Addressing Popular Forms of Theism vs. the Best Forms
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 ส.ค. 2024
- Here's my defense of philosophical atheism (or whatever you want to call it) against new atheism (or whatever you want to call it) and my proposed truce.
So, should atheists address popular and harmful versions of theism? Or should we address the most defensible versions of theism? To explore the question of God’s existence, we must engage with the best forms of theism, not the worst. As Michael Huemer put it, “Who cares if you can refute the craziest version of a view? … The way to learn is to address the most interesting defensible views, not to spend our time discussing trivially false ideas.” Even if those trivially false ideas are widespread, wield lots of influence in the world, and are positively dangerous, they’re still trivially false. At worst, it’s deeply dishonest to refute the worst version of an idea, stop there, and act as if the entire idea has been refuted.
Depending on one's goals, however, addressing the strongest forms of theism might seem like a waste of time. If you're primarily concerned with atheist activism, helping others, and reducing the harm brought about by religion, why spend any time on things that have no significant influence in the world? The activists are generally more concerned with attacking the truth of influential beliefs that make the world worse. Philosophers are generally more concerned with addressing the best versions of each side, since that’s the best way of figuring out whether we should be theists, atheists, or agnostics. Though both are valuable and worthwhile projects, the main issue with the activist crowd is that they seem to think they’re the best at both, despite never engaging with the strongest versions of the view they reject.
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I wrote an expanded version of this for Prosblogion, which you can read here: prosblogion.com/2023/06/05/philosophical-atheism-vs-new-atheism/
Why do you think we need to engage with theism at all? What a priori reasons would you have for even considering it a viable idea? Are there not better questions to consider in philosophy?
I really wish he would have responded to the few critical comments
This is a fantastic and much needed video, it perhaps may be one of the most important videos on your channel, as I think you really look at some of the fundamental issues that divide those of us interested in the analytic philosophy of religion and those interested in activism. I don't really have much to say other than to echo a lot of your brilliant and insightful points. One thing I would point out though is that the work we do in addressing the best forms of Theism can also indirectly assist the work of activists. If at an intellectual level, the philosophical defense of Atheism is seen as a worthy and serious position, that can help improve the social viability of Atheism and Secularism. For example, a lot of contemporary activism around animal rights finds its roots in Peter Singer's work _Animal Liberation_ and there are plenty of other examples of other activist movements that have a lot of intellectual roots. I look forward to further explorations of the history and sociology of the more philosophical and analytic strains of Atheism on your channel.
Just great as always. Absolutely agree that it's a distinction that all would do well to acknowledge more often, including myself.
To contribute to the discussion, at 17:28 I'm not sure I agree with Hart that the "inconsequentiality of contemporary atheism is a social and spiritual catastrophe" in the sense that it was an avoidable disaster, or that we've fallen from some previous higher ground of discourse. Hart talks about the discourse having "taken leave of our culture" as if it was ripped out and there remains a gaping hole where it once was. I agree it is certainly lamentable that the level of discourse in popular contemporary atheism is poor, but I still think it is leaps and bound beyond the level of //popular// discourse in a previous generation. Sure, it can often feel like Richard Dawkins and crew have dragged us down when compared to the intelligentsia of the 18th and 19th centuries, but that is the incorrect comparison to make. I do not think that the highest level of skeptical discourse has left us in the slightest, but it merely appears to be shrinking when compared to the sheer number of people that are now in the discussion at all. In fact, if I may be bold, I think that the number of people engaging at the highest level has likely increased from 0.0001% of the population to perhaps 0.0008% or so. It just feels drowned out because the percent of the population now engaging in discussion has gone from perhaps 5% to 20 or 30%.
I like to think of new atheists like Dawkins (and pop-apologists like Turek on the theist side) as the start of a journey that aims to raise the base floor of the level of discourse rather than increase the height of the highest peaks. They themselves might not think they are working to raise the bottom level (as you mention, they often confidently parade around as if they've solved everything) but whether they acknowledge their place in the level of discussion or not, I think that is where they are, and it serves a purpose beyond just harm reduction. In fact I think it contributes to eventually bringing the heights even higher. I know so many people like myself who were introduced to the very topic of religious discussion via the popular level. I'm nowhere near the level of people like you, or the realAtheology team, or the Naturalism Next duo, but I have a copy of Logic and Theism on my phone that I'm slowly making my way through, and I do have to credit that at some level to people like Julia Sweeney and Christopher Hitchens for being the start of my journey.
Anyway, all that to say this: If they can acknowledge their place in the level of discussion as you suggest, then I think that popular level engagement with the least plausible forms of the arguments can also be an essential part of the grand push for truth, especially from a population point of view.
Popular forms of theism are not just easier to debunk and more socially relevant, but they are also more widely accessible. They are all over the internet. Where would one go to find the best forms of theism? I don't have a copy of Swinburne's "The Existence of God." I certainly hope it is better than "I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist," though I haven't read that either. It is hard to justify spending money on an apologetics book when apologetics seems to be so uniformly bad.
I agree with most of what you say here. Somewhat related, I think it's interesting to look at how apologetics gets baked into Christianity as it gets passed down. My parents' generation of evangelicals was super anxious about evolution, but our generation of evangelicals has (to a greater extent at least) come to terms with it. What's intriguing is how that gets baked into the content of the faith over time--now my friends are having kids of their own and raising them without the evolution anxieties of their grandparents. In some sense that's good because it's a more plausible form of the faith. But it also means that for them, evolution is never experienced as "coming at a price." Me and my peers all have stories of an "oh shit" moment where we realized evolution was true and knew that something in our beliefs had to change. Christianity took a hit in plausibility as one previously-viable corner of the possibility space (creationism/ID) was lopped off before our eyes. The beauty and magic that was Genesis's snow globe universe was shattered and we felt it. I'm not really sure what to make of all this, but I understand how atheists can view these successive modifications as giving up on the true/original form of christianity.
Hi. I’m a theist and I want to engage.
I think that the best argument against evolution are the patterns found in nature. Here’s what I think evolution is: gradual changes in an organism provided by beneficial random mutations resulting in an increase of genetic information.
Two problems, waiting times and patterns. The waiting time for beneficial random mutations with increased information is too high even with billions of years. The patterns found on nature may be appreciated with the eye. How can very rare and beneficial random mutations follow a pattern that would construct the eye? Sounds like natural slection is more intentional than random.
We can also combine both problems into one. Would billions of years be enough time to create an eye?
Here’s a caveat. Even when there’s a gap when we cannot explain something, the heart is not neutral. You will worship something or someone, let it be God or naturalism. You will still live with believing on something or on someone.
@@jorgei.alonso9959 Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about the specifics of evolution to make it worth your while. My comment was really only targeted at people who have come to reject a specific view and are trying to think about how they should update their beliefs in light of that. That said, there are entire communities of atheists (strictly speaking, I’m not an atheist fwiw) who would love to talk about evolution with you.
@@mf_hume
Seriously, thank you for the polite response. I never know what kind of reaction I'm gonna get especially when I talk to atheists online (hasn't been good). I hope you believe in Jesus Christ, the reason why I do this, and I bless you and your loved ones.
Great reply. Shows that religion is constantly evolving. The heresy of yesterday can become the orthodoxy of tomorrow.
@@jorgei.alonso9959 Your idea of how randomness manifests in evolution is completely misconceived. Most anti-evolutionists seem to think of random mutations as taking place in a long, more or less linear, chain of improbable events. That's not how it works. Random mutations take place in every generation at a rate such that any large population of organisms harbors a serious fraction of all possible survivable mutations simultaneously-- at all times. This means that all large populations encompass a huge pool of variation that is constantly being acted on by natural selection. All these variable traits (and the genes that generate them) exist in multi-dimensional combinatory associations at all times. Not only that, but every possible mutational gene form arises over and over again, even after it has been eliminated or reduced in frequency at any given stage of history.
You said, "The waiting time for beneficial random mutations with increased information is too high even with billions of years." Sorry, but the hardcore math on all this has been comprehensively worked out. We know the rates at which mutations occur per gene locus per unit time; we know the amount of quantified information change that has to occur to get from a specified state of DNA complexity to another specified state, we know the probabilities relative to entropic variation, etc., etc. We have statistical models that allow us to date archaeologically recovered DNA samples by analyzing the information difference between those samples and current forms of the organisms involved. The data sets this has been worked out on are massive beyond your imagination. Contrary to your impression of evolution being based on tenuous strings of improbable events, the probabilities of all this have been redundantly calculated, and at this time probability theory applied to genetic data supports evolution as strongly as the fossil record does. The statistics of genetic evolution is a whole field in itself.
Incidentally, the fossil record data collection set is also enormous beyond the comprehension of most creationist's ideas. Despite many creationists' idea that the record is full of huge gaps, there are many lineages of animals with amazingly complete fossil development sequences.
The reality is that the disbelief in evolution rests on almost total ignorance of what evolutionary theory actually says and almost total ignorance of the evidentiary basis for it. I have yet to meet a creationist who doesn't harbor a completely distorted misconception of both evolution and probability theory in general. Every creationist video or literary production I've ever seen has been just deluded and slobbering ignorant about evolutionary science. They are always attacking a strawman version of evolutionary theory that bears no resemblance to reality. It's true that their conception of evolution is ridiculously improbable. They just have no idea what the science and math actually is.
I agree that the best arguments for atheism point to the incoherence of *any* permutation of God. But there is a practical problem with engaging with the strongest forms of theism: the *strongest* version of God is inaccessible and irrelevant to human beings except as a philosophical topic. Certainly a deistic, necessary entity is nontrivial to exclude-or to demonstrate-but such an unadorned God has _nothing at all to do_ with the gods proposed by the world's large religions. Arguing as though it does is a trick employed by the most dishonest apologists, and it is a snare of equivocation that atheists are right to avoid.
@CubanClyde The world's major religions expressly exclude an uninvolved god. Each argument toward a deistic god crowds out the god they are pretending to argue for.
Thanks for the video Emerson! Those quotes at the end were beautiful. Recently I've been struggling to overcome the fear that we can't possibly see/read/listen to/comprehend the best arguments and evidence for the one true religion (if it's out there). I worry a good reason to believe is out there but I don't speak the language, I have to work and don't have time in life to find it, or because I lack the intelligence to understand the best reason to believe in any of the gods out there.
Particularly with Christianity there is so much gatekeeping, so many ethical hurdles to overcome, so much conflict with my moral intuitions, so many denominations with so many different rules and beliefs, and so many books to read before I can even consider worshipping Jesus as a god.
This was a great video! It generated so many great thoughts, and I very much appreciate it. I am practicing Catholic and I aspire to a form of Thomism (The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas). Indeed, many of the claims you made cut both ways: theists are just as likely to habitually dunk on weak forms of atheism. Theists, such as myself, need to keep apologists like Turek and others accountable in this respect. Also loved the David Hart quotes: he is right on the money.
Side topic: Have you ever engaged with any form of Christian Socialism? I am curious of your thoughts on how most social progressives think about religion or Theism more broadly. Regardless, I love your content and appreciate the stuff you have on Walden Pod as well. It has helped give me a general perspective of analytic philosophy of mind.
If my goal is to change hearts and minds of the most Christians possible, do you think I should focus my efforts on the things that they themselves claim make them convinced of Christianity?
Great insights! In my experience, the more you talk to thoughtful Christians, the harder it is to straw-man and discount Christianity as a whole.
Excellent. As someone who leans activist but agrees with many of your points I wish I had time for the discussion you propose. Hopefully some thoughtful activist types open to your points will engage in such a discussion. I'll certainly listen or read, if so
I wouldn't discount popularity entirely. For instance I can spend all day trying to come up with the most plausible explanation but that's just me exploring hypotheticals. If others genuinely believe it, that is interesting to me. It suggests the existence of at least some reason for belief.
But yeah, if you don't find something compelling, don't deal on it forever.
I've at least seen (parts of) an interview with Swinburne, and I was deeply unimpressed. If that's "the best version", then theists have no hope. He certainly didn't manage to convince me that looking into his stuff would be worth my time. Every time I encounter one theist that's supposedly really worth listening to, I end up disappointed at the shallowness of what I hear. You can only do that so many times before becoming convinced that there's no there there.
You addressed this at the end, but there's one gripe I have with your defense of the most defensible versions of Christianity. You talk about universalism, for example, but seem to never grapple with the fact that those most defensible forms really contradict the Bible. You'd have to believe that Christianity is true but that the Bible isn't? Which, okay, but it seems more likely that those defenders of Christianity are claiming that their version is consistent with the Bible. I think you'd have to address the huge mental gymnastics those people do to try to make the Bible mesh with their stances, and determine how likely they are to be true when the Bible has such an obvious meaning and interpretation on the face of it and what that means to the truth proposition of these different versions of Christianity.
being passionate about truth is so important 🥹
Excellent
Excellent as always
@@ReverendDr.Thomas explain the slave context?
I’m carnivorous being.
@@ReverendDr.Thomas brutal murder of the microbes killed in my treated water have any India ancestry texts?
Do you think that addressing a version of Christianity believed by 10 people is more valuable (from a truth seeking perspective) than a religion worshiped by 11 people.
I ask this since you seem to spend a lot of time on tiny christianity but no time at any other religion.
I think this is an important question. Tbh, I think there’s actually a decent argument to be made that someone who cared about the truth would spend more of their time trying to develop plausible versions of other religious views.
When I think about why philosophically sophisticated Christianity is relatively more prevalent than, say, philosophically sophisticated Zoroastrianism, it has very little to do with the relative merits of those two views. It has much more to do with the fact that Christianity became popular for reasons totally orthogonal to its intellectual merits, the fact the most people retain the beliefs they were raised with, and the fact that people try to articulate their views in the idiom of their cultural and intellectual environment. So it’s no surprise there’s a relative abundance of academic Christianity. But now I have to ask the counterfactual question of whether I have any reason to believe that, had Zoroastrianism succeeded for similar evidentially-irrelevant reasons, academic Zoroastrianism would be less defensible than academic Christianity. I don’t see any reason to think so.
So why would I spend more time on Christianity than Zoroastrianism? Arguably I should do the opposite. It’s relatively easy to figure out what the most plausible version of Christianity is. But figuring out the most plausible form of Zoroastrianism would take work, because there’s no apologetic industry serving as a pipeline between Zoroastrian philosophy departments (do such things even exist?) and the public. So what’s going to yield larger truth dividends, re-reading Swinburne for the ninth time (trying to glean some deep moral truth from his anecdotes about being spanked in his boys school) or spending some time trying to flesh out a philosophically respectable Zoroastrianism. Granted, none of my internet pals care about Zoroastrianism, so it’ll be a lonely pursuit, but it seems obvious that’s where I should spend my time.
Here's the problem - trying to present atheism as some kind of claim rather than a *response* to God claims is a BIG mistake because atheism is simply skepticism & nothing more nothing less. You make a point about addressing 'Better forms of theism' but there really aren't any. None, nada, nil since there are no plausible versions of theism. Apparently that makes me an idiot according to you in which case I have to ask what I'm supposed to be missing except the most banal assertions imaginable along the lines of 'Well a God might exist because... errr... erm... well because it just might!' or words to that effect. If I'm wrong & there are significantly better arguments for a Christian or Islamic or Hindu god(s) then feel free to tell me exactly what you know that I don't but somehow I don't think you can do that otherwise you _would_ - Well let's see if I am wrong about that from your response...