This, therefore, is, in conclusion, my reason for accepting the religion and not merely the scattered and secular truths out of the religion. I do it because the thing has not merely told this truth or that truth, but has revealed itself as a truth-telling thing. All other philosophies say the things that plainly seem to be true; only this philosophy has again and again said the thing that does not seem to be true, but is true. Alone of all creeds it is convincing where it is not attractive; it turns out to be right, like my father in the garden. Theosophists for instance will preach an obviously attractive idea like re-incarnation; but if we wait for its logical results, they are spiritual superciliousness and the cruelty of caste. For if a man is a beggar by his own pre-natal sins, people will tend to despise the beggar. But Christianity preaches an obviously unattractive idea, such as original sin; but when we wait for its results, they are pathos and brotherhood, and a thunder of laughter and pity; for only with original sin we can at once pity the beggar and distrust the king.
I never asserted so absurd a Proposition, as that any thing might arise without a Cause: I only maintained, that our Certainty of the Falsehood of that Proposition proceeded neither from Intuition nor Demonstration; but from another Source.
In my life, I’ve identified as a non-denominational Christian, theist, agnostic, atheist, and atheist plus metaphysical naturalist, in that order. … My research has led me to the conclusion that metaphysical naturalism, which entails atheism, is more probable than theism. This conclusion follows from three facts.
There is exactly one overriding question in contemporary philosophy… How do we fit in? … We now have a reasonably well-established conception of the basic structure of the universe. We have plausible theories about the origin of the universe in the Big Bang, and we understand quite a number of things about the structure of the universe in atomic physics and chemistry. We have even come to understand the nature of the chemical bond. We know a fair amount about our own development on this little Earth during the past five billion years of evolution. We understand that the universe consists entirely of particles (or whatever entities the ultimately true physics arrives at), and these exist in fields of force and are typically organized into systems. On our Earth, carbon-based systems made of molecules that also contain a lot of hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen have provided the substrate of human, animal and plant evolution. … The most important set of basic facts, for our present purposes, are given in the atomic theory of matter and the evolutionary theory of biology. … It is not at all easy to reconcile the basic facts with … a conception of ourselves as conscious, intentionalistic, rational, social, institutional, political, speech-act performing, ethical and free will possessing agents. Now, the question is, How can we square this self-conception of ourselves as mindful, meaning-creating, free, rational, etc., agents with a universe that consists entirely of mindless, meaningless, unfree, non rational, brute physical particles?
Written in a respectful and conversational style, this unique book is designed to promote constructive dialogue and foster mutual understanding between Christians and non-Christians. The author, a skeptic and journalist, asks basic questions about Christian belief. What is the born-again experience? Why would God want to sacrifice his only son for the world? Do miracles really happen? How reliable is the Bible? What is the rapture? Why isn’t everyone a Christian? Each question is followed by commentary and analysis that is skeptical and tough but never argumentative or condescending. Christians will find the book useful as a basis for developing their apologetics, while skeptics will welcome Harrison’s probing rational analysis of religious claims. ~ Publisher’s Description
The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history, either. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such. Nagel’s skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. In Mind and Cosmos, he does suggest that if the materialist account is wrong, then principles of a different kind may also be at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic. In spite of the great achievements of the physical sciences, reductive materialism is a world view ripe for displacement. Nagel shows that to recognize its limits is the first step in looking for alternatives, or at least in being open to their possibility. ~ Publisher’s Description
Naturalism is what we could call a worldview, a sort of total way of looking at ourselves and our world. It isn’t clearly a religion: the term “religion” is vague, and naturalism falls into the vague area of its application. Still, naturalism plays many of the same roles as a religion. In particular, it gives answers to the great human questions: Is there such a person as God? How should we live? Can we look forward to life after death? What is our place in the universe? How are we related to other creatures? Naturalism gives answers here: there is no God, and it makes no sense to hope for life after death. As to our place in the grand scheme of things, we human beings are just another animal with a peculiar way of making a living. Naturalism isn’t clearly a religion; but since it plays some of the same roles as a religion, we could properly call it a quasi-religion.
Modernity is a period, a mindset, and a malaise. The period begins with the French Revolution in 1789. The mindset is that ethos reflected by an elitist intellectual class of “change agents” positioned in universities, the press, and in influential sectors of the liberal church. This elite continually touts the tenets of modernity, whose four fundamental values are moral relativism (which says that what is right is dictated by culture, social location, and situation), autonomous individualism (which assumes that moral authority comes essentially from within), narcissistic hedonism (which focuses on egocentric personal pleasure), and reductive naturalism (which reduces what is reliably known to what one can see, hear, and empirically investigate). The malaise of modernity is related to the rapidly deteriorating influence of these four central values between roughly 1955 and 1985. … Anybody who knows the modern university knows that we have gone far beyond modernity. We left it behind in 1968. It is only a matter of catching up with where history is taking us. We must now learn how to live with the consequences of the failure of those assumptions and values. This is the challenge of the postmodern period.
The concept of the soul is accepted in many religious traditions and widely used in fictional worlds, and yet the idea that we are anything more than physio-chemical organisms seems out of step with contemporary secular thinking. Scratch the surface of western philosophy, however, and you find a history filled with arguments in favor of the idea that we are embodied souls. This book provides a clear and concise history of the soul, from Plato to cutting-edge contemporary work in philosophy of mind. Taking in the arguments of influential thinkers, such as Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, and Hume, Goetz and Taliaferro tackle keys issues, such as the problem of mind-body interaction, the causal closure of the physical world, and the philosophical implications of the brain sciences for the soul’s existence. A Brief History of the Soul brings together historical and contemporary scholarship to examine one of the essential questions of our existence.
Few, if any, thinkers and writers today would have the imagination, the breadth of knowledge, the literary skill, and-yes-the audacity to conceive of a powerful, secular alternative to the Bible. But that is exactly what A.C. Grayling has done by creating a non-religious Bible, drawn from the wealth of secular literature and philosophy in both Western and Eastern traditions, using the same techniques of editing, redaction, and adaptation that produced the holy books of the Judaeo-Christian and Islamic religions. The Good Book consciously takes its design and presentation from the Bible, in its beauty of language and arrangement into short chapters and verses for ease of reading and quotability, offering to the non-religious seeker all the wisdom, insight, solace, inspiration, and perspective of secular humanist traditions that are older, far richer and more various than Christianity. Organized in 12 main sections — Genesis, Histories, Wisdom, The Sages, Parables, Consolations, Lamentations, Proverbs, Songs, Epistles, Acts, and the Good — The Good Book opens with meditations on the origin and progress of the world and human life in it, then devotes attention to the question of how life should be lived, how we relate to one another, and how vicissitudes are to be faced and joys appreciated. Incorporating the writing of Herodotus and Lucretius, Confucius and Mencius, Seneca and Cicero, Montaigne, Bacon, and so many others, The Good Book will fulfill its audacious purpose in every way. ~ Product Description
The intellectual and cultural battles now raging over theism and atheism, conservatism and secular progressivism, dualism and monism, realism and antirealism, and transcendent reality versus material reality extend even into the scientific disciplines. This stunning new volume captures this titanic clash of worldviews among those who have thought most deeply about the nature of science and of the universe itself. Unmatched in its breadth and scope, The Nature of Nature brings together some of the most influential scientists, scholars, and public intellectuals — including three Nobel laureates — across a wide spectrum of disciplines and schools of thought. Here they grapple with a perennial question that has been made all the more pressing by recent advances in the natural sciences:Is the fundamental explanatory principle of the universe, life, and self-conscious awareness to be found in inanimate matter or immaterial mind? The answers found in this book have profound implications for what it means to do science, what it means to be human, and what the future holds for all of us. ~ Book Description
Twenty-three philosophers examine the doctrine of materialism and find it wanting. Their case against materialism comprises arguments from conscious experience, from the unity and identity of the person, from intentionality, mental causation, and knowledge. The contributors include leaders in the fields of philosophy of mind, metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology, who respond ably to the most recent versions and defenses of materialism. The modal arguments of Kripke and Chalmers, Jackson’s knowledge argument, Kim’s exclusion problem, and Burge’s anti-individualism all play a part in the building of a powerful cumulative case against the materialist research program. Several papers address the implications of contemporary brain and cognitive research (the psychophysics of color perception, blindsight, and the effects of commissurotomies), adding a posteriori arguments to the classical a priori critique of reductionism. All of the current versions of materialism — reductive and non-reductive, functionalist, eliminativist, and new wave materialism — come under sustained and trenchant attack. In addition, a wide variety of alternatives to the materialist conception of the person receive new and illuminating attention, including anti-materialist versions of naturalism, property dualism, Aristotelian and Thomistic hylomorphism, and non-Cartesian accounts of substance dualism. ~ Synopsis
In ‘Why Us?’, James Le Fanu explores the major implications of the most recent findings of genetics and neuroscience, challenging the common assumption that they must ultimately explain all there is to know about life and man’s place in the world. On the contrary, he argues, they point to an unbridgeable explanatory gap between the genes strung out along the Double Helix and the near infinite beauty and diversity of the living world to which they give rise, and between the monotonous electro-chemistry of the brain and richness and creativity of the human mind. “There is,” he writes, “a powerful impression that science has been looking in the wrong place, seeking to resolve questions that somehow lie outside its domain. It is as if we – and indeed all living things – are in some way different, profounder and more complex than the physical world to which we belong.” A N Wilson in his review described it as ‘an extraordinary work of science … quite wonderfully refreshing’; for Christopher Booker in The Spectator it was “enthralling”: “one of the glories of Le Fanu’s erudite and beautifully written book is that a sense of wonder is evident on every page, even as he lucidly analyses the limitations of the narrow intellectual prism in which science has languished too long.” ~ Publisher’s Description
The great variety of contradictory religious views is for many reason enough to conclude that there is no truth to be had in such matters. No one religion is at all likely to be closest to the truth. In his debate with Dinesh D’Souza, John Loftus argues that these inter-religious and intra-religious disagreements the gravamen of his case against Christianity, arguing that in effect they cancel each other out in virtue of the mutually exclusive nature of their claims.1 He does not see, apparently, that by such reasoning, the ageless debate between naturalists and theists is also cancelled, each position nullified. Indeed, every point of view falls prey to such a criterion. When we look within naturalism, we also find denominations and sects, a cacophony of diverse and contradictory positions on fundamental questions. It turns out, the problem of pluralism is an equal opportunity employer. Worldviews are like personalities. Each one is unique. Though there are types of personalities, just as there are broad worldview categories, none is identical. Whatever our worldview, that view must countenance the fact that many others think it mistaken. This is the problem of pluralism. The implication of this reality, however, need not be the defeat of any particular set of beliefs. Rather, the proper response is virtue. It begs modesty, a profound intellectual humility about our take on reality. And second, it should serve as a call to personal responsibility for our beliefs, and therefore to the epistemic virtues, for there is no consensus on ultimate questions that we can simply adopt by proxy.
In adolescence, when I was for the first time really struck by the pervasiveness of irreconcilable differences between peoples, my confidence in my own beliefs was shattered irreparably. What had seemed obvious seemed less so. What I believed based upon what I thought was good reasoning was undercut by the realization that my reasoning was unpersuasive to others. And so began my journey as a truth seeker haunted by the fear that truth could not be found. Like Sisyphus, who was condemned to roll a rock up a hill only to see it roll back down, ad infinitum, I found again and again that the briefly confident conclusions of my inquiries crumbled each time with the realization that others who had traversed those same paths had concluded otherwise. This is to say, the problem of pluralism is a real and ever-present foil in my own thinking. Nonetheless, the fact of disagreement about reality is often overstated and misappropriated to prove what it does not. Here I propose what we should, and should not, take from pluralism, by which I mean the evident fact of irreconcilable differences between individuals and communities on both the details and broad strokes of reality.
But why, exactly, is pluralism so problematic? The problem is that, to the extent that we hold mutually exclusive beliefs, it follows necessarily that very nearly all of us are wrong about many of the things we believe. This is not to minimize that which we hold in common. Graciously, substantial agreement is possible about a great deal that is required for the necessities of life. Nonetheless, our political, ethical, philosophical, historical, and religious beliefs exemplify virtually every conceivable point of view, and insofar as they reference an external world that does not indulge contradictions, many of those beliefs must be erroneous. Unfortunately, the realization that many of our beliefs are mistaken does not thereby reveal those which are true and which are false. Rather, pluralism casts suspicion on all of our controversial beliefs. The problem is exacerbated in that we must make decisions of great consequence not only for ourselves but also as families, communities, and nations. The stakes are high, and our great need is to ground our beliefs on secure foundations. But the pervasive error entailed by our pluralism persistently undermines our efforts. Our human quest for knowledge and understanding, especially in the Modern era, has largely been the effort to find solid ground amidst the quicksand, but to no avail. It seems our pluralism is inescapable. Or is it?
Consensus by Circling
Years ago, in conversation with some Mormon missionaries, I was presented with an argument that was part of Joseph Smith’s own departure from the received Christianity of his day. Smith was frustrated by the profusion of Christian denominations who disagreed with each other on points of doctrine large and small. He perceived these disagreements as an indication that none of them had the truth, and was at a loss until, as the story goes, the truth was restored to him by the angel Moroni. These missionaries appealed to my own frustration with the endless disagreements amongst Christians, suggesting that in Mormonism I could finally escape the squabbling and find a set of beliefs agreed upon by all. As the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has grown and evolved, that promised consensus is harder to find even from within, even with a “living prophet”. The main problem with their argument, however, was that these earnest missionaries did not see their own church as yet one more party to the debate about the way of things. Of course I could find more consensus by joining their party and renouncing the claims of others, just as I could by joining the Moonies or the Marxists and forswearing the rest. It is always possible to find some level of consensus by simply drawing the circle smaller. But drawing circles only underscores the persistent factiousness. And if complete consensus is demanded, that circle will have to be drawn so small as to include only oneself.
In other words, as his creed was like no man’s else, and being well pleased that Providence had intrusted him alone, of mortals, with the treasure of a true faith, Richard Digby determined to seclude himself to the sole and constant enjoyment of his happy fortune.
Arguments from pluralism against religious truth proceed in the same vein. The disagreement at every level of religious affiliation is regarded as a pox on them all, without seeing that criticism as one of the dissenting parties to the discussion. If it is merely disagreement that invalidates all sides, the naturalist’s own views on God, religion, and ethics are swept away by that same tide. The irreconcilable differences between the varieties of religious expression are no more ageless or intractable than that between naturalists and theists. For at least several thousand years, humans have disagreed about whether atoms or gods are at the bottom of the universe9. Sure, the religious enterprise has failed to come to unanimous agreement about the nature of God. But the philosophical enterprise has failed no less in achieving any real consensus about fundamental reality. It is no answer to say, “but we basically agree amongst ourselves”. The problem is not Christian pluralism or religious pluralism. Pluralism challenges all. Disagreement is a defining feature of the human condition, and one cannot escape the problem of pluralism simply by choosing another circle.
Problem Solved? Positivism.
In the early part of the twentieth century a solution was proposed. Keying off on the more general agreement achievable when talking about things like rocks and trees and red apples, logical positivists sought agreement by banishing more ethereal subjects from the land of meaningful propositions. Whatever could not be touched, smelt, seen, heard, or deduced thereof, would not be considered a sensible subject or object of a sentence. On this proposal, the proposition “God exists” is neither true nor false. It is meaningless. “God” is not a thing we can point to or show to others in order to speak meaningful sentences about it. No doubt, if universally accepted, positivism promised to drastically diminish the range of human disagreement by constraining what was up for discussion. But in the end, positivism fell on its own sword, for its own criterion of meaning was philosophical, unfit to be weighed and measured.2 Furthermore, by so strictly limiting the explanatory options, it led to positions that were obviously wrong. For example, since conscious states are not sensible objects, feelings like pain were of necessity redefined in terms of something observable. So, behaviorists proposed that pain was not that felt sensation in the mind as we had thought, but rather the act of saying “ouch!”, or some such. Michael Egnor suggests that the final blow to the viability of behaviorism was a joke. After a night of passion, one behaviorist rolls over in bed and says to the other: “that was good for you; how was it for me?” However discomfiting the problem of pluralism, positivism presumed an artificial constraint that could not be sustained and led us down dead end trails. It was no escape.
Problem Solved? Naturalism.
Though shedding the hard and fast rules of positivism, naturalists continue in that tradition by constraining what can exist to that which can be a subject of the sciences, especially of physics. And who can blame them? Science rocks! By positing hypotheses, winnowing out successful hypotheses by methodical, experimental testing, only to start the process over again,3 scientists have achieved remarkable feats and bested all other means of winning agreement about how the world works. Thomas Nagel sympathizes with the impulse to universalize science:
“This reductionist dream is nourished by the extraordinary success of the physical sciences, not least in their recent application to the understanding of life through molecular biology. It is natural to try to take any successful intellectual method as far as it will go.”4
Thanks to science, we’ve sent men to the moon, and no educated person doubts the reality of elliptical planetary orbits or the double helix structure of DNA. Science is superlative at mastering matter and energy and has significantly extended the range of facts that are agreeable to us all. But here we arrive at the point of contention. Should we, because of that tremendous success, foreclose on questions science cannot answer and on hypothetical entities beyond scientific verification? The question is the answer. It is precisely the kind of question that science cannot answer about itself. To adjudicate the question, we will have to defer to reason, including the unquantifiable canons of logic, and to the history of science and ideas. We will have to appraise other supposed sources of knowledge, such as introspective awareness, moral intuition, and wisdom based on life experience. Nagel continues:
“Yet the impulse to find an explanation of everything in physics has over the last fifty years got out of control. The concepts of physical science provide a very special, and partial, description of the world that experience reveals to us. It is the world with all subjective consciousness, sensory appearances, thought, value, purpose, and will left out; what remains is the mathematically describable order of things and events in space and time.”
Is science sufficiently expansive to capture the full breadth of reality exhaustively? Whether it is or is not is not self-evident. Once this inevitable question is on the table, the problem of pluralism returns in full force, a multitude of positions vying for acceptance.
In any case, the problem of pluralism rears its head even if we accept science as the sole or preeminent source of knowledge. Even within naturalism, each of the conceivable positions allowed by the data is well represented. We find strong physicalists and emergent property dualists, compatibilists and incompatibilists, determinists and libertarians, moral realists and nonrealists, ontologists and nominalists, conservatives and liberals. Human experience simply begs questions that are not answered decisively by the scientific data, and some that cannot be in virtue of its inherent limitations. Furthermore, it is impossible not to ask what the data means, to venture beyond data into synthesis and interpretation. The debate about the meaning of the surprising and strange quantum world is illustrative. No one disputes the experimental data, that photon and electron trajectories can only be determined probabilistically, and quantum mechanics is employed everyday in real life applications. Nonetheless, though the Copenhagen interpretation of this phenomenon is the orthodox one, notable naysayers persist, as well as at least half a dozen rival interpretations that are also consonant with the data. Scientific data is in one sense not unlike religious texts. It is a core set of givens that serves as a jumping-off point for a multiplicity of interpretations. It is no surprise, then, that even having given science pride of place, naturalism eludes precise definition. It lacks a universally accepted set of truths and can only be roughly characterized: epistemologically, it’s science aided by reason; ontologically, it’s elementary particles at bottom; etiologically, the story is neo-Darwinian; theologically, no God or gods exist. Beyond this central creed, disagreement runs amuck.
Finally, naturalism as a worldview is not entitled by right to appropriate the special esteem we grant science. The scientific enterprise emerged out of a Christian culture, was forged by an eclectic mix of orthodox and heterodox “natural philosophers”, and continues to be practiced by the religious and non-religious alike. Scientific methodology is a heritage we share in common and is largely embraced by all. But while the success of science within its domain is indisputable, it is arguable whether naturalism as an all-encompassing worldview is likewise superior to its competitors in mitigating or eliminating our irreconcilable differences. Naturalists disagree amongst themselves and with others. Whatever else it may be, naturalism is not an escape from the problem of pluralism.
The Upside of Pluralism
As the proverb goes, iron sharpens iron. Disagreement, dissension, and debate are a refining fire, par excellence. The desire and need to control nature for our own ends and our innate desire for knowledge are powerful generators of discovery, but there is no greater engine for the refinement and discrediting of ideas than the ceaseless argument about how the world works and what it all means. I have argued that there is no escape from pluralism. We are condemned to live at ideological odds with others. But this is not to say that our arguments are stagnant, are without purpose. On the contrary, in many of our most interminable disagreements, there has been real movement, even progress.
There is no more contentious arena than the political. It’s to be expected. Political systems effect our lives intimately for better or worse. And, as James Madison opined: “What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” The debate over proper governance is epic. Great thinkers have pondered and disputed it endlessly. Wars and revolutions have been fought. Contemporary political debate is a morass of intemperate wrangling. And yet, with a historical perspective, we can see a remarkable shift in the terms of debate. As Fareed Zakaria points out: “For the vast majority of the world, democracy is the sole surviving source of political legitimacy. Dictators such as Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe go to great effort and expense to organize national elections — which, of course, they win handily. When the enemies of democracy mouth its rhetoric and ape its ritual, you know it has won the war.”5 Moreover, some measure of both free markets and of government regulation are largely taken for granted. The raging debate resides in the center and is largely one of degree, of the appropriate measure of each. Many old arguments that seemed irreconcilable at the time were, in fact, settled. New arguments have taken their place. The moral legitimacy of American chattel slavery was so intractable that its resolution cost over 600,000 lives. A hundred years later, fully equal treatment for all was no less divisive. Graciously, the second time around it was resolved politically, though not without great personal sacrifice by civil rights activists. Today the legitimacy of slavery and legal discrimination isn’t given a second thought, and we debate instead the merits of affirmative action and reparations. The argument continues, but that is progress nonetheless.
So be it for politics, but one might think that religion is categorically different, that with its dogma, “leaps of faith”, and eternal stakes it is immune to the refiner’s fire. Such a view requires a strange anthropology, a belief that religious people are some alien creature, somehow divested of their natural rationality and sensitivity to recalcitrant facts. The history does not bear this out. Most ancient religions are just that: relics of the past. Their followers were persuaded or otherwise motivated to discard their beliefs. Conversions to and from religions as well as the loss of religious faith altogether are commonplace. And within religious traditions, believers individually exhibit a diversity and varying confidence in their beliefs, each believer uniquely persuaded by their experiences and the evidence available to them. Religions as communities evolve as well. To name but one example, there was a time when for many Christians it was plausible to think it appropriate to persecute dissenters and wage wars over doctrinal disputes. But by exegetical debate and the weight of decisive events, such as the Thirty Years War, the consensus interpretation of scripture was reformed to such an extent that coercive indoctrination is unthinkable now. It’s no different in the philosophy of religion. To everyone’s surprise, the logical argument from evil against God was basically put to rest, and the terms of debate relocated to an inductive form of the argument. Big Bang cosmology and our increasing awareness of the necessary fine-tuning of the universe weigh heavily in the debate about God’s existence, prompting the formulation of new or revived atheistic explanations like quantum tunneling and bubble universes. Demonstrations of mind-brain correlation in neuroscience have given succor to physicalist monists and forced refinement, or at least clarification, in the substance dualist’s view. In biblical studies, the development of new methods of textual criticism provided a vast body of widely accepted facts that inform questions of authorship and dating. Indeed, even the most conservative articulations of belief in biblical inspiration have been shaped by these developments. Though we are far from the end of many such debates, religious inquiry is by no means stagnant or immune to the refining fire.
Far from inhibiting the expansion of human understanding, in every field our inescapable pluralism is its catalyst. The quest for knowledge and understanding is a community project, a human project. Public debate and discourse is the principle means of moving it forward, kicking and screaming. And as Robert Frost would have it, “the only way around is through”. We cannot skip ahead to the resolution of the debates that so exercise us today. In any case, we cannot assume that these debates will be settled on behalf of the good and the true. Our only recourse is to participate in the debate in the hope that our best efforts to understand the world may lead to our own enlightenment and also contribute to the betterment of human understanding. Our communal quest for knowledge cannot proceed without individuals who are willing to slog through the difficult and unseemly debates that litter the path.
The Imperatives of Pluralism
If there is no escape from pluralism, as I think the case, what follows? As communities, the reality of pluralism warrants tolerance, freedom of speech and of conscience, and the preservation of mechanisms that facilitate the dialectic, such as journals, editorials, peer review, round tables, public debates, etcetera. These are vital. But furthermore, there is a personal imperative. Pluralism presses upon each of us an obligation to earn our beliefs by earnest inquiry, whether we welcome this onus or not. On consequential issues where there is significant disagreement, we neglect the relevant questions at our own peril. Of course, we may throw in with the majority or our own circle of friends, but to do so is a gamble. Majorities have been wrong. Authorities have been wrong. There is simply no reliable way to defer our personal responsibility to others. We can’t outsource our thinking. Again, history is instructive, and in this case fearfully so. I shudder to think that I may have opposed Galileo, Locke, Wilberforce, MLK or sided with Calhoun, with Torquemada, with Hitler. Many did, and it is naive to think we are immune from aligning ourselves against the good and the true. The Nobel Laureate Percy Bridgman described the ultimately personal nature of truth-seeking in the context of science.
The process I want to call scientific is a process that involves the continual apprehension of meaning, the constant appraisal of significance, accompanied by the running act of checking … and of judging correctness or incorrectness. This checking and judging and accepting, that together constitute understanding, are done by me and can be done for me by no one else… They are as private as my toothache, and without them science is dead. Quoted in The Age of Science, by Gerard Piel (Basic Books: 2001), p. 21.56
Quoted in The Age of Science, by Gerard Piel (Basic Books: 2001), p. 21.5
The contentious scientific, political, religious, and ethical issues of our own day demand our care. If we have done our due diligence and end up on the wrong side of history, we may be forgiven. But if we sit it out, we may be the unwitting enablers of ignorance and injustice in our own day, without excuse. It is imperative that we take the pursuit of truth as a serious and personal calling.
Secondly, it is imperative that we believe knowledge is possible. As much as the tradition of skepticism, the postmodern rejection of the possibility of knowledge is a resignation to our inescapable pluralism and just as demoralizing to our quest for truth. Postmodern analysis is deservedly renowned for its deconstruction of the self interests that incline us to believe one way or the other. Ironically, there is much Truth in this analysis. But when postmoderns prescribe relativism, they take a right when they should turn left. To suggest that because of our apparently irreconcilable differences we are all right — that it is “true” for you — is to paper over our differences and end the dialogue that promises the possibility of convergence on the truth. It would be better to infer that we are all wrong, or more accurately, partially wrong. None of us has the complete and final account of reality. This turn, by contrast, serves as an impetus for the ongoing quest. We must likewise reject the notion that our beliefs are captive to our cultural context. Culture is powerful, but not all powerful. There have always been dissenters and revolutionaries who have been able to see through the assumptions taken for granted by their countrymen. The pronounced pluralism of our own time only makes this easier because it is so obvious that our assumptions can and should be questioned.7
It follows from our incomplete knowledge that intellectual humility is in order. Remember that pluralism entails by necessity that we are very likely wrong about some of our beliefs. We are not omniscient. Not by a long shot. “For now we see through a glass, darkly… For now we know in part.” Intellectual humility is to seriously entertain the possibility that we may be wrong, and on the flipside, to be open to the possibility that others may be right. This principle of fallibility is well put by James William McClendon, “that even one’s most cherished and tenaciously held convictions might be false and are in principle always subject to rejection, reformulation, improvement, or reformation.”8 On either side of every debate there are those that seem utterly incapable of second-guessing themselves. Such certain minds, who are not troubled in the least by the fact that others see things differently, escape my comprehension. But because of their intransigence, we should not follow their lead nor despair at the apparent impasses in the contemporary conversation. They too can serve as foils in our own deliberations about the merits of one view or another. And only if we ourselves are open will we be able to be corrected if we are in error. Basil Mitchell gets it exactly right with his recommendation that a spirit of self-reflection and self-criticism is apt no matter the subject.
The main thrust of my argument has been to the effect that the charge that to accept the possibility of criticism is to rule out commitment is palpably untrue to the way our thinking really works in matters of any importance, whether religious or not. Even in the realm of the natural sciences, where the advancement of knowledge is the central concern and where the subject matter is strictly delimited, a considerable degree of tenacity is required if new theories are to be adequately tested and properly developed. Hence, established scientific systems are not abandoned in the face of problems and puzzles that are not immediately soluble. Science advances precisely by the sustained attempt to iron out these anomolies. ~ “Faith and Criticism as Interdependent” in Faith and Criticism (Oxford University Press: 1994), p.46.
The rejection of the possibility of religious truth with which we began, merely in virtue of its contentiousness, is a case of special pleading and dismissiveness. I am sympathetic with that impulse, divisive as the history of religious differences have been. And yet, it is all too easy to dismiss religious claims in this way, with one fell swoop. It relieves one of the trouble of having to examine and weigh them. To do so, however, is to throw stones in a glass house. It is a failure to see that one’s own house is not in order. Pluralism is a challenge to us all and these imperatives are just the tip of the iceberg. The epistemic virtues are many and plot the course well. Pluralism itself settles nothing. We are left right back where we started with the need to appraise the evidence as best we can. But we arrive there, I would hope, with a profound sense of modesty about our ability to do so definitively. Thank God, the continuance of a stable and inhabitable natural world does not depend on us. And just as Camus thought Sisyphus could find joy and significance in his redundant task, we too can make the most of our inescapable pluralism.
In the face of our disagreement, let us not abandon truth, but rather add love.
Notes
1 “Does the Christian God Exist?” A Debate between Dinesh D’Souza and John W. Loftus (February 9, 2010). Loftus states: “When they [the world religions and sects] criticize each other, they’re all right. What’s left, I think, is the demise of Christianity and religion as a whole.” Later, Dinesh responds to a restatement of this argument: “The presence of disagreement does not invalidate the possibility of truth.”
2 C. A. Campbell summed up the status of Positivism nicely as it waned in influence: “In the days when the Verifiability Principle was accepted by its devotees as a secure philosophical truth, one could understand, though one might not agree with, the sweeping claim that many of the traditional problems of philosophy had been shown to be mere ‘pseudo-problems’. It was easy to see how, given the Principle’s validity, most of the leading questions which agitated our forefathers in metaphysics, in ethics, and in theology, automatically become nonsensical questions. What is perplexing, however, is that despite the pretty generally acknowledged deterioration in the Principle’s status to that of a convenient methodological postulate, the attitude to these same questions seems to have changed but little. To admit that the Verifiability Principle is not an assured truth entails the admission that a problem can no longer be dismissed as meaningless simply on the ground that it cannot be stated in a way which satisfies the Principle. Whether or not a problem is meaningless is now something that can only be decided after critical examination of the particular case on its own individual merits. But the old antipathies seem in large measure to have survived the disappearance of their logical basis. One gets the impression that for at least many thinkers with Positivist sympathies the ‘liquidation’ of a large, if unspecified, group of traditional philosophic problems is still established fact. If that impression is mistaken, well and good. One may then hope for an early recrudescence of interest in certain problems that have too long suffered the consequences of an unhappy tabu. If the impression is correct, a real service would be done to philosophy if it were plainly stated which of the traditional problems are still regarded as pseudo-problems, and what are the reasons, old or new, for passing this sentence on them. The smoke of old battles, perhaps understandably, darkens the philosophic air, to the considerable inconvenience of all concerned.” “Is ‘Free Will’ a Pseudo-Problem?”, In Defence of Free Will (Routledge: 2004, orig. 1967), p. 17.
3 This is, of course, a caricature of scientific method. Philosophers of science will be quick to point out that there is no strict demarcation of what is and is not appropriately scientific methodology, and here too a debate continues.
4 Thomas Nagel, Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament (Oxford University Press: 2009), p. 25.
5 Fareee Zakaria, The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (W.W. Norton: 2003), p. 13.
6 Apropos to my defense of the salubrious effect of the competition of ideas, Piel goes on to describe what happens to beliefs earned in private when they enter the marketplace of ideas. “Upon publication, the work enters the public, social process of science. Members of the community who are interested will address it in their individual responsibility. They are a democracy of warring sovereigns. If science is not dead, they will root our frailty in the design of the experiment and error in the data. They will challenge the premises on which the work was undertaken and the meaning the author has found in it and, perhaps, argue for their own. Debate will be unsparing in the common cause of consensus.” In, Gerard Piel, The Age of Science (Basic Books: 2001), pp. 21-2.
7 D’Souza makes this very point: “If you happen to be born in Afghanistan, you’d be a Muslim. If you happen to be born in Tibet, you’d be a Buddhist. That’s true, but what on earth does that prove? I happen to have been born in Bombay, India, which happens to be a Hindu country. The second largest group is Muslim. Even so, by choice, I am a Christian. Just because the majority religion is one thing doesn’t make it right or wrong. By the way, what he says about Christianity or Islam is equally true about beliefs in history or science. If you are born in Oxford, England you are more likely to believe the Theory of Evolution than if you are born in Oxford, Mississippi. If you are born in New Guinea you are less likely to accept Einstein’s Theory of Relativity than if you are born in New York City. What does this say about whether Einstein’s Theory of Relatively is true? Absolutely nothing.”
8 McClendon, Understanding Religious Conviction (University of Notre Dame Press: 1975), p. 118.
9 The Epicureans and Platonists anticipated so many of the debates we continue today.
“But you seem pretty sure that your point of view is correct. Good luck. So are the Islamists. So are the Hindus. So are the Jains. So are the Zoroastrians.” Deepak Chopra on “The Future of Faith”, Faith Under Fire (April 30, 2005) Episode 10, Season 2.
Why have materialist views been so dominant? Part of the answer is that it is far from clear that dualist views, at least those that go much beyond the bare denial of materialism, are in any better shape. But it must be insisted that the inadequacies of dualism do not in themselves constitute a strong case for materialism: arguments by elimination are always dubious in philosophy, and never more so than here, where the central phenomenon in question (that is, consciousness) is arguably something of which we still have little if any real understanding. Instead, materialism seems to be one of those unfortunate intellectual bandwagons to which philosophy, along with many other disciplines, is so susceptible — on a par with logical behaviorism, phenomenalism, the insistence that all philosophical issues pertain to language, and so many other views that were once widely held and now seem merely foolish. Such a comparison is misleading in one important respect, however: it understates the fervency with which materialist views are often held. In this respect, materialism often more closely resembles a religious conviction — and indeed, as I will suggest further in a couple of places below, defenses of materialism and especially replies to objections often have a distinctively scholastic or theological flavor.
Physicalism, the thesis that everything is physical, is one of the most controversial problems in philosophy. Its adherents argue that there is no more important doctrine in philosophy, whilst its opponents claim that its role is greatly exaggerated. In this superb introduction to the problem Daniel Stoljar focuses on three fundamental questions: the interpretation, truth and philosophical significance of physicalism. In answering these questions he covers the following key topics: A brief history of physicalism and its definitions; What a physical property is and how physicalism meets challenges from empirical sciences; ‘Hempel’s dilemma’ and the relationship between physicalism and physics; Physicalism and key debates in metaphysics and philosophy of mind, such as supervenience, identity and conceivability; Physicalism and causality. Additional features include chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary of technical terms, making Physicalism ideal for those coming to the problem for the first time. ~ Product Description
Fifty Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists presents a collection of original essays drawn from an international group of prominent voices in the fields of academia, science, literature, media and politics who offer carefully considered statements of why they are atheists. Features a truly international cast of contributors, ranging from public intellectuals such as Peter Singer, Susan Blackmore, and A.C. Grayling, novelists, such as Joe Haldeman, and heavyweight philosophers of religion, including Graham Oppy and Michael Tooley. Contributions range from rigorous philosophical arguments to highly personal, even whimsical, accounts of how each of these notable thinkers have come to reject religion in their lives. Likely to have broad appeal given the current public fascination with religious issues and the reception of such books as The God Delusion and The End of Faith. ~ Product Description
Is a life without religion one without values or purpose? Julian Baggini emphatically says no. He sets out to dispel the myths surrounding atheism and to show how it can be both a meaningful and moral choice. He directly confronts the failure of officially atheist states in the twentieth century, and presents an intellectual case for atheism that rests as much on reasoned and positive arguments for its truth as on negative arguments against religion. Julian Baggini is editor of Philosopher’s Magazine and the author of several books on philosophy. He has also written for a variety of newspapers and journals, including the Guardian, the Independent, and New Humanist. ~ Synopsis
A fascinating journey through Western civilization’s ongoing attempts to understand and explain the concept of God. Celebrated religion scholar Armstrong (The Bible: A Biography, 2007, etc.) creates more than a history of religion; she effectively demonstrates how the West (broadly speaking) has grappled with the existence of deity and captured the concept in words, art and ideas. Beginning in the majestic caves of Lascaux, Armstrong explores how religion became a meaningful part of prehistoric societies, and the ways in which these societies passed down their practices and ideas in the earliest forms of art. The author then moves on to early monotheism and its rivals, offering a brilliant examination of ancient Greek views on religion and reason, which laid the groundwork for so much of Western thought. Looking at the early Christians and Diaspora-era Jews in tandem, Armstrong delves into Talmudic study and midrash, as well as Christian adaptations of theological concepts. Throughout the book, the author argues against religion as an abstraction, noting that it most truly exists in practice. "Faith . . . was a matter of practical insight and active commitment," she writes. "It had little to do with abstract belief or theological conjecture." Nevertheless, scholars have always attempted to define and "prove" God, and Armstrong admirably outlines the best of them through the centuries, including Origen, Anselm, Pascal and Tillich. Armstrong claims that the "warfare" between science and religion is a myth perpetuated by those with axes to grind. Likewise, the modern atheist movement, "death of God" theology and even fundamentalism arise from extremists who see religion as correct doctrine,not correct praxis. Though mostly focused on the West, Armstrong maintains a global perspective, masterfully weaving in her solid understanding of the world’s panoply of faiths. Accessible, intriguing study of how we see God. ~ Kirkus Reviews
Recent books by authors such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens lay out some of the core ideas of what has been dubbed the "New Atheism" and have generated significant buzz. Stenger (philosophy, Univ. of Colorado; God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist) continues the debate with a review and defense of some of the key principles of the New Atheism as well as a general response to some of its critics. This book is largely focused on the scientific and expands upon Stenger’s thesis that the question of God’s existence is not beyond science. It also debunks numerous myths about religion and atheism and explores the possibility of a nontheistic "way of nature" based on the teachings of ancient sages such as Lao Tzu. Although the text is not as engaging or well written as some of the other New Atheist books, and the level and quantity of science may make it difficult for some general readers, this book is recommended for those already interested and engaged in the current discussion about God and religion, from either side of the fence. ~ Brian T. Sullivan for Library Journal
There is an unacknowledged creation story that is at the root of all secular learning which is the precise opposite of John 1:1 in every way. You will probably never hear this creation story told forthrightly at Harvard or Berkeley, because to state its elements explicitly would be to reveal that it is merely on creation story and that it is possible to conceive of another. A foundational story is much more powerful when it is pervasively assumed, so that its elements are never evaluated and it appears to be an unavoidable implication of reason itself. The materialist story is the foundation of all education in all the department at all the secular universities, but they do not spell it out. It is: In the beginning were the particles and impersonal laws of physics. And the particles somehow became complex living stuff; And the stuff imagine God; But then discovered evolution.
People often talk about worldview when describing the philosophy that guides their lives. But how have we come by our worldviews, and what impact did Christianity have on those that are common to Western civilization? This authoritative, accessible survey traces the development of the worldviews that underpin the Western world. It demonstrates the decisive impact that the growth of Christianity had in transforming the outlook of pagan Roman culture into one that, based on biblical concepts of humanity and its relationship with God, established virtually all the positive aspects of Western civilization. The two-pronged assault in our time on the biblically based worldview by postmodern philosophy and the writings of neo-atheists has made it even more crucial that we acknowledge and defend its historical roots. Unique among books on the topic, this work discusses Western worldviews as a continuous narrative rather than as simply a catalogue of ideas, and traces the effects changes in worldview had on society. It helps readers understand their own worldviews and those of other people and helps them recognize the consequences that worldviews hold. Professors, students, and armchair historians alike will profit from this book. ~ Back Cover
Malls, stadiums, and universities are actually liturgical structures that influence and shape our thoughts and affections. Humans — as Augustine noted — are “desiring agents,” full of longings and passions; in brief, we are what we love. James K. A. Smith focuses on the themes of liturgy and desire in Desiring the Kingdom, the first book in what will be a three-volume set on the theology of culture. He redirects our yearnings to focus on the greatest good: God. Ultimately, Smith seeks to re-vision education through the process and practice of worship. Students of philosophy, theology, worldview, and culture will welcome Desiring the Kingdom, as will those involved in ministry and other interested readers. ~ Product Description
So yes, my arguments might give us reason to prefer natural explanations when these are available, and to seek natural explanations when they are not. It follows that a proposed theistic explanation should be, at best, an explanation of last resort. One might argue that this view — that we should abandon the search for natural explanations only in extremis — represents a kind of “presumption of naturalism.” And so it does. ¶ My own view is that the naturalistic research tradition of the sciences has been stunningly successful and must rank as one of the greatest of human achievements. But I think it is poorly served by attempts to define science in such a way as to exclude the supernatural. The debate over intelligent design is instructive in this regard. One might win a legal victory by insisting that this proposed theistic explanation is not what we customarily call “science.” And this is true, for contingent historical reasons. But it would be much more effective to show that this particular proposed theistic explanation, with its deliberately vague appeal to an unspecified “designer,” is practically vacuous. it lacks the first and most important virtue of any proposed explanation, namely that of testability. It follows that this particular proposed theistic explanation should be rejected. ¶ Could the theist produce a better one? I doubt it, but then it would be most regrettable if we were to forbid him to try. Nothing could be more antithetical to the spirit of free enquiry than this kind of censorship. If proposed theistic explanations are to be defeated, as they have been so often in the past, it will be by way of the free contest of ideas.
The Ontology of naturalism knows nothing of active powers. The particulars that populate that ontology are, one and all, exhaustively characterized by passive liabilities with regard to their causal powers. A passive liability is such that, given the proper efficient cause, it is and, indeed, must be actualized. As such, the actualization of a passive liability is a passive happening, not an action. This fact about passive liabilities is what makes their owners bereft of the sort of first-moving, active spontaneity that is a necessary condition for the exercise of free will. ¶ All natural objects with causal powers posses them as passive liabilities. Again, these liabilities are triggered or actualized if something happens to the object and, once triggered, they can produce an effect. For example, dynamite has the power (passive liability) to explode if something is first done to it. And so on for all causes. They are, one and all, passive potentialities. There actualizations are mere happenings to the relevant object. ¶ But active power is different. In virtue of possessing active power, and agent may act, initiate change or motion, perform something, bring about an effect with nothing causing it to do so. Active power is not something admitted in the ontology of the hard sciences, period.