I saw Bill Maher's Religulous over the weekend, and thought I'd take a bit of time to review it.
The first thing to note is that philosophically it's a bit ham handed. No religious person is going to be persuaded by the film. Maher's subjects are largely at the fringes of their communities. It would have been interesting if he could have sat down with people who really are spearheading mainstream religious sects. Understandably, no such persons seem to have agreed to speak with Maher. However, Maher isn't really aiming at the religious with this movie. Instead, this is a movie aimed at those who already doubt. It's aim is to persuade those who are not deeply religious that religion is something to be worried about. It's an activist film in that it tries to convince those who agree with its message to take action.
Maher highlights the irrationality of religion, the parts that clearly make little or no sense. There's nothing particularly novel or deep about his criticisms. Anyone who has worried about the rationality of religious belief will be familiar with the gist of them, at least in spirit if not in detail. That is, one may not be familiar with the specific examples of, say, scriptural inconsistency or outlandishness that Maher uses, but the general notion that scriptures often say things that are either inconsistent or just plain outrageous when viewed in the clear light of day shuould come as no surprise to anyone.
Maher's film is a call to action to the non-religious. he points out that 16% of Americans are not religious. This is a higher percentage than many more visible and active minorities, for example black are only around 12% and gays around 3%. Maher presents the case that much of the world is controlled by people who have crazy religious beliefs. These are people who simply don't believe the evidence that is clearly before them on subjects such as evolution. Maher suggests (rather strongly) that if we allow policy to be determined by religious belief rather than rationality, things will end badly. Non-believers thus need to stand up for their rights and insist that policy not be based on religion.
Surely there is something to Maher's exhortation. A minority of 16% is large enough that it ought not be run over roughshod without some pretty clear rational backing. But ultimately Maher's portrayal of religion is too one-sided to be really believable on a practical level. Maher focuses exclusively on the negative consequences of religious belief, e.g. on the idea that if the End Times really are upon us then there is little reason to worry about global warming or pollution, or on the idea that only infidels are worthy of death. But this approach simply ignores the fact that much good in the world is religiously motivated. One need only visit various soup kitchens and charities to see this.
Let me develop this idea by pursuing one of Maher's examples: Mormonism. Maher portrays Mormonism as a particularly crazy religion. Mormons believe that God is a physical being who resides on a planet called Kolob, that God and Jesus appeared to Joseph Smith and told him that all religions at that time were an "abomination" to him, and that God has commanded them to baptize living people on behalf of dead people - including Hitler, Stalin, and the like. One could take issue with Maher's portrayal of Mormon beliefs, but for the moment let's assume that his protrayal is accurate (it's close in any case). On what basis do we say that Mormon beliefs are on their face more irrational than, say, catholic beliefs? Maher offers no real argument here. He presents the beliefs as being inherently irrational and then spends his time focusing on the social pressure that is brought to bear on Mormons to believe the doctrines of the church. He doesn't speak to any believing Mormons, just a couple of ex-Mormons. Most importantly, Maher completely misses the social welfare programs of the Mormon church. So with essentially no argument, and a very narrow one-sided focus, Mormonism gets lumped in with radical Islam, Scientology, and Cantheism.
Similarly, Maher focuses exclusively on trends in Christianity that hold that the world was given to mankind to use for his own purposes. This is the view that would allow rampant pollution, so long as the end of the world would occur before humankind could exterminate itself. But there are other trends. For example, one argument is that the earth is an opportunity for humankind to exercise stewardship. On this view, we are responsible to God for how we treat his creation. At the End Times we should be even more caring of the planet as we will have precious little time to correct any mistakes we might make.
While there certainly are crazy and destructive themes in religion, there are also benign and good themes. Maher can quite rightly point out that one can be good without religion, but then again one can be evil without religion so it's not clear how far such an argument can go. Neither religion nor rationality has any corner on the market of evil or good.
So in the end I'm not inclined to accept Maher's portrayal of the evils of religion at face value. However, I am inclined to listen heartily to his two main messages. First, non-believers need to be more vocal about their position. There is nothing wrong in pointing out the craziness inherent in certain religious positions. There is nothing wrong in insisting that public plicy be made on the based of publicly available evidence rather than religious dogma. Atheists, agnostics, and secularists in general ought to be far more vigilant in standing up for their position. And second, Maher's final message - that we need to rid ourselves of the desire for mass extermination and of our carelessness with our environment, lest we succeed in exterminating ourselves - is certainly right. But I don't think Maher has made the case that religion is solely responsible for these ills, nor is its eradication the sole remedy.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Friday, January 2, 2009
Of Spiders and Elephants
As I said, there's a lot more to how hard it is to prove something than just whether it's positive or negative, universal or existential. Sticking with just mathematical statements and a strong notion of proof, consider the proof that earned Kurt Goedel his fame. Goedel proved "there is at least one true statement of arithmetic that is unprovable." Notice this is an existential statement, but it turned out to be very difficult to prove. On the other hand, a universal statement such as "all triangles have interior angles that sum to 180 degrees" is easy enough that we routinely have high school students do the proof.
Let's move to some examples that are easy to understand without knowing a lot of math. Consider the following two statements:
A) There are no elephants in this room.
B) There are no spiders in this room.
Clearly, A is a lot easier to prove than B is. A quick glance around any average size room is enough to prove that there are no elephants in it. However it is much more difficult to prove that there are no spiders in the room. The difference in this case has nothing at all to do with grammatical differences between A and B, it has to do with physical differences between elephants and spiders. Elephants are just the sorts of things that are hard to conceal, whereas spiders are easy to conceal. In many many cases, the grammar of a statement just isn't enough to decide how difficult a proof of the statement might be, you have to take account of the content.
So where does that leave us with respect to proving whether or not there is a god? Well, it means we have to start digging into the concept of god before we know how hard it will be to prove whether or not such a being exists.
Let's move to some examples that are easy to understand without knowing a lot of math. Consider the following two statements:
A) There are no elephants in this room.
B) There are no spiders in this room.
Clearly, A is a lot easier to prove than B is. A quick glance around any average size room is enough to prove that there are no elephants in it. However it is much more difficult to prove that there are no spiders in the room. The difference in this case has nothing at all to do with grammatical differences between A and B, it has to do with physical differences between elephants and spiders. Elephants are just the sorts of things that are hard to conceal, whereas spiders are easy to conceal. In many many cases, the grammar of a statement just isn't enough to decide how difficult a proof of the statement might be, you have to take account of the content.
So where does that leave us with respect to proving whether or not there is a god? Well, it means we have to start digging into the concept of god before we know how hard it will be to prove whether or not such a being exists.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Universal and Existential
Last time, I talked about positive and negative claims. I argued that neither was inherently harder to prove than the other. But of course I don't mean to claim that all statements are equally hard or easy to prove.
Let's start by thinking about the "strength" of a statement. All I mean by "strength" is how much is being claimed. For example, consider the difference between "There is at least one egg roll on my plate" and "there are at least two eggrolls on my plate." The second statement is stronger than the first. It is stronger because it tells us more about the world. There are more ways to make the first sentence true, than there are to make the second statement true, so merely knowing the first statement is true tells us less about the world than knowing the second statement is true. Of course an exact statement like "There are exactly three eggrolls on my plate" is even stronger - it tells us more about the world.
In general, stronger statements are harder to prove than weaker ones. For example, if you can't see my plate, all I need to do to prove that there is at least one egg roll on it is hold up one egg roll. But to prove that there are at least two egg rolls on it, I have to hold up two egg rolls. It's harder (ok, not much harder) to hold up two egg rolls than one.
Logicians typically deal with existential and universal statements. Existential statements start out something like "there is at least one thing that ....". They make a claim that can be satisfied very easily. Universal claims are about everything that exists, or perhaps about everything of a certain type. So you can surmise that universal statements are generally stronger than existential statements.
Consider, for example, the difference between "All ravens are black" and "at least one raven is black." To prove the existential statement, I just need to produce one black raven. But to prove the universal statement, I have to do more. Not only do I have to somehow check the color of each and every raven, I also have to find some way to show that I haven't missed any. It's not sufficient to simply note that every raven I've seen is black. After all, perhaps almost all ravens are black except for an isolated colony that manages to cling to life in the snowy wilds of Greenland.
Ok, so now we turn to the question of theism. It's easy to see that the theistic claim "there is a god" is existential. All we need to do is show that there is at least one god. It's a bit more difficult to see that the atheistic claim "there is no god" is universal. To do so, we restate it as "Each thing is not god." It turns out that the denial of an existential statement is a universal. Similarly, the denial of a universal statement is existential. To see this general structure, let's go back to ravens.
If I claim that all ravens are black, you can prove me wrong by producing one raven that isn't black. You show I'm wrong by proving an existential statement. On the other hand, if you claim that there is at least one black raven, I can only prove you wrong by checking all of the ravens and showing that none of them are black. To show you're wrong, I have to prove a universal statement.
So on the face of it, it seems that the atheist is at a bit of a disadvantage. There is something inherently more difficult in proving of each and every thing that it is not god, than there is in proving that there is at least one thing that is not god. But the atheist's claim is hard to prove because it's universal, not because it's negative.
So, why does all this matter, aren't we in roughly the same position as we were when we thought that it was impossible to prove a negative? Not quite. I'll go into more detail in the next post, but it turns out that a lot more goes into how hard something is to prove than merely whether it's universal or existential. It turns out that some universal statements are easy to prove, and some existential statements are extremely difficult to prove.
Let's start by thinking about the "strength" of a statement. All I mean by "strength" is how much is being claimed. For example, consider the difference between "There is at least one egg roll on my plate" and "there are at least two eggrolls on my plate." The second statement is stronger than the first. It is stronger because it tells us more about the world. There are more ways to make the first sentence true, than there are to make the second statement true, so merely knowing the first statement is true tells us less about the world than knowing the second statement is true. Of course an exact statement like "There are exactly three eggrolls on my plate" is even stronger - it tells us more about the world.
In general, stronger statements are harder to prove than weaker ones. For example, if you can't see my plate, all I need to do to prove that there is at least one egg roll on it is hold up one egg roll. But to prove that there are at least two egg rolls on it, I have to hold up two egg rolls. It's harder (ok, not much harder) to hold up two egg rolls than one.
Logicians typically deal with existential and universal statements. Existential statements start out something like "there is at least one thing that ....". They make a claim that can be satisfied very easily. Universal claims are about everything that exists, or perhaps about everything of a certain type. So you can surmise that universal statements are generally stronger than existential statements.
Consider, for example, the difference between "All ravens are black" and "at least one raven is black." To prove the existential statement, I just need to produce one black raven. But to prove the universal statement, I have to do more. Not only do I have to somehow check the color of each and every raven, I also have to find some way to show that I haven't missed any. It's not sufficient to simply note that every raven I've seen is black. After all, perhaps almost all ravens are black except for an isolated colony that manages to cling to life in the snowy wilds of Greenland.
Ok, so now we turn to the question of theism. It's easy to see that the theistic claim "there is a god" is existential. All we need to do is show that there is at least one god. It's a bit more difficult to see that the atheistic claim "there is no god" is universal. To do so, we restate it as "Each thing is not god." It turns out that the denial of an existential statement is a universal. Similarly, the denial of a universal statement is existential. To see this general structure, let's go back to ravens.
If I claim that all ravens are black, you can prove me wrong by producing one raven that isn't black. You show I'm wrong by proving an existential statement. On the other hand, if you claim that there is at least one black raven, I can only prove you wrong by checking all of the ravens and showing that none of them are black. To show you're wrong, I have to prove a universal statement.
So on the face of it, it seems that the atheist is at a bit of a disadvantage. There is something inherently more difficult in proving of each and every thing that it is not god, than there is in proving that there is at least one thing that is not god. But the atheist's claim is hard to prove because it's universal, not because it's negative.
So, why does all this matter, aren't we in roughly the same position as we were when we thought that it was impossible to prove a negative? Not quite. I'll go into more detail in the next post, but it turns out that a lot more goes into how hard something is to prove than merely whether it's universal or existential. It turns out that some universal statements are easy to prove, and some existential statements are extremely difficult to prove.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
On Proving Negatives
So where does an atheist start to talk about god? We could start with the classical arguments, but those have already gotten a lot of press. I do have some things to say about them, but I think I'd rather start elsewhere.
How about this? One of the comments I often hear when the subject of atheism comes up in a conversation is that atheism is an untenable position because, as everyone knows, "you can't prove a negative". Atheism's central claim is, of course a negative - "There is no god." So the argument is that atheism cannot be proven. This puts it at a disadvantage to both theism and agnosticism. Simple agnosticism makes no claim about god's existence. As theism's central claim is positive - god exists - it is at least possible that it might be proved. Thus the theist can offer positive arguments for his position while the atheist is reduced to merely finding fault with the theist's arguments rather than offering positive proof.
Or so the argument goes. The most glaring problem with this argument is that it rests on a false premise. It turns out that it is possible to prove negatives. Not only that, it's not even especially difficult. Let me start out by noting an oddity in the premise - if it were true, it would be unprovable! That's right the premise, "You can't prove a negative" is itself a negative statement and hence unprovable by it's own lights. We have to be a bit careful here. The fact that the premise is unproveable if true, or false if provable, does not show that the premise is false. Goedel made a lot of his fame in mathematics on the basis of just such a sentence - one that was unprovable if true. But it is a weird to use a negative premise as the central claim in criticizing atheism for having a negative as its central claim. The the extent that the argument works against atheism, it undercuts itself.
Luckily there is a more direct way to show the argument doesn't work. We simply note that proofs of negatives are readily available. For this we can turn to that most proof-laden of disciplines, mathematics. Here's an old one: "there is no greatest prime number." This is Euclid's theorem which can also be stated as "there are infinitely many primes." The proof is pretty straightforward. Or how about "there is no triangle whose internal angles sum to more than 180 degrees." It turns out that we routinely rquire high school students and undergraduates to prove negative mathematical statements. Ok, what about statements outside of math. Here's an easy one "There are no elephants in this room." It seems pretty easy to prove that, just have a quick look around. Elephants in rooms are the sort of thing that are easily discoverable with a quick visual inspection. If you look earnestly for an elephant in your room and don't find one, that proves there isn't one.
The bigger issue here is that statements don't divide neatly into negative and positive one except on purely grammatical grounds. Any claim can be made by using either a positive or a negative statement. Sometimes one is more natural, but there is always someway to state the claim positively and some way to state it negatively. We saw this with Euclid's theorem. The formulation I initially gave was negative, but the second one is positive. It's not hard to show that the two statements are equivalent. Try it. I'll try to show you the answer in a later post. So how would we state the atheist's central claim positively? Well, one way to do it is to divide things into to groups, the divine and the mundane. All gods are in the divine group, everything else is in the mundane group. Now atheism amounts to the claim that everything that exists is mundane. Theism can be expressed as the negation of atheism, i.e. as the claim that not everything is mundane. There are other ways too, but they often depend on the specific concept of god being employed, and we haven't gotten that far yet.
There, I think that's enough for now. In my next posts I want to talk about universal and existential claims, and also about the notion of proof.
How about this? One of the comments I often hear when the subject of atheism comes up in a conversation is that atheism is an untenable position because, as everyone knows, "you can't prove a negative". Atheism's central claim is, of course a negative - "There is no god." So the argument is that atheism cannot be proven. This puts it at a disadvantage to both theism and agnosticism. Simple agnosticism makes no claim about god's existence. As theism's central claim is positive - god exists - it is at least possible that it might be proved. Thus the theist can offer positive arguments for his position while the atheist is reduced to merely finding fault with the theist's arguments rather than offering positive proof.
Or so the argument goes. The most glaring problem with this argument is that it rests on a false premise. It turns out that it is possible to prove negatives. Not only that, it's not even especially difficult. Let me start out by noting an oddity in the premise - if it were true, it would be unprovable! That's right the premise, "You can't prove a negative" is itself a negative statement and hence unprovable by it's own lights. We have to be a bit careful here. The fact that the premise is unproveable if true, or false if provable, does not show that the premise is false. Goedel made a lot of his fame in mathematics on the basis of just such a sentence - one that was unprovable if true. But it is a weird to use a negative premise as the central claim in criticizing atheism for having a negative as its central claim. The the extent that the argument works against atheism, it undercuts itself.
Luckily there is a more direct way to show the argument doesn't work. We simply note that proofs of negatives are readily available. For this we can turn to that most proof-laden of disciplines, mathematics. Here's an old one: "there is no greatest prime number." This is Euclid's theorem which can also be stated as "there are infinitely many primes." The proof is pretty straightforward. Or how about "there is no triangle whose internal angles sum to more than 180 degrees." It turns out that we routinely rquire high school students and undergraduates to prove negative mathematical statements. Ok, what about statements outside of math. Here's an easy one "There are no elephants in this room." It seems pretty easy to prove that, just have a quick look around. Elephants in rooms are the sort of thing that are easily discoverable with a quick visual inspection. If you look earnestly for an elephant in your room and don't find one, that proves there isn't one.
The bigger issue here is that statements don't divide neatly into negative and positive one except on purely grammatical grounds. Any claim can be made by using either a positive or a negative statement. Sometimes one is more natural, but there is always someway to state the claim positively and some way to state it negatively. We saw this with Euclid's theorem. The formulation I initially gave was negative, but the second one is positive. It's not hard to show that the two statements are equivalent. Try it. I'll try to show you the answer in a later post. So how would we state the atheist's central claim positively? Well, one way to do it is to divide things into to groups, the divine and the mundane. All gods are in the divine group, everything else is in the mundane group. Now atheism amounts to the claim that everything that exists is mundane. Theism can be expressed as the negation of atheism, i.e. as the claim that not everything is mundane. There are other ways too, but they often depend on the specific concept of god being employed, and we haven't gotten that far yet.
There, I think that's enough for now. In my next posts I want to talk about universal and existential claims, and also about the notion of proof.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
An Introduction
I'm an atheist. I'm also a philosopher. No, I mean really. I have the Ph.D. and everything. I've even taught at schools you've heard of. I was brought up in a very religious family. We went to church every Sunday, and generally a couple times during the week too. We weren't fanatic. In fact I think of my family's approach to religion as eminently reasonable and sane, despite the fact that I no longer follow it. We weren't fanatic, but we were devout. I was raised to believe that one's relationship with god wasn't merely a facet of one's life, like a penchant for reading mystery novels, but was a central pillar which supported and defined the rest of one's existence. I still think that's largely the right way to think about god. Well, that is, I think it's the right way to think about god IF you're going to believe in god. I've never understood those who take their religion lightly, who believe in god but don't give it much thought except on Sundays, and then only for an hour or two. From my current vantage as an atheist, I do understand that a bit more, at least from the outside. But I really can't wrap my head around what it would be to live that way. Perhaps as this blog progresses I'll come to understand it more.
I don't believe in god. I think the evidence against the existence of god is overwhelming. I think that a purely rational analysis of the publically available evidence concerning the existence of god is as a close to a slam dunk against god's existence as can be had short of mathematical proof. As far as I'm concerned, the evidence for god ranks right up there with the evidence for Santa Claus, somewhere just shy of the evidence for alien abductions and Bigfoot. Nonetheless, I don't think people who believe in god are necessarily crazy or irrational for doing so, even if they are aware of the same arguments against god's existence that I am. I know that sounds like an odd position, perhaps even a bit contradictory or paradoxical. Nevertheless I believe it is the right one. A lot of the point of this blog is for me to try to spell it out and argue for it. In the end it will come down to trying to get clear on what "belief in god" means. There are certain interpretations of the phrase on which belief in god turns out to be unjustified, irrational even. But I think there are others in which it might not.
I don't really know how I'm going to organize this blog. I'd like to think that I'll work through the material a little at a time in some sort of logical order, but I probably won't. Instead it will probably come closer to a post on whatever aspect of the topic is occupying me that day. I'll try to arrange relevant posts topically somehow also. So someone reading a chronological version of the blog is likely to get insights into how my thoughts develop. But I'd liek a way for it to be read topically, so that those who are interested in just the content can get to it without having to wade through the tangents and meanderings of my psyche.
A couple other points by way of introducing the blog. I'm writing anonymously. My main reason is that I often work through this material in my philosoophy classes. I find that it's helpful if students don't know what my personal views are until the end. It helps them maintain an open mind and discourages those who would rather just be told the answer rather than working it out for themselves. At the same time, I'm not going to great lengths to hide my identity. If anyone has a good reason for knowing, I'd be happy to fess up about who I am as long as they agree not to go blabbing it about. Second, I'm going to be using lower case to refer to deity ("god" rather than "God") in general. I'm doing that to try to indicate the generality of my remarks, not as a sign of disrespect. For the most part "god" isn't a proper name, and so shouldn't be capitalized. I suppose one could argue that it's a title like "President" in "President of the United States". But that analysis assumes that it is a specific title, not a general descriptor that could apply to a variety of similar though not identical positions. But when we consider the difference between conceptions of god even within the Christian tradition, it's just not clear that a single title can be stretched to cover all of them. The Catholic conception of god has enough differences from, say, the Mormon conception, that no single entity could occupy both roles. Thus it seems innapropriate to use a capitalized term for both of them. Nor is "god" a title in the line of "Ms." or "Dr.". These titles precede names, and a usage such as "God Yahweh" or "God Thor" seems tortured at best. So I'll stick with the lower case construction here except in those few cases where an upper case construction seems clearly called for.
Well, that's enough for now, time for bed.
I don't believe in god. I think the evidence against the existence of god is overwhelming. I think that a purely rational analysis of the publically available evidence concerning the existence of god is as a close to a slam dunk against god's existence as can be had short of mathematical proof. As far as I'm concerned, the evidence for god ranks right up there with the evidence for Santa Claus, somewhere just shy of the evidence for alien abductions and Bigfoot. Nonetheless, I don't think people who believe in god are necessarily crazy or irrational for doing so, even if they are aware of the same arguments against god's existence that I am. I know that sounds like an odd position, perhaps even a bit contradictory or paradoxical. Nevertheless I believe it is the right one. A lot of the point of this blog is for me to try to spell it out and argue for it. In the end it will come down to trying to get clear on what "belief in god" means. There are certain interpretations of the phrase on which belief in god turns out to be unjustified, irrational even. But I think there are others in which it might not.
I don't really know how I'm going to organize this blog. I'd like to think that I'll work through the material a little at a time in some sort of logical order, but I probably won't. Instead it will probably come closer to a post on whatever aspect of the topic is occupying me that day. I'll try to arrange relevant posts topically somehow also. So someone reading a chronological version of the blog is likely to get insights into how my thoughts develop. But I'd liek a way for it to be read topically, so that those who are interested in just the content can get to it without having to wade through the tangents and meanderings of my psyche.
A couple other points by way of introducing the blog. I'm writing anonymously. My main reason is that I often work through this material in my philosoophy classes. I find that it's helpful if students don't know what my personal views are until the end. It helps them maintain an open mind and discourages those who would rather just be told the answer rather than working it out for themselves. At the same time, I'm not going to great lengths to hide my identity. If anyone has a good reason for knowing, I'd be happy to fess up about who I am as long as they agree not to go blabbing it about. Second, I'm going to be using lower case to refer to deity ("god" rather than "God") in general. I'm doing that to try to indicate the generality of my remarks, not as a sign of disrespect. For the most part "god" isn't a proper name, and so shouldn't be capitalized. I suppose one could argue that it's a title like "President" in "President of the United States". But that analysis assumes that it is a specific title, not a general descriptor that could apply to a variety of similar though not identical positions. But when we consider the difference between conceptions of god even within the Christian tradition, it's just not clear that a single title can be stretched to cover all of them. The Catholic conception of god has enough differences from, say, the Mormon conception, that no single entity could occupy both roles. Thus it seems innapropriate to use a capitalized term for both of them. Nor is "god" a title in the line of "Ms." or "Dr.". These titles precede names, and a usage such as "God Yahweh" or "God Thor" seems tortured at best. So I'll stick with the lower case construction here except in those few cases where an upper case construction seems clearly called for.
Well, that's enough for now, time for bed.
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