they came into use in 1917 (see page 28) I believe. Then they counter, but these Xrays were fake. The recording procedures and documentation for the saint making committee is such that they could NOT fabricate such xrays. But then they began to deamnd that I find some way to verify that the xrays exist. I contacted the Lourdes miracle committee and exchanged email with a committee member who assured me that they do exist. He had seen them, he is a medical researcher and a doctor he knows how to read Xrays he knows they are not fake. Of course he's lying, you can't trust a religious guy. Member of the committee just means he's real good lying about stuff. Unless I get the actual Xrays in my hands they wont accept it. But why should they believe me? Do we see who is rationalizing the evidence away here? I went out and found evidence they previously stated could not exist, so of cousre they refuse to accept it's validity but I'm rationalizing my own faith?

O but look at the nature of religion and religious people. It's all based upon lies and religious people are hysterical and stupid so of course it has to be that I'm just rationalizing. They are not rationalizing they are brave men of science. This is kind of perpetual knee jerk doubt is just the kind of penetrating insight people have when they become incurably skeptical. But where I come from we have another name for it. It's called "bigotry." I define rationalization as the refusal to think deeply about an issue but putting up a self deceiving pretense of thought by going through the motions of critical thinking without looking deeply at one's own interest or prejudices. That's what those guys are doing. I'm not doing that becuase I was an atheist. I had doubt. I was one of those perpetual doubters who said as long I have an excuse for doubt or a breath I will continue to doubt. I struggled thought that by honestly confronting the nature of my experiences and thinking as deeply and logically as I could about them. I came to the conclusion of faith. I don't see any evidence that would disprove or overturn the warrant for belief that I have discovered. I don't see any reason not to credit God with the good and refuse to blame him for the bad. That is logical and consistent given what I know about God. What is not logical is the circular reasoning that says "there's no evidence for God's reality, but the evidence that people put forward must be wrong, must be rejected, because there's no evidence."

Liberal or Progressive Christianity?

 
 Walter Rauschenbush

Lothar Lorraine asks if I would describe myself as "progressive" or "liberal." I guess I'm behind the times because that phrase "progressive" was not used when I went to seminary (late 80s) so I am sure exactly what it means or how it differs from liberal. He has a page where he explains to some extent. Before talking about that I tried looking for some other sources on the net. Progressive Christianity.org

The video by Fred Plumber on Progressive Christianity.com identifies the movement with a hundred year old trajectory going back to "the progressive era" in American history and the leaders of the Social Gospel movmeent. It names Walter Rauschenbusch, Harry Emerson Fosdick, 100 years Jim Adams 1994  Christianity would fail if it didn't align itself with the best scholarship. Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918) Baptist minister, Best known for his work The Social Gospel. He's identified most closely with the social gospel movement which was a sort of liberation theology movement of the early twentieth century. Their biggest issue was the labor movement. Walter Rochenbach worked among the poor and the workers in industrial settings of New York City.[1]


Harry Emmerson Fosdick, (1878-1969) Christian History tags him as "liberalism's popularizer."[2] One of the most popular preachers of his day. Central figure in the battle between fundamentalism vs Liberalism or modernism in the 1920s and 30s [3] He Presbyterian also New York based. The Christian History artilce quotes him: "I believe in the personal God revealed in Christ, in his omnipresent activity and endless resources to achieve his purposes for us and for all men."


(progressive Christianity.org) defines their movement:

Progressive Christianity is an open, intelligent and collaborative approach to the Christian tradition and the life and teachings of Jesus that creates a pathway into an authentic and relevant religious experience.

 Plumber in his Video says, Take it beyond social action to Christology. Wide spectrum, "all we ask is that someone is willing to examine the best scholarship." He doesn't propose anything about changing Histology. The site lists eight points. It doesn't really say what these points are, but I suppose they typify Progressive Christianity.

8 points:

1.  Believe that following the path and teachings of Jesus can lead to an awareness and experience of the Sacred and the Oneness and Unity of all life;
2.  Affirm that the teachings of Jesus provide but one of many ways to experience the Sacredness and Oneness of life, and that we can draw from diverse sources of wisdom in our spiritual journey;
3.  Seek community that is inclusive of ALL people, including but not limited to:

• Conventional Christians and questioning skeptics,
• Believers and agnostics,
• Women and men,
• Those of all sexual orientations and gender identities,
• Those of all classes and abilities;

4.  Know that the way we behave towards one another is the fullest expression of what we believe;
5.  Find grace in the search for understanding and believe there is more value in questioning than in absolutes;
6.  Strive for peace and justice among all people;
7.  Strive to protect and restore the integrity of our Earth;
8.  Commit to a path of life-long learning, compassion, and selfless love.[4]

 "We are a movement, we have a network" totally different approach form new atheism. Still trying to convince us they don't have a movement while in the middle of a faction fight in which all the commentators refer to atheism as "the movement." Who these guys really represent I don't know. There is a "progressive Christian Alliance."


 Wilipedia identifies Progressive Christianity as "the emerging chruch movement." That I have heard of and read some things about.[5]

 The movement is characterized by a willingness to question tradition, acceptance of human diversity with a strong emphasis on social justice or care for the poor and the oppressed (often identified as minority groups) and environmental stewardship of the Earth. Progressive Christians have a deep belief in the centrality of the instruction to "love one another" (John 15:17) within the teaching of Jesus Christ.^[1] This leads to a focus on compassion, promoting justice and mercy, tolerance, and working towards solving the societal problems of poverty, discrimination and environmental issues, especially by social and political activism. Comparatively, a further understanding within Christianity being of the Greek word agape or agapaó as used within John 15:17 translated to the English word "love" as that being of "i.e. embracing God's will (choosing His choices) and obeying them through His power".^{(Wiliki FN)}

 So far it sounds like a movement for people who have discovered liberal theology but who don't want to call themselves "liberal" for one reason or another.

Am I a "progressive" in the above sense? I can agree with to a degree the eight points, I wouldn't take any of them literally or absolutely. None of them actually alarm me although I wouldn't statement them all as they are above. Point 1 is good but I am not afraid to speak of being saved. Jesus saves. Even though I don't believe hell is eternal conscious torment, I do believe in the term "salvation." If anyone was lost it was me, in this life. Not becuase I was going to burn in hell but just in life I was damn lost. I had no idea where I was going what I was doing. I had no hope. I didn't think about any "oneness." I just lost. Point 2 I guess would be one I wold come closet to disagreement with: teachings of Jesus provide but one of many ways to experience the Sacredness and Oneness of life. That's ok (see my views on salvation and other faiths here) not exactly the way I would put it. I still want to emphasize the uniqueness of Jesus as the mechanism of salvation and then talk about the availability of Jesus to all humanity. The one true reality behind all religion is God, then we have our individual concepts of God. We identify with those concepts through traditions, but our traditions are filtered through cultural constructs. Of course the other faiths will say "I get to say that too of my guy." That's ok with me. Perhaps Jesus is Buddha? That I don't know. What i do know is when I called on Jesus, he answered.

 "Real liberals" (self proclaimed) have called me a "no-Orthodox" and told me that I'm really not very liberal. The moderator on CARM just got through that I'm not a Christian at all. I don't deserve the consideration of their fundamentalists Christian apologists becuase they really Christian apologists. I say "Yes but they are just amateurs when it comes to insulting atheist." (That's a joke). As I get older I find I care less and less about labels. I don't really care about them. That's partly becuase I grew up in the 60s when it was really fashionable to say "I don't like labels." Partly because as I get older I find the closer you look at a given thinker the more he/she contradicts the given label. Labels can be as misleading as they are useful. Young people like to taxonomize and assign everything a label and they feel they are getting it all nailed down. I used to think if I could identity a school of thought that an idea came from I had beaten it. All I had to do was hang a label on a thinker and I had exposed that thinker. Then I realized that's committing the genetic fallacy. Labels are not all that great.

Not to put him on the spot or make him feel that I'm putting him down, but Lothar Lorraine has a page that explains the distinction between liberal and progressive. On that page he raises some interesting points.[6] He starts with compression to evangelicals who believe in a perfect inerrant bible

To my mind, both progressive and liberal Christianities begin with the realization that it is neither epistemologically nor morally permissible to believe everything standing in our favorite holy book without any kind of reality-check. Our faith should always welcome  facts from the external world and from our undeniably true moral intuitions to correct and possibly abandon our theological doctrines.
If we don’t, we cannot bring up a coherent answer to Sam Harris’s contention that religious people would systematically slit the throat of every girl with red hair if God said so in their sacred scriptures.[7]

 I can't comment on the accuracy of this in relation to progressive since that's not a label I use. I think his view seems consistent with the little I've read about it recently. I agree with what he said in this quote, I also reject as problematic and misleading the concept of "inerrancy" as the wrong model to use. I've posted about that recently. One difference he identifies is "Liberals believe  that miracles are impossible (or at the very least extremely unlikely) and that we should interpret the resurrection as a psychological experience of the first disciples. Many go as far as saying that God cannot be personal (even as a distant landlord) and that he has to be some kind of energy or impersonal concept."[8]
 By and large that is true but I can think of notable exceptions, to the idea of miracles. Three major liberal theologians of the sixties believe in the resurrection, Kasemann, Panenberg, and Moltmann. Of those three Kasemann studied with Bultmann, the archeliberal. Paul Tillich, certainly liberal, while disparaging the term "supernatural" had a complex relationship to that concept. He did not disapprove of miracles. Nor did they say they were "unlikely." He accepted the Biblical miracles with the proviso that they are related to a comoplex relatinoship to the divine/world interface. Essentially he rejected the concept of supernatural when it was conceived as "breaking into or disrupting the natural order." He was amenable to miracles when they were construed as working within the framework of harmony between the world and the divine.[9] My own reading of Tillich on this point is complex, please see my article "Was Paul Tillich Anti-Supernatural?" Thus there are always exceptions to every label, and when labels become stereotypes (not to say that Lorragine is doing that) they become coutner productive.

I think what we see happening in this "emergent chruch" movement is Christianity working to re-define itself. The chruch as a whole is taking Dave's challenge. Discontent withe fundamental interpretation, recognizing the language has become abstract and removed, they are seeking to reshuffle the linguistic deck and come with new says to describe that work the Gospel into a contemporary framework. This is not an emergency, it's been done before. In fact it's probably done every hundred years or so. The Original Jesus movement was shaped into the Orthodox chruch in defining itself in opposition to the Gnostics. The church again found itself front and center in the medieval synthesis, the reformation, modernism, and so on. It's a necessary natural process. See my article on Mouthner for an explanation about the abstraction of language vs. concrete gesture.


 Lorraine focuses on two points as indictive of his faith:

1)      God has necessarily to be a perfect being
2)      Despite all their flaws, humans are quite able to recognize goodness and perfection (and that’s what makes us guilty, like Paul expressed it in Roman 2).

I agree with those points. I have pages defending modern miracles on Doxa, my original website. I use them as a God argument. I have posted numerous times on this blog about my belief that God is the source of consciousness and is conscious. Yet at the same time I embrace Tillich's notion of God as the ground of being. Tillich was famous for asserting that personal God was anthropomorphism, yet  again I think there's a complex relationship there that requires a closer look.

see my articles

The Bible God and the Depth of Being

Ground of Being and the Source of Conscoiusness


I have more emtional commitment to the term "liberal" because I went to a liberal seminary and have been thinking of myself as liberal, for decades, although real liberals reject me as one of their own. My belief exhibit the spectrum from Paul's ground of being to Pentecostal tongue speaking. It's been known to happen. I am absolutely certain that I received baptism of the Holy Spirit. I am also absolutely certain that I'm wrong about a great many things. I am so anti-label that I call myself an "existentialist."




sources

 [1] Paul Haulsall, "Modern History Sorucebook: Walter Rauschenbusch: The Social Gospel 1908." published on the net by Forham University, originally in 1997, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/rausch-socialgospel.asp  accessed 9/1/2013.
[2] "Harry Emmerson Fosdisck, Christian History, published by Christianity Today http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/131christians/pastorsandpreachers/fosdick.html?start=1  posted:(8/8/2008) accessed 9/1/2013.
[3] Wikepidia articleon Fosdick,
[4] fn is to Strong's Concordence 25, agapao.
[5]
[6] Lothar Lorraine, "On the Defintion and Meaingfulness of Progressive Christianity." webstie: http://lotharlorraine.wordpress.com/  accessed 9/1/2013
[7] Ibid
[8] Ibid
[9] D.M. Brown, Ultimate Concern, Tillich in Dialogue New York, Harper and Row, 1965, online version published on "Religion online" http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=538&C=604 accessed 9/1/2013.
[10] Metacrock, "Was Paul Tillich Anti-Supernatural?" The Religious A priori (website) http://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2013/01/photobucket.html published (4/2/2013) accessed 1/9/2013

My Answer to Lowder's Attack upon My Bayes Paper part 1

 


Jeff Lowder wrote an article attacking my criticisms of the use of Bayes theorem to plot the probability of God. "Is It a Crock to Use Bayes’ Theorem to Measure Evidence about God? Part 1
March 3, 2013." The point of my original article is that you can't apply scientific probably to something as basic and metahpysal as God, the ground of being, the basis of all reality. The nature of Bayes theorum is such that it only works where new information is obtainable. The sort of new information one can have about God is not available to scientific scrutiny and thus there is no new information. That means the "prior" (the prior probability that must be obtained tom make the theorem work) wont be accurate and thus the whole project is dubious. Lowder never actually comes to terms with this argument. Most of the arguments he makes are red herrings or white rabbits.
.... Lowder summarizes what he thinks I'm saying:

I think the point that Metacrock is trying to make is that, if we define “miracle” as an event which requires a supernatural explanation, then by definition a miracle is logically incompatible with metaphysical naturalism, which denies the existence of all supernatural beings, including God. So naturalists can’t remain naturalists and believe a miracle has occurred. The options seem to be: (1) give up naturalism, (2) deny the event took place at all, or (3) agree the event did take place, but deny it has a supernatural explanation.

That's part of what I'm saying but it's not the really crucial points that I made about Bayes.  It's not so much about supernatural as it is about metaphysics and scientific domain. I am not drawing upon the conventional misunderstanding of supernatural that pits a realm of magic against a realm of what atheist want to believe is "fact." Rather, the whole issue of epistemology and metaphysics is prior to scientific learning. Science requires epistemology and metaphysics to ground its assumptions. God is related to those aspects of reality, and thus not part of the scientific domain. In trying to make God an object of probability they have to reduce the concept of God to just another fact in the universe; something God clearly transcends. Lowder merely denied the circular reasoning but of cousre he would.It's not just a matter of bad reasoning, it's an ideological thing. Those are ho in throngs of ideological zeal can't step back from their ideology and critically evaluate their own thinking. They can critique all that is not the ideology but they can't criticize that. That was my point in talking about the circular reasoning naturalists employ in sweeping aside miracle claims: it is that they can't accept anomalies that would threaten the paradigm. Lowder quotes me in cautioning the skeptical attitude.

    So should we all be watchful not to believe too quickly because its easy to get caught up in private reasons and ignore reason itself. Thus has more than one intelligent person been taken by both scams and honest mistakes. By the the same token it is equally a danger that one will remain too long in the skeptical place and become overly committed to doubting everything. From that position the circular reasoning of the naturalist seems so reasonable. There’s never been any proof of miracles before so we can’t accept that there is any now. But that’s only because we keep making the same assumption and thus have always dismissed the evidence that was valid.

he adds: "I agree with everything Metacrock writes here, with two important exceptions. First, that metaphysical naturalists do, in fact, reason in the way he describes." That's becuase he reasons that way himself. He can see it's a mistake when called out but he can't see that his rejection of evidence for miracles is that kind of mistake.

 Second, that metaphysical naturalists rely upon “circular reasoning” to avoid the conclusion that a miracle has occurred. It is true, of course, that some individual metaphysical naturalists have made fallacious inferences about miracles. The same could be said about some individual theists. But so what? Metacrock presents absolutely no evidence to justify the assumption that such individuals are representative of the position they represent. Metacrock is attacking a straw man of his own creation.

....Presenting evidence would just be an obligatory task becuase we've all seen what they say about miracles and it's clearly ciruclar it's just that they don't step back from their ideolgoical assumptions to see themselves doing it. Look at Hume. "This does not happen enough." Well, we have lots of claims, when they are advanced the usual rejoinder is "this hasn't happened before, it just does not happen, we don't see it, so we have to assume this is not it (a miracle)." If you want to see this principle actions go to CARM and start arguing for the Resurrection. I've been doing this for 15 years and I've seen thousnds of such arguments iti's aburd to say they say that they say it all the time. Next he's going to tell me that they don't say "He must not understand this idea" when you disagree with them. That's another of their obsessions, if you really understood you would agree with me. He makes that very charge in this article. But then he tries to sweep it away by saying theists do the same thing. That's neither here nor there, the point is atheist arguments about miracles are circular reasoning. That's improtant to realize becuase the whole issue of trying to show the probability of God is based upon trying to treat God like another fact in the universe rather than the basis of reality. That's the root issue of the whole matter. When one understands God as the basis of reality one is apt to see the issues pertaining to God as much larger than just charting the probability of some particular item, just as the realities of miracles is more than just finding an anomaly.
....Now here's where he stops following my train of thought and starts interjecting a bunch of red herrings and a bait and switch or two. I brought up ECREE because given what I said above about about the fruits of skepticism I thought "this would be a good place where they might argue ECREE as a counter to the shortcoming of skepticism." Instead of dealing with that issue he goes off on a tangent defending ECREE when in fact I didn't say it was wrong. Here's a crucial point he misses. My position on ECREE is that it is dependent upon Bayes. As Bayes goes so goes ECREE. That means if Bayes is not suited to probability for God then ECREE is not a valid standard for God arguments. Rather than understanding this he tries to tie ECREE to Bayes even more tightly which would mean it's taken out if I can take out Bayes. It also tells me he's not really following my issues. let's look at what he says:

With all due respect to Metacrock, this statement suggests he does not understand ECREE. As I have explained elsewhere, the best interpretation of ECREE is the Bayesian interpretation. According to BT, the final probability of a hypothesis is determined by two other values: the prior probability of a hypothesis and the hypothesis’s explanatory power. Now explanatory power is, by definition, a measure of how well a hypothesis “predicts” (i.e., make probable) the data.

 ....There it is, he disagrees with me, therefore, he doesn't understand. The problem is it's Jeff who doesn't undersatnd. He thinks I'm saying that ECREE is no good. He focuses here on two things that make Bayes work: (1) the "prior," and (2) and explanatory power. The problem there is my argument hinges on how both of those rule Bayes out as valid way to understand God. I think that's what he doesn't get. I show that you can't set the prior for God, no setting will work; all settings for prior probability of God have the same flaw as the overall project, no new info coming in. All the things we can know of god we know through either deductive reasoning or experience of the divine on the level of the numinous. That means scinece can't handle it. It's outside the domain of scinece. Any setting of  a prior for God will be fraught with ideological needs. Ne never deals with that issue. Rather he brings in red herrings. Moreover the same limitation would also go for explanatory power. God can't give the kind of explanation we expect from scientifically verifiable data. Now the explanatory power of apophatic theology is fine with me. The explanatory power of the Jesus prayer works for me it's not gonna work for an atheist. That means no Bayes on God, no ECREE in relation to God.
....I had said that using ECREE in the way they do would cause one to remain skeptical even when the evidence is good. In fact that's what happens when they think in the ideologically circular way that says "we never accepted this stuff before so we shouldn't accept it now." They create a false record, "there have never been any miracles," based upon circular assumptions. He says it would be ambiguous to talk about "good" miracle evidence. Then he explains two reasons why. But  this is one of many red herrings. regardless of the quality of miracle evidence, that must be discussed in another venue about evidence. My only point was that the assumptions they make about naturalism that enable them to explain away God with Bayes also drive them to assume that their basic ideological assumptions are explanatory. An ideological truth regime is not explanation  it's only a reduction of all phenomena to that which can be controlled and pressed into service for the ideology. Of course he winds up diverting our attention with guilt by association trying to link miracle belief to Mormonism. I'm not going to bother to refute the statements about good miracle evidence because that can only serve to take us off the path.
...At this point he returns to ECREE and he assumes my answer about the meaning of extraordinary (as in "extraordinary claims") are irrelevant. Nothing could be further from the truth. They are totally relevant. The point I was making was that atheists try to present "extraordinary" as though Belief in God is some wired thing, or as though the kind of extraordinary evidence we need is on a level of Moses and the red sea. The fact of it is the kind of claim that is extraordinary in the sense of a Bayes theorem would be extremely ordinary. A finding that one has cancer when one has never had it before is statistically extraordinary. At that rate any probabilistic God argument we can pull, or the 200 empirical studies on mystical experience, are extraordinary evidence. He gives us a white rabbit to chase in another direction.

Again, with all due respect to Metacrock, this statement shows that Metacrock doesn’t understand ECREE. We don’t determine whether a belief is extraordinary by measuring the percentage of people who hold that belief. Rather, ECREE is epistemic in nature; it has to do with what we would expect to be the case based upon our background knowledge.

He's actually made the argument for me. I never said anything about extraordinary being defined by a percentage of people that believe it. My point is you can't subject the reality of God to empirical proof in a scientific sense. To the extent that we can establish a co-determinate that can be so subjected, such as religious experience being measured by the M scale, we can measure aspects of belief without claiming to measure God. ECREE is not epistemic it's a betrayal of the epistemic. We can't put over "what we expect to be the case God wise" and translate that into standard mathematical terms for probability. how could we do that when God is beyond our understanding? No new info on God is going to come in becuase it can only come from sources that science cannot trust, such as 'the heart.' How can we attach number and data to that? Epistemic issues can't be resolved by scientific reductionism or inductive empiricism. They are more basic than that. They can only be resolved through either logic, experience, or remain open ended. What all of this comes to is we can do two things: (1) we can keep it on a philosophical level and not try to pretend we've solved it. Or, (2) we can find a co-determinate and make phenomenological observations about aspects of the issues around faith and use that to extrapolate assumptions on the more subjective issues, we should not try to pretend that we have some scinece magic that will resolve all belief and make God vanish in a puff of science.
....AT this point he brings up several observations I made about the history of ECREE and Bayes. I'm not going to bother to correct his disagreement except to point out that I documented by sources and I used some of the most recent historians to write on the issue. I am sure he knows more ins and outs of the history than I do, but none of the information he presents are really relivant to my basic argument about probability and God. He tries to claim that Bayes is not in doubt, rather than disproving the history I brought he ignores it completely. It has been in doubt time and time again, it is professors of mathematics who doubted it. I documented that with McGrayne and he has nothing to say about that.[1] that's probably the most authoritative history about the BT. None of the issues he brings up historically disprove the history I listed. He merely shows additional examples of people who have accepted the BT. That's ust begging the question, they made the same mistake he is. He took the history to mean that I think Bayes isn't useful for anything but to argue for atheism. I did actually read the McGrayne book. Obliviously her point is that BT keeps coming back because it's useful. My argument is not that it's not useful. I never said Bayes is no good we can't use for anything. That is a red herring. It's good but it can't be used to tell us about God becasue God is not amenable by such methods. God is the unified field its so basic you can't get a microscope and find it. It's too basic as the same time too big. Too fundamental to reality to be just another thing we can subject to empirical measures. Now uses those red herrings to take us down to the path to a point where can try to use Chrsitain apologists to argue against me.

To cite the most obvious counter-example, has Metacrock never heard of Richard Swinburne or read any of his numerous books which use BT to defend Christian theism? (See here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) Or seen Tim and Lydia McGrew’s impressive use of BT to argue for the Resurrection in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology? (See here.)

Obviously I have hard of them, I have to confess I don't read much of the apologists running around now days. I respect Swinburne. I probalby have missed lot by not following him. Most of the thinkers I use are those I read in Doctoral work when I studied history of science as Ph.D. candidate in history of ideas. Now Jeff sites apologists who argue for the resurrection using the BT. Arguing for the Resurrection is a different matter. That's not arguing for the probably of God. There might be tangible things to latch onto there. The resurrection is a physical event in space/time and it's not on par with God as the basis of reality. So it is anther fact in the universe. Thus it could be subject to empirical means. Natual theology also one can make the same point about that. then he says:

Metacrock is simply “barking up the wrong tree” on this one. I cannot think of any way to salvage his point.

I can think of a way. One might try to undersatnd what I'm real saying and deal with the one cogent point upon which my original paper is based: that God is not given in sense data, thus he cannot be subjected to probability. The Bayes theorem can be used for other things, some of those serve belief in God. That doesn't mean that God himself can be subjected to it.




[1] Sharon Berstch McGrayne, The Theory that would not Die: How Bayes’ Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011, 3.