Comments by Dianelos Georgoudis

851. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #50389 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 17, 2007 at 4:32 pm

Dr Benway (post 711, #50358):

what's the diff between these two statements:
1. Torture is wrong.
2. Torture is objectively wrong.

We say "X is objectively true" when we claim that X is true independently of peoples' opinion. This implies that X is true even if all people think that X is false, even if nobody has thought about X one way or the other (and even in some cases if humanity did not exist at all). There are many examples of such claims: All mathematical theorems are claims of objective truth; so for example mathematicians claim that it is objectively true that the number pi is an irrational number. So, even if everybody believed the opposite, even if nobody had ever thought about the number pi, and even if humanity itself did not exist it would still be true that the number pi is irrational. Another example: Somebody may claim "the phlogiston objectively exists". Today we know that the phlogiston does not exist and that the above proposition is false, but this is irrelevant to the meaning of that proposition. Of course any proposition, whether it claims to be objective or not, can in fact be false. Also observe that the meaning of "X is objectively true" does not imply anything about popularity, or about how probably true, or about how well justified a proposition is.

So, the proposition "gratuitous torture is objectively wrong" may be true or false. But what the proposition claims is that gratuitous torture is wrong whatever people may believe, and that gratuitous torture (of some sentient being) would still be true if humanity did not exist at all.

On the other hand somebody may claim a proposition not in the objective sense. For example somebody may claim "Cindy Crawford is beautiful", and mean that this proposition is true in the sense that it expresses a fact about their own opinion or a fact about many peoples' opinion (and is therefore, trivially, not independent of peoples' opinion). On the other hand one can equally well claim "Cindy Crawford is objectively beautiful". The meaning of this claim is that Cindy Crawford's beauty is objectively real and independent of peoples' opinion. I suppose most people would agree with "Cindy Crawford is beautiful" but disagree with "Cindy Crawford is objectively beautiful". In other words for most people beauty is subjective and not objective.

To come back to your question: The proposition "gratuitous torture is wrong" means that most or all people think so, or that this is the dominant social convention (as "for adult men to wear dresses is wrong" is the dominant social convention).

Here is an interesting issue: Even though naturalists believe that the physical universe is objectively real they don't believe that scientific propositions (say "the speed of light is the same in all frames of reference") are objectively true. Why not? Because scientific knowledge is always provisional until maybe a better theory is proposed. It's peripheral to our discussion about how I justify that a non-naive theistic worldview works better than naturalism, but it turns out that in my worldview scientific propositions are objective. According to my worldview the physical universe is not objectively real but represents stable patters present in our experiential environment. Science is the disciplined effort to discover such patterns. So Newton discovered a particular pattern in the gravitational phenomena we observe, and latter Einstein discovered a deeper and more precise pattern. But Newton's theory is still objectively true, because it expresses a pattern that is really there in our experiential environment. So, here we note a second sense in which science works better in my idealistic theism than in naturalism. (You'll recall the first sense is that scientists do not have to waste time thinking about how objective physical reality is.)

So, in conclusion, there is a huge difference between the meaning of "gratuitous torture is wrong" and "gratuitous torture is objectively wrong". Having said that, it very often happens that people say "X is true" meaning "X is objectively true". So you may read "there are many ways to prove the truth of the Pythagoras theorem" when strictly speaking the meaning is "there are many ways to prove the objective truth of the Pythagoras theorem". Indeed most propositions are claimed in the objective sense, and therefore the qualifier "objective" is often suppressed. One only uses "objective" it such contexts where the question arises about whether the meaning of a proposition only expresses subjective opinion or rises above subjective opinion. Such as in the context of ethics we have been discussing.

--

I am traveling right now, and will not have much time posting for the next couple of days. But I will try to post by tomorrow the answer to Steve99's question "But if it were true [that science has nothing to say about reality], perhaps you could explain why any other approach should work any better."

852. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #50347 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 17, 2007 at 3:50 am

Steve99 (post 693, #50256)

That was a good post, and made me think a lot.

Many normal adults (indeed probably most normal adults) very strongly believe that to torture children is objectively wrong.

So what? Reality is not determined by what people believe it is. This is obviously nonsense.

I agree, but that was not my meaning. Again: What I am explaining here is how I justify my claim that theism works better than naturalism. One reason is that I very strongly believe that gratuitous torture is objectively wrong and naturalism is incompatible with that belief. So it's reasonable for me to consider naturalism problematic in this respect. Further I point out that many, probably most, normal adults also very strongly believe that gratuitous torture is objectively wrong, and therefore many people have reason to consider naturalism problematic in this respect. So the fact that both I and many normal adults have reason to consider naturalism problematic "represents a problem for naturalism" which was my meaning in post (688, #50233).

The majority of people have a wildly different (and mistaken) idea of time and space is than what we know is true. The majority of people think it is obviously objectively true that time can't stop or move backwards. We know from relativity that this is at least possible.

I understand what you are saying, but I think here you are confusing the justification of the claim "X is true" with the justification of the claim "It's reasonable for person P to believe that X is true". These are different claims. For example a naturalist versed in science will believe both: "Gravitational force fields do not exist" and "It was reasonable for Newton to believe that gravitational force fields exist." What I am arguing here is that it is reasonable for me (and for many other people besides) to consider that theism works better than naturalism.

Having said that, let me point out that your example above of a belief that is true even though it contradicts many peoples' strongly held beliefs doesn't work. You see, "space" and "time" are words coined by people to describe important parts of their experiential reality. As science models physical phenomena which are part of our experiential reality it's natural and reasonable for scientists to use the same words. So, for example, a scientist may explain that even though two people may look at the same thing, one may observe that event A happens before event B, and the other observe that event B happens before event A. Similarly scientists can explain that many counterintuitive experiences are possible in specific situations. But this does not in any way affect the reality of our experience of time and space, which is indeed what the words "time" and "space" refer to. As one cannot experience time stopping or move backwards, then to say that time can stop or move backwards is obviously false. If there is something that can stop or move backwards in the context of our discussion it's certainly not time, as the word is meant by people.

Here is the root of the confusion: It turns out that most people (naturalists and theists alike), and indeed most scientists, believe in the objective existence of the physical universe. So it's natural for them to use the same concepts (time and space, light, color, etc) to also denote parts of objective reality. But, by doing so, they typically overlook the fact that they are using the same word to denote two completely different things: 1) some part of our experiential environment, and 2) some part of physical reality. Of course to use the same word to denote two completely different things is the perfect formula for confusion and fallacious thought. Now some incisive naturalists have noticed this problem. For example here is what Bertrand Russell (the great naturalist philosopher) wrote in his "Problems of Philosophy" almost a century ago: "When it is said that light is waves, what is really meant is that waves are the physical cause of our sensations of light. But light itself, the thing which seeing people experience and blind people do not, is not supposed by science to form any part of the world that is independent of us and our senses" [i.e. objective physical reality]. (You can read this online here: http://www.ditext.com/russell/rus3.html )

I know that Dawkins compares believing in God to believing in fairies, but this is clearly nonsense and should not cloud your thinking

It is clearly not nonsense, as there is precisely the same amount of evidence for either. That is Dawkins' point.

This is Dawkins's point, but it's still nonsense. After all there are arguments for the existence of God which atheist philosophers judge serious enough to write books responding to. There are no comparable arguments for the existence of fairies. So to claim that there is precisely the same amount of evidence for the existence of God and the existence of fairies is trivially wrong.

Oh I agree; reality is the operative word. And reality is objective by definition and does not depend on anybody's opinion.

Yes. But that does not mean that you, Dianelos, or anyone else has any claim to know directly what reality is. This is what really puzzles me. What instrument or process do you have that allows you to claim that something is objectively true?

Surely I don't have any instrument or process that you lack, my friend :-) We are both human beings sharing the same human condition.

Let's see. First of all the operative concept here is "I very strongly believe" and not "objective". So when I say that the fact that I very strongly believe that gratuitous torture is objectively wrong is part of the reason I reject naturalism, what's important is the "very strongly believe" part. Here is an example: We both very strongly believe that we are having conscious experiences right now, correct? It's unthinkable to doubt that we are having conscious experiences right now, don't you agree? Now suppose somebody would suggest to us a worldview (or a description of how reality is) that contradicts the very strongly belief of ours that we are having conscious experiences right now. Don't you agree that it's reasonable to consider that this contradiction represents a problem for the suggested worldview, and is a reason to reject it? And even if that other person insisted that our very strongly held belief "is an illusion", or "is just an intuition like many intuitions that were proven to be wrong in the past", or even "that science can explain why or how your brain produces the illusion that you are having conscious experiences right now" – that wouldn't really change anything, because it would still remain unthinkable to doubt that we are having conscious experiences right now.

Well for me it's really unthinkable to doubt that gratuitous torture is wrong not because people think so but because it really is. So vis-a-vis naturalism which is a worldview that contradicts this I find myself in the same situation that you would find yourself vis-a-vis a worldview that contradicts your belief that you are having conscious experiences right now.

As we saw science has nothing to say about reality,

No... this is only what you say.

I assume you believe that science has something to say about reality. So how does science find out whether electrons form part of reality or not (or in other words objectively exist)? How does science find out whether reality consists of some kind of physical world that causes our observations of it, or rather consists of God directly causing all our experiences, or rather consists of a two-dimensional field of hyperintelligent shades of blue where two schoolchildren are running a simulation in their home computer? But if science has no way of finding out the truth about any of the above, then science has nothing to say about the truth of any of the above. And as the above are all examples of questions about reality it's pretty clear that science has nothing to say about such questions. (Incidentally, Kant knew that 200 hundred years ago; see his theory about phenomena and the noumenon).

But if it were true [that science has nothing to say about reality], perhaps you could explain why any other approach should work any better.

That's a very good question, which I have never considered before. It's an important question. I have the answer but I will need some time to compose it. Anyway this post is already too long so I'll answer it in a future post.

853. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #50284 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 16, 2007 at 11:25 am

_J_ (576, #49711):

The fallacy should be obvious: the evolution of all beliefs can be explained on naturalistic grounds, so this cannot say anything about whether any one belief is in fact true or false, and of course some are true and others are false.

[snip two examples of how some beliefs were tested using an enquiry based on objective observations and were found to be wrong] The basis of a belief is a subject for naturalistic enquiry.

Why do you call the enquiries you describe above "naturalistic"? A theist would do exactly the same type of enquiry, so there is nothing "naturalistic" about them. The enquiries you describe is what any reasonable person would make, namely devise tests and check whether the results contradict something that the respective belief entails. For example the belief that some particular person is King Henry VIII implies that that person is a man, and if one objectively observes that that person is not a man, then indeed that belief is falsified.

Anyway observe that in your examples the enquiry you mention does not make use of knowledge about how the beliefs in question have evolved – so these examples are irrelevant to my claim. To count as a counterexample you should suggest a case where somebody makes use of that kind of knowledge to find out whether a belief is true or false.

Your claimed fallacy relies on a failure to recognise what an exploration of beliefs on naturalistic grounds entails.

First of all it's not my claimed fallacy. The naturalistic fallacy is well known for over a century, and as far as I know nobody has seriously challenged that there is indeed such a fallacy. Further, one explores beliefs on reason, not on naturalism per se. Reading through your post I get the impression that you equate "naturalism" with "reason". But these are very different concepts. Naturalism is an ontology, a view about how reality is. It may be true or false. Reason is what characterizes successful epistemologies; that's what one uses to find out whether beliefs are true or false.

854. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #50251 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 16, 2007 at 3:26 am

No, I never claimed that. I only claimed the well known fact that nobody knows how to make naturalism compatible with objective morality, and that as many people believe that morality is objective that represents a problem for naturalism.

It is also a well known fact that nobody knows how to make naturalism compatible with fairies. Some people believe in fairies. Would you claim that this represents a problem with naturalism?

No, of course not. But there is a big difference, and I am surprised you didn't spot it: Many normal adults (indeed probably most normal adults) very strongly believe that to torture children is objectively wrong. Contrasted to that no normal adult very strongly believes that fairies exist. (I know that Dawkins compares believing in God to believing in fairies, but this is clearly nonsense and should not cloud your thinking.)

You need to realise that we have to change our minds based on reality - we can't declare what reality is based on opinion of what it should be. that you have a personal belief in objective morality (which I still find unjustified and bizarre) has no relevance to reality.

Oh I agree; reality is the operative word. And reality is objective by definition and does not depend on anybody's opinion. Still, can you explain how a naturalist finds out how reality is? As we saw science has nothing to say about reality, so I am really curious about your answer.

855. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #50237 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 16, 2007 at 1:01 am

TedWak (687, #50231):

Welcome – This is a long thread in which for some time now we are discussing whether a theistic worldview works better than a naturalistic worldview or not. My case in favor of theism is rooted in posts 333 and in a somehow shorter form in post 470, so I think it's a good idea to have a look at those.

To clarify, if Dianelos Georgoudis believes the torture of children is objectively wrong, it doesn't matter what people on this forum think or even if everyone in the world thinks it's OK. To him, the torture of children would still be wrong – not as a personal or subjective judgment, but as the result of an independent reality. This isn't, of course, in any way verifiable.

Well, I think it is as verifiable as any claim about objective reality. But of course it's not verifiable by the scientific method if that's what you mean.

This argument is also a tautology that leads directly to God. For to be independent of human minds, the objective "wrongness" of an act still depends on someone or something to value it negatively, and here it means something beyond normal human thought, that is, a supernatural being, must imbue it with wrongness.

I am not sure why you think "objective morality exists" is a tautology, but the rest of what you write here fairly well represents my argument, or part of my argument. (My argument is not based exclusively on naturalism's inability to account for objective morality).

(What about intuition, as Dianelos Georgoudis suggests? Again, I think there's some confusion here. There may be many explanations for our "gut" reaction that torturing children is wrong, but it still reflects our own judgment that it's wrong. The gut reaction doesn't suggest "objective" morality any more than a long and considered assessment that torturing children is wrong. It may reflect a shared cultural abhorrence, or perhap a deep evolutionary "lesson" about the psycho-social costs of involving one's children in conflict.)

As I argued in post 571 there are degrees of intuition, or degrees of "obvious". There is a level of clear intuition that is indeed unthinkable to doubt. One could say it represents the very mental facts (or conscious data) which we directly access and on which all knowledge is based. For example I can't really doubt that I am right now seeing my computer's monitor. In the same way I can't really doubt that gratuitous torture is objectively wrong, and not wrong only because of opinion, convention, or sociobiology. It would be hypocritical on my part to pretend it's possible for me to doubt that.

Now here is a fact that is both interesting and potentially confusing: Our experiential environment is such that we can explain (at least in principle) all physical phenomena we observe on purely naturalistic grounds. So there exists a perfectly naturalistic explanation why Dianelos says that gratuitous torture is objectively wrong. But this does not in any way imply that Dianelos's claim is wrong. To think that such an implication is justified is called the "naturalistic fallacy". This is a very common and also well understood fallacy, which I have discussed before, e.g. in post 571. The best way to elucidate the fallacy is through an example: Naturalism can explain on purely naturalistic grounds how come most people (theists and naturalists alike) say "the physical universe exists objectively" and how come I say "the physical universe does not exist objectively" – but this fact in not way tells us something about who is right and who is wrong.

But it seems to me a simple and reasonable response to DG is to deny that acts are objectively wrong or right -- is that unthinkable? And so whether God's existence best explains "objective morality' is irrelevant, since the premise is not accepted.

Correct, and I have pointed that out before: If you don't believe in objective morality then my argument for God loses some strength for you. But here I only try to justify why I judge that my theistic worldview works better than naturalism, and am interested to find out what holes other posters can find in my argument or what counterarguments they can suggest. I am making no claims about whether you are justified or not to judge that naturalism works better than theism yourself. The difference is subtle but significant: All knowledge can only be justified on experience, and therefore one's own knowledge can only be justified on one's own experience. But I cannot make assertions about other peoples' experiences so I cannot claim that my justification must be valid for others too.

Incidentally I wonder: Is it thinkable for you that gratuitous torture is not objectively wrong?

Maybe where DG is going here is that,for atheists, any standard for right and wrong comes down to practicality issues, whether short-term or long-term. A standard based on the Benthamian-Millian "greatest good for the greatest many [snip]"

As I explained in a recent post (688, #50233) I have no problem at all with naturalist ethics, nor do I think that when compared to a theist a naturalist is somehow cognitively impaired for discussing what is ethical. Not at all. So I don't see why naturalists need be defensive about ethical knowledge.

856. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #50233 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 15, 2007 at 11:41 pm

Dr Benway (685):

[Dianelos] said our [naturalistic] worldview wasn't very good because […] it lacked ethical rules that wouldn't ever break or need fixing.

No, I never claimed that. I only claimed the well known fact that nobody knows how to make naturalism compatible with objective morality, and that as many people believe that morality is objective that represents a problem for naturalism. But the existence of objective morality does not any way imply that our actual knowledge of morality can be absolute or will never need fixing. On the contrary the existence of objective morality is entirely compatible with a process of discovery that bit by bit comes closer to that objective morality – in a way similar to how science bit by bit comes closer to mathematically modeling the physical phenomena we experience.

I have no problem with naturalist ethics by the way. Here is how my worldview deals with it: We all live in an experiential environment caused by God, and in which God's objective goodness is present. Now naturalists do not of course realize that this is God's objective goodness, but many at least realize that there exists objective goodness in our experiential environment. Dawkins muses about the "place" where people get their ethics from; well that's the place: a deep pattern present in our experiential environment. So as both theists and naturalists have access to that same place both have the same intuitions and can reason about ethics and agree about what is ethical. But theism does offer some experiential advantages here because it is morally empowering (makes it easier to actually do the right thing), whereas naturalism offers some disadvantages as the naturalist will reason that ethical precepts are nothing more than remnants of our evolutionary history and can be explained fully by sociobiology, an understanding that rests relevance from ethics (and therefore makes it more difficult to do the right thing).

[Dianelos] promised [theism] would make our lives better.

No, I only used the fact that adopting a theistic worldview has made my life better as part of how I justify my judgment that theism works better than naturalism. It is plausible though that theism can make everybody's life better, and I think there are some statistical studies that actually show that religious people enjoy on average a better quality of life than non-religious people (after eliminating all other factors that can affect one's quality of life such as education, health, wealth, etc).

857. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #50228 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 15, 2007 at 10:47 pm

Phillip1978 (654 - #50101)

he asks why people can't look at the beautiful garden without wanting the fairies to be there as well.

Well, people before the advent of science tried to understand the phenomena they observed and could not do better than hypothesize the presence of fairies. Sagan's "the demon haunted world" is a good exposition of how superstition is still alive and well. And as why religious institutions today try to keep alive myths, well Dawkins's meme theory goes a long way explaining that I suppose. "Believe in every word of this perfect book otherwise you'll burn in hell" or "this holy institution's dogma is divinely revealed and therefore perfectly true and immutable" are powerful memes. All that is lamentable but an understandable part of our intellectual history. And it is lamentable because it clouds the judgment and free thought of many people, both theists and atheists.

The garden or even the universe is a mind bogglingly beautiful place, it really is. Not only is the stuff we do know about is beautiful but the stuff we do not know about and still have yet to discover is also as amazing.

Yes, our experience of life can be achingly beautiful, so I want to understand it all because by understanding it all, all becomes more beautiful still. I don't want to understand only physical phenomena, I want to understand all data I have, objective and subjective, the whole of my experience. You speak of beauty and it's a very important thing, so I want to understand what beauty actually is. Why do we experience beauty the way we do? Why is love like it is? What is good? These are age-old questions that are hugely relevant and are not less relevant today because we understand quantum mechanics and neurophysiology. Atheists are under the impression that religion represents an obstacle to knowledge as it contradicts science - and some religion as practiced today is and does that. But what religion in fact represents is the impulse to understand how reality is as evidenced in the whole of our conscious experience. I think we are lucky that it is easy to see that religion does not contradict science (except in its more primitive, mythology driven, and indeed demon haunted forms). And we are lucky that it is easy to see that naturalism is plagued with structural problems including, amazingly, the absence of an epistemology about how to find out how reality is. But finding how reality is is what ontology is about; so saying that naturalism is a good ontology is like saying "this is a very good car, only it can't drive". How could such a situation be stable? Well, observe that there are some powerful naturalistic memes around also. After all, if you think about it, naturalism and the idea that we are little physical bodies moving around a stable and objectively real physical world is the worldview everybody's brain adopts by the age of three, i.e. before long term memory, and therefore naturalism is experienced as a deep-seated intuition by all of us. Come to think of it you are right: many theists do not substitute naturalism with theism but rather just add God to naturalism and create therefore a Frankenstein like incoherent worldview. But again, if one is interested in truth, if one wants to know how reality is, then the question is not how the most popular and/or official theistic worldview looks like, but rather how the best theistic worldview looks like, as compared to the best naturalistic worldview one can come up with. For me the best theistic worldview cleanly makes away with naturalism and its foundational belief of the objective existence of the physical world, and that's why I call it "idealistic theism".

A lover of truth (which incidentally is the etymology of "philosopher") must continuously check on the reasonableness of one's beliefs and indeed how one justifies them. I claim that there are several such unjustifiable naturalistic beliefs, beliefs which more or less all naturalists share by the way, such as that science has something to say about reality, or that the brain produces consciousness. And to understand why these beliefs are wrong goes a long way I think to show why naturalism does not work as well as naturalists more or less unquestionably believe. And what I find intellectually very pleasing is that the minimalist theism I have presented here is not ad-hoc, but rather can be constructed step by step as the most economical hypothesis that eliminates naturalism's most conspicuous problems. In other words, the very failures of naturalism imply how an alternative worldview that works must be. Theism is implicit in naturalism's limits. Which is kind of neat.

858. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #50161 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 15, 2007 at 11:12 am

Epeeist (676 or #50156):

You might want to treat science in an empirical fashion, or take a conventionalist view. It doesn't particularly matter. The theories are used to predict what will happen in the world, whether that world has objective reality or not. These predictions are observable and testable.

I agree but would only like to suggest that it is more precise to say that scientific theories are used to predict what will happen in our experience of the world.

What can theism provide that is comparable?

But here I am not comparing theism to science, but rather theism to naturalism. I trust we agree that one can only compare oranges with oranges, and theism and naturalism are both worldviews about reality, or ontological theories if you prefer. Anything useful that science provides (either intellectually or experientially) to people who adopt a naturalistic worldview, science can also provide to people who adopt a theistic worldview (of the non-naive kind I suggest here). In fact I argued that my theistic worldview offers some advantages for science, but no matter.

So if I rephrase your question as "What can theism provide that is comparable to what naturalism provides?" then I have plenty to offer: Intellectual coherency and elegance, some kind of epistemology for finding out how reality is and some semblance of agreement about how it is, very significant gains in the experience of life, moral empowerment.

859. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #50157 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 15, 2007 at 10:54 am

Bonzai (667 or #50140):

Interesting – I did not know about all the cases you mention. In post 548 (#49425) I explained why I think the belief that our brain causes our consciousness cannot be justified, and is therefore arbitrary. Incidentally this argument is based on a naturalistic understanding of reality, i.e. works from a naturalist's point of view. I think this argument covers all your examples. In short the argument is that the premise that a physical system such as our brain causes consciousness and the premise that we observe a perfect correlation between mental facts (data about perceptions, cognition, will, etc) and states in our brain, imply the possibility that a physical system other than our brain, possibly of an entirely different nature and structure, may be causing our consciousness.

For example if such a physical system other than my brain causes my consciousness then it could very well produce for me the observation of the various pieces of evidence you mention. So my observation of all that evidence cannot serve as an argument against the hypothesis that something other than my brain causes my consciousness.

860. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #50151 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 15, 2007 at 9:40 am

Steve99 (661):

But suppose that God does in fact exist and directly causes all our experiences including the experiences of physical phenomena that science studies. That's a theistic worldview, yes? And moreover describes a God who is extremely active with us. How then might such a theistic worldview conflict with science? Clearly it can't.

It certainly does conflict with science because it assumes an explanation for things, rather than leaving options open.

This is not a conflict. Again a conflict would exist if science claims a proposition which this theistic worldview denies, or vice versa. If no such conflict exists then all propositions of science are logically compatible with all propositions of this theistic worldview. But then no scientific proposition can possibly serve as evidence against this theistic worldview. Which is the same as saying that this theistic worldview is completely compatible with science. Which is really a simple claim easily demonstrated; I don't understand why we are stuck with it.

Also, if it is in no way measurable, then there is no possible mechanism by which you can know that is is there, so you might as well have just made it up. You can't just come up with an imaginary being that has no detectable effect, because, as has been pointed out, there are an infinite number of those, and no justification for choosing any particular one. You could claim God is very active; I could claim he is very lazy, and only causes things 1% of the time. There is no difference in principle in which anyone could distinguish between our claims. In fact, I could go further and claim that a God exists and is infinitely lazy, and does nothing at all. You could not refute that. So I go one step further....

I am not "claiming" that God is very active but rather am pointing out that the God of the theistic worldview I assert is very active as S/He causes all our conscious experiences. Maybe there is some epistemological confusion here. I don't have to justify the hypothesis I put forward, for I can assert any hypothesis I like. I only have to justify any proposition I claim about that hypothesis. Now according to my hypothesis God is indeed very active. And one proposition I claim about that hypothesis is that it represents a worldview that cannot possibly contradict or conflict with any piece of scientific knowledge – and that I justify by pointing out that all scientific knowledge is based on observation of physical phenomena, and according to the hypothesis all these observations are caused by God.

Also, when discussing other peoples' hypotheses you can't simply state that they speak of an "imaginary being", because this is an example of begging the question. Neither can you change their hypothesis at will by claiming properties of God they have not asserted, because this amounts to constructing a strawman. Further you claim that there are a million other theistic hypotheses with no way to choose between them, but this even if true is irrelevant: I have often pointed out my goal is to explain how I justify the claim that my theistic worldview works better than naturalism. If it turns out that there are a million other theistic worldviews that work as well as mine the much the better.

861. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #50144 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 15, 2007 at 8:39 am

_J_ (660):

How then might such a theistic worldview conflict with science?

By being a massively superfluous and unwarranted hypothesis.

That's not what "conflict" means in our context. In our context there would be a conflict if science claims some proposition that this theistic worldview denies, or vice-versa. Can you see any possibility of such a conflict between science and the theistic worldview I described? But if there can't be any conflict in this sense then science and this theistic worldview are completely compatible.

862. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #50135 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 15, 2007 at 7:58 am

Steve99 (619):

I think that to believe that our brain causes consciousness is a belief that cannot be justified on reason.

I know this may sound like a trivial question, but how then do you explain the removal of consciousness through things that change the brain, such as anaesthetics?

The evidence is not really conclusive, but let's assume that under anesthesia people do not feel a thing; it's certainly a plausible assumption. Now as I pointed out in post 492 (point 2) we must distinguish between consciousness and conscious experience: consciousness means the capacity of having conscious experiences. A physical system that has consciousness may at times not have some kind of conscious experience or even any conscious experience at all, for example humans when under deep sleep or when under anesthesia. But clearly, anesthesia does not "remove consciousness", as it does not remove a human's capacity for having conscious experience. It does only temporarily remove conscious experience itself until the anesthetics are flushed from the blood stream. Similarly switching off the light bulb in a windowless room temporarily removes the conscious experience of light until it is switched back on.

---

The hard question is what causes consciousness, and not what, given there is consciousness, causes specific conscious experiences. Again: If I knew that cockroaches have consciousness then I could easily argue that cockroaches experience light and that that experience is caused by their brain. But the hard problem that consciousness represents for naturalism is that nobody knows whether cockroaches have consciousness in the first place, nor can imagine how a test to find that out might look like.

863. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #50126 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 15, 2007 at 7:05 am

Steve99 (639):

I claimed that a very widespread but fallacious belief is:

That a theistic worldview must, or at least might, conflict with science.

You answered:

So there can be no doubt whatsoever that theist worldviews might conflict with science. I believe something stronger - that they inevitably will. Even the least interventionist theism overlaps and conflicts with science in the following way: If someone claims that God exists, then they are presumably basing that on some evidence (if not, they are just making it up). That evidence is either their own thoughts (which can be examined by science) or by some physical phenomena (which can also be examined by science).

I fail to see what evidence or justification for theism have to do with my previous claim. In fact let's assume that there isn't any evidence or justification or reason at all to believe that God exists. But suppose that God does in fact exist and directly causes all our experiences including the experiences of physical phenomena that science studies. That's a theistic worldview, yes? And moreover describes a God who is extremely active with us. How then might such a theistic worldview conflict with science? Clearly it can't.

864. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #50102 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 15, 2007 at 5:01 am

Dr Benway (648):

If by objective you mean endorsed by most people, you're likely correct with respect to torture, although I wouldn't bet the house on that. However it's my impression that by objective, you mean something true for all times and places. You mean something beyond argument. In this, my nose catches the scent of an Orwellian rat.

No, I don't mean that. "X is objectively true" means that X is true independently of peoples' opinion or social convention; indeed it entails that X would still be true if everybody in fact believed that X is false, or if nobody had ever thought about X one way or the other, or even if humanity did not exist at all. That's the meaning of objective truth. Which does not imply that objective truth actually exists, nor, of course, that if somebody claims or believes that X is objectively true somehow it becomes unarguably true. Nothing of the sort.

So let's discuss data, and as Chalmers says subjective data are data too:

1. It's a fact that there is a group of people (including myself) who believe that gratuitous torture is objectively wrong. They don't justify that belief of theirs on argument, but on clear intuition. By "clear intuition" I mean an intuition that strong that the alternative is unthinkable. We all base some of our beliefs on such clear intuitions. (For example I trust you believe that you have conscious experiences; you believe that an external objective reality exists that causes your conscious experiences, and so on. And incidentally, you haven't clarified what your position is: Do you think that gratuitous torture is wrong because of personal opinion and convention, or because it is objectively wrong?)

2. The existence of objectively true ethical precepts contradicts the naturalistic understanding of reality.

Of course this latter contradiction is not problematic for those who do no adopt the naturalistic worldview but a worldview that is compatible with objective morality. But what would the reasonable reaction be for naturalists who believe in objective morality? Well, one entirely reasonable reaction would be to abandon naturalism and search for a worldview that works better. Another is to argue that #2 is not conclusive, because even though there are strong arguments for #2 and indeed no naturalist philosopher has yet found any way to make compatible naturalism and objective morality, it is still possible that such a way exists. Indeed, these naturalists may believe so strongly that any alternative to naturalism is unacceptable, that they decide that such a way must exist and will probably be found in the future.

In general, a naturalist may judge that the probability that naturalism's problems (including the three I mentioned in post 333) will be solved in the future is greater than the probability that reality is supernatural, or alternatively because a naturalist may judge that any version of supernaturalism entails greater conceptual problems still.

865. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #49999 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 14, 2007 at 1:39 pm

Bonzai (635):

I asked whether there is an answer to the question "How does mass curve spacetime?". I see now that my question was ambiguous. Anyway, you answered:

Of course there is an answer. That is what the Einstein equations tell you. GR wouldn't be a scientific theory if it only says "mass curves spacetime" and leaves it at that, without telling you how and providing a quantitative relationship between mass and curvature that can be tested.

Well, strictly speaking, mathematical equations express relationships between variables, so they don't really tell us anything about reality. It's how we interpret GR's equations that tells us something about reality. Luckily there is one natural way to interpret GR's equations which is indeed that mass bends spacetime. Now in the context of my question above I assume naturalism, i.e. I assume the objective reality of the physical universe, and that GR describes that reality. You say that the theory provides a quantitative relationship between mass and curvature, one that can be tested. I agree; indeed it says that such quantity of mass bends spacetime to this degree, and when we check the relevant observations everything fits with this view. Splendid. But the question I meant to ask is how mass curves spacetime, and not what quantity of mass produces what degree of curvature of spacetime. In other words, given that mass curves spacetime in exactly the quantitative and verifiable ways that GR describes, how does mass manage to do that?

So, after having clarified the question, do you think that this question is meaningful? If you don't, why not? If you do, how would you answer it?

866. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #49989 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 14, 2007 at 12:20 pm

Dr Benway (520):

I presume you think that the objective existence of the moon is science. How do you suggest we test this belief?

Imagine the set of observations about the world we would expect if the moon exists, and if it doesn't. Select an observation from the "moon exists" set that isn't also in the "moon doesn't exist" set. Describe the methods you plan to use to make your observation, so others can repeat your work. Observe. Serve your results piping hot, glazed with savory creme sauce and a fine Merlot. Science is delicious.

Mouthwateringly well said, but I have a problem: It seems to me that the scientific methodology you suggest only checks for the objective presence of observations consistent with the objective existence of the moon, not for the objective existence the moon itself. You quite explicitly state that it's all about observations. But the very meaning of objective existence is that something objectively exists even if nobody has ever seen it or has thought about it; and that it would exist even if no conscious person were around to know anything about it. Indeed that's how we understand the concept of reality: as the set of all things that objectively exist, whether we like or not, whether we know about them or not. And here is I think where science and the scientific method have nothing to say, not because of some limitation of science but because that's not what science is about. That's what ontology (or metaphysics) is about. Reality and objective existence is a subject matter of philosophy, not of science.

Let me elaborate this point using some examples:

1. I think it's a fact that most scientists believe that electrons objectively exist. Even after quantum mechanics, not to mention quantum electrodynamics, and all the weird and weirder things these theories say about electrons, most scientists would insist that there is no question that electrons objectively exist. But suppose some scientists would claim that electrons do not objectively exist but are only useful concepts that form part of the mathematical theories of physics which were empirically found to correctly describe and predict the relevant observations. Now if the question about the objective existence of electrons were a scientific question, then there would exist some objective method or experiment to decide which side is right, correct? But no such method or experiment is possible. How can I be so sure? Because all methods and experiments of science deal with observations, and scientists on both sides of the debate fully agree about the observations. They disagree about how these observations are to be interpreted ontologically (i.e. what they say about reality). – At this juncture somebody might suggest that the objective reality of the electron may be unclear, but not the objective reality of the moon. The problem is that the moon is not in any fundamental way a different kind of thing than an elementary particle such as the electron, in fact the moon is a big pile of elementary particles.

2. Einstein, when trying to argue about the (as he thought) absurd ontological implications of quantum mechanics, famously asked Pais (and asked not in jest): "Do you really believe the moon exists only when you are looking?" About a century later two physics professors of the University of California at Santa Cruz, Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner, publish "Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness", where they insist that the only way to understand what quantum mechanics says about reality is that "consciousness creates physical reality" – which is equivalent to saying that the physical universe that science studies does not objectively exists, but only exists in a sense that is contingent on consciousness. Now one might question the philosophical acumen of these two physics professors, but the fact remains that for almost a century scientists deeply disagree about the most basic facts about objective reality and nobody is suggesting experiments to settle that disagreement – which would be the case if they disagreed about a question that can properly be called scientific.

3. Suppose we live in the Matrix. (I mention The Matrix because this is a popular and well understood movie; the corresponding philosophical thought experiment would be the so-called "brain in a vat".) Of course the Matrix creates for us all our observations including the ones we make of the moon, and therefore all tests you suggested in your post would be successful. Still the moon in this scenario does not objectively exist, which shows that your tests do not really check for the moon's objective existence.

I have insisted on this point at some length, because I think there exist two very widespread beliefs that are completely false. It's not a matter where one stands on the question of God, as most theists and atheists believe in them, indeed most theologians and most scientists believe in them. These two beliefs are so widespread and so unquestionably held, that one could call them full-fledged modern myths. Here they are:

1. That science has something to say about how reality is.

2. That a theistic worldview must, or at least might, conflict with science.

The two beliefs are related, because as people believe #1 and as theism does have things to say about reality, people deduce #2.

But my position is that both beliefs are utterly and demonstrably false, and the fact that almost everybody believes in them goes a long way to explain why the theism versus naturalism debate is often so confusing. Naturalism versus theism is really not a question between science and superstition or between questioning reason and unquestioning faith, but is a question between which of two reasonable (even though dramatically opposed) worldviews about reality works best.

On a personal note I would like to express the following sentiment: As I see that most of the disagreements between theism and naturalism are based on or motivated by these two fallacious beliefs, I am very optimistic that a new level of understanding can be reached. We'll see.

867. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #49971 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 14, 2007 at 10:11 am

Steve99 (630):

I have to admit I am starting to have a problem with your posts, in that you keep stating hypotheses that I feel have been seriously challenged in posts you have not yet replied to.

If you (or other posters here) feel that me replying particular posts before others would help focus this discussion, please point out the numbers of the posts you mean.

868. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #49968 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 14, 2007 at 10:03 am

Steve99 (573):

But theism avoids naturalism's problems and moreover is able to answer some deep questions that naturalism can't (such as why physical reality exists in the first place, or why the human condition - i.e. how it is to be a human being, how human life is subjectively experienced - is like it is).

If it did, then you would be able to answer questions like 'how does God produce conciousness?'

Actually I have something to say about how God produces consciousness. But before doing so, it would help if I knew your position about the following:

As you know according to general relativity mass curves spacetime. Do you think that the question "How does mass curve spacetime?" is meaningful? If you think it's not meaningful then why do you think that? But if you think this is a meaningful question how would you answer it? And if you don't know the answer could you at least explain how a possible answer might look like?

(Why am I asking all these questions? Because here I try to justify my judgment that theism works better than naturalism, and nothing more. I am not claiming that my theistic worldview has all the answers to all possible questions in a form that satisfies all people, but only why in comparison I judge that theism works better than naturalism. So I am asking the above questions to make certain that the playing field is level and the comparisons fair. For example should you find the question "How does mass curve spacetime?" meaningless, then by the same measure I can claim that the question "How does God produce consciousness?" is meaningless too. After all "mass curves spacetime" and "God produces consciousness" are kind of basic explanatory principles in both worldviews. Or one could say "the spacetime bending property of mass is a defining property of what mass is" but then one could equally well say "the consciousness producing property of God is a defining property of what God is". Indeed, that's exactly what I have done in previous posts.)

869. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #49964 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 14, 2007 at 9:41 am

_J_ (625):

I suppose you are trying here to test the coherence of the God concept. You write:

'I KNOW EVERYTHING.'

But I never claimed that God knows everything. Such strikes me as incoherent too. My argument rests on the hypothesis that God is personal (i.e. a conscious being), objectively good, and willing as well as powerful/intelligent enough to create us and cause all experience we have.

870. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #49962 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 14, 2007 at 9:34 am

Dr Benway (611):

Clear to you with your naive powers of imagination. Have a look at the Abu Ghraib photos; see the sincere smiles on the soldiers' faces.

I agree that Abu Ghraib is an example of gratuitous torture and therefore evidences that gratuitous torture happens. I think your point though is that Abu Ghraib also evidences that some people do not believe that gratuitous torture is objectively wrong, and I am not sure it follows. We all know from personal experience that it is possible (even common) to do things one believes are wrong, whether objectively or subjectively, and sometimes even feel good while we are doing it.

But suppose I am wrong. Suppose that it's a failure of my imagination to believe that gratuitous torture is wrong necessarily and independently of personal opinion or convention, and that other people with greater powers of imagination actually believe that gratuitous torture is wrong only because of personal opinion or convention. Then people in the first group for whom it is unthinkable that gratuitous torture is not objectively wrong will judge naturalism equally unthinkable (because naturalism is not compatible with objective morality) and will therefore be driven by reason to adopt a worldview beyond naturalism, a worldview that can account for objective morality. On the contrary, people in the second group who believe that all morality is subjective will not see any problem with naturalism on this account.

So, even if I am wrong on this particular (namely, that no normal human being can really doubt the objective wrongness of gratuitous torture) it does not all affect my basic argument which is that I am justified to believe that a theistic worldview is much more reasonable than a naturalistic one.

If I am wrong on this particular then it might only weaken the claim that for all people the most reasonable worldview cannot be a naturalistic one, but that's a claim I am not making. Why not? Because knowledge can ultimately be justified only on one's own data (objective and subjective), and even though my working assumption is that all normal humans experience life basically the way I do, it's not my place to impose on others how I think their subjective experiences are. So, for example, it is not my place to object to other peoples' claim that they don't have the kind of clear intuition I have about the objective wrongness of gratuitous torture.

871. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #49889 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 14, 2007 at 3:05 am

Philip1978 (552):

One thing I would like to ask is which god are you talking about? In all seriousness is it Allah, The Protestant God, The Catholic God, David Robertson's God, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, Odin? All of these gods could be justifiable in explaining the way your brain produces conciousness.

Back to front:

I don't claim that the God hypothesis explains how our brain produces our consciousness, because I don't believe that our brain produces our consciousness. In fact as I argued here (there an ongoing discussion about this and it's an important issue) I think that to believe that our brain causes consciousness is a belief that cannot be justified on reason. What we know is this: Something causes us to be conscious beings, and what we are conscious of (i.e. the particular conscious facts we know given we are conscious beings) correlates (probably perfectly) with our observations of what happens in our brain. (Under "conscious facts" I understand all subjective facts that are contingent on consciousness, such as the experiences of perception including the five senses, thinking, remembering, willing, perceiving beauty, feeling love, feelings in general, and so on.)

The God I am talking about is the God I hypothesize in order to build a worldview that works better than naturalism as an explanation of the whole of my conscious experience, i.e. for all the conscious facts. The basic properties I require is that it be supernatural (in my sense), personal (i.e. a conscious being), objectively good, and willing and capable to cause our consciousness and all that we are conscious of. Such a God does not correlate well with the Flying Spaghetti Monster or with Odin or even, before you ask, with the God of the Old Testament when understood literally. It correlates better with the more liberal/enlightened/mystical understanding of the three great monotheistic religions. Other aspects of my worldview correlate well with the Buddhist understanding of reality. But I am not especially well versed in world religions, or in the intricate theological differences that separate Christian denominations. What matters to me here is whether the basic understanding of God I posit here allows for a better worldview than naturalism, or not.

872. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #49874 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 14, 2007 at 1:52 am

Dr Benway (605):

I wrote:

...it's intuitively obvious for me that to torture children is objectively wrong ...Actually knowing how it is to be a human being I have trouble imagining another human who would disagree.

and you respond:

I had a conversation with Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, the Army's surgeon general until recently, about torture. He argued in favor of coercive interrogation techniques. You realize that some of the people brought to Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, etc., were picked up at 15, 16 years of age.

Right. I should have been more precise and have written: it's intuitively obvious for me that to gratuitously torture children is objectively wrong. After all there are many cases where there is good reason to cause pain. "Gratuitously" is then a critical concept and should be explicitly mentioned. For example nobody would characterize as unethical (or indeed as torture) a situation where a surgeon has no alternative but to operate a child without anesthesia.

In any case I stand by my claim that the human condition is such that we can't doubt the objective truth of some ethical precepts, such as that to gratuitously torture children is wrong. It's an intuition alright, but such a clear intuition that it's reasonable to expect worldviews to conform to it, and not vice-versa.

873. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #49867 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 14, 2007 at 1:08 am

Thanks to everybody who one time or other has expressed something positive about me personally. It's true I am overworked here, on the other hand let me tell you that I am delighted to be the only theist debating several atheists, because it allows some coherency in the discussion. In other forums there always seems to be a fundamentalist theist posting ideas that are so annoying that nothing useful happens from that point on.

I will try to keep commenting in sequence, but I think I will jump around a little when I feel some especially important point is raised and/or can swiftly be engaged with.

As you know by basic position is this: I judge that a good theistic worldview works better than a good naturalistic worldview. You judge the opposite to be true. What mostly interests me is what holes you can find in the arguments I use to justify my judgment, or what counterarguments you can offer in the sense that a naturalistic worldview works better. So indeed this has been very interesting so far.

Not to lose context my basic argument has been presented in post 333 and in a shorter form in post 470. The basic points are as follows:

1. Naturalistic worldviews contain serious conceptual problems and in comparison my theistic worldview is not problematic. I picked three such naturalistic problems: what causes consciousness, how to account for objective ethics (or for what is objectively good) given one believes it exists, and the epistemology and actual results of how each kind of worldview deals with the task of describing how reality is.)

2. As far as scientific and technological knowledge is concerned by theistic worldview is as compatible as naturalism, and indeed offers some practical advantages (e.g. avoids the need to describe an objectively real physical environment).

3. In comparison my theism offers some explanations in areas that naturalism can't or doesn't (e.g. why is there an orderly and intelligible physical environment free of "magical" effects in our experience? – and in general questions of the form: why is how it is like to be human as it is?). In post 532 I wrote down various criteria that I think an explanation must fulfill, including the criterion of empirical testing.

4. In comparison to naturalism theism is found to offer experiential gains and be morally empowering, and therefore preferable not only in the intellectual sense but also in the existential sense.

874. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #49863 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 14, 2007 at 12:51 am

PrimeNumbers (508):

The problem of the supernatural, is it means letting go of the hold of reason, and in esscence, the supernatural is un-reasonable. As soon as you allow supernatural in a discussion, logic, reason and all sense go out of the window. The problem is, that using supernatural as an explanation explains nothing. Supernatural only explains things by adding something even more un-explainable into the explanation. It's a dead end to knowledge and reason. It's a dead end to any discussion.

Don't let the associations of the word "supernatural" affect your judgment. When I use "supernatural" I don't mean the realm of witches or ghosts or parapsychology or mental powers or miraculous healings or anything of that sort, namely physical (i.e. objectively observable) phenomena that supposedly lie beyond what science can explain. I agree that such phenomena do not exist, and that by now it's quite unreasonable to believe they do. Nor do I mean a realm where anything goes so nothing requires explanation, on the contrary my claim is that the supernatural is intelligible. No, I use "supernatural" to denote anything we have reason to believe exists and that lies beyond the physical phenomena we experience and all existents we posit in order to explain them, i.e. lies beyond the "nature" that science studies. As I argued in a previous post this includes subjective experiences, such as our experience of red. Red is not a physical phenomenon (because all physical phenomena are objectively observable and red is not), nor is it required to explain any physical phenomenon the way electrons, or electromagnetic radiation, or the bending of spacetime are. In fact there is nothing "red" in the physical universe. So, in my nomenclature, as red is beyond the naturalistic understanding of reality it's "supernatural". Finally in my worldview nature forms an integral part of "supernature", and is in no conflict or contraposition to it.

It's unfortunate that "supernatural" carries such a heavy load of negative associations. I could have used some other word, maybe "metaphysical" or even "experiential" instead. So for example I might have said that the fundamental ingredient of reality is experience and that the physical world of physical phenomena is only a part of that larger reality that consists of experience. Further, this larger world of experience is structured or ordered by the presence of an overarching conscious being, a person of objective goodness who causes all our particular conscious experiences, and whom for reasons of consistence I call "God". Of course, that name carries a heavy load of associations too :-(

875. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #49860 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 14, 2007 at 12:25 am

_J_ (506):

Do you think it more likely that God, being benevolent, would provide exactly the sort of evidence that is also used by conjurers, con-artists, and proselytisers of myriad other bogus religions?

No, I don't think that's likely at all. In fact I did never claim that such is the case.

If there is, he (I'll go with 'he' just because it's the norm) has either revealed himself to us or he hasn't.

I think God reveals him/herself in the whole of our experience. God is intelligible.

If he has revealed himself to us, the omniscient, benevolent creator of humanity would presumably have done so in such a way as to settle all arguments. There would be a revelation that put all others to shame, one that is completely in agreement with our best powers of reasoning and that successfully conquers all opposition. God would be, after all, a fact, and ought therefore to agree with naturalistic reasoning, even if his revelation is light-years beyond our current level or naturalistic understanding. Such a revelation would be embraced by scientist non-scientist alike.

I agree in all particulars (I assume that by "naturalistic reasoning" you mean the kind of reasoning that depends on evidence, is coherent, can be empirically tested, etc). And I see that nowhere do you suggest that such understanding should be easy. If we know something about our experiential environment is that nothing is easy. We are not being pampered in any way; we are God's children after all.

We do not find ourselves in such a world.

Oops, here we disagree. I think we do, in fact I find that more and more questions about our experiential environment (especially the subjective bits) can be explained by the God hypothesis. But the more important thing _J_ is this: I think the kind of reasoning you are using here is sound. That's the way one should think about God: What kind of experiential environment would a benevolent, and powerful, and intelligent God want to give us? (But not what kind of environment we would like God to give us.) Does this kind of environment contradict the one we find ourselves in? If so this counts as evidence against the existence of God. Does it fit? Then this counts as evidence for the existence of God.

876. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #49772 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 13, 2007 at 11:36 am

_J_ (505):

Our naturalistic understanding of all things is a work in progress. It may very well always be so. To acknowledge this is not to find a fault in naturalism as a reliable approach to discovery and description.

The signs though are not good. The problem of consciousness and the failure to account for objective goodness appear to be insurmountable problems for naturalism. And as for naturalism's descriptions of reality, things appear to be deteriorating right now.

Again, our understanding is in progress. Hopefully, our many competing theories [about how physical reality is] will gradually resolve as we learn more.

Hopefully. But even then the other problems (such as the problem of consciousness) remain. But maybe they too will be solved in the future, who knows? Time will tell. But meanwhile I judge that competing theistic worldviews are clearly better. They avoid naturalism's problems without losing any of naturalism's usefulness (including science, technology, etc), add at least some explanatory power, and are found to offer significant experiential and ethical gains. So I think that here and now it's much more reasonable to abandon naturalism and adopt some of these other worldviews. (Of course that's only my judgment; I understand that other people judge that some naturalistic worldview is preferable.)

I find the stated theory [of Many Worlds] much more plausible than one that states that a carpenter was resurrected within a universe in which resurrection is, by all observations, impossible.

I don't; after all according to Many Worlds there is a huge number of universes in which you and I live and resurrections happen all the time (maybe steve99 would like to confirm this). Anyway Many Worlds is maybe the least plausible naturalist worldview, so we may drop it. There is still a long term problem though: I know of no argument to justify the belief that our continuously improved modeling of phenomena through science will tend to allow for only one description of the physical reality that produces them. So unless you can suggest such an argument the reasonable assumption is that naturalism will never agree on one description of physical reality, which is kind of a serious letdown.

In any case a worldview based on the existence of an objectively good God who created us and our experiential environment with the goal that we attain virtue on personal merit represents, as far as I am concerned, what is most important to know about reality.

I must mention something that just occurred to me: If it turns out that the physical reality that according to naturalism is objectively real and causes the physical phenomena we observe is fundamentally and dramatically ambiguous, then theism gives an explanation of why that should be so: Maybe it's God's way to give us reason to doubt naturalism. Sounds farfetched but consider: On the one God would not want to give us the experience of a Mickey-Mouse or a demon-haunted physical environment, on the other hand God would also not want to give us the experience of a physical environment that is so elegant and unproblematic that people could easily believe it is objectively real and would not be motivated to look beyond it in wonder.

877. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #49742 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 13, 2007 at 7:49 am

Steve99 (503)

I wrote:

There are strong arguments that show that objective ethics is not compatible with a naturalistic worldview, and this clearly has something to do with naturalism.

to which you responded:

You keep saying this, but you never actually present any such arguments.

Ok, here is the basic argument:

According to naturalism all events are composed of elementary events, and elementary events are either deterministic (in the sense that event B is caused by event A, which always causes event B) or random (in the sense that event B just happens without anything having caused it). So nothing "supernatural" interferes or causes events. Now goodness is a property of events which represents a value judgment we do. So in naturalism the proposition "to torture children is not good" is both meaningful and arguably reasonable as a value judgment, as long as it is clear that there is nothing intrinsically bad in an event that corresponds to the torture of children, because such an event is nothing more than the conjunction of elementary events that are either random or else caused deterministically by previous events. So the truth of the proposition "to torture children is not good" is contingent on our subjective value judgment and is therefore not objective.

All naturalistic efforts to find a way to assign objective value to some events must fail because they must be contingent on some other value which in the end must be reduced to subjective judgment. For example some tried to objectify ethics by reducing it to life. Roughly their idea was that everything that promotes life is objectively good. Apart from the obvious problem about which kind of life is objectively more worthy, the fundamental problem is that we have simply moved the question somewhere else. After all how is one to objectively justify that life itself is good? Life, after all, is nothing but a particular kind of chemical reaction and there is no intrinsic or objective reason why this type of chemical reaction is more valuable than any other. Other naturalists tried to objectify goodness by suggesting that any event that tends to maximize the experience of well-being and minimize pain is objectively good. But, again, this depends on the value judgment that some events that happen in animal brains are "good" and other are "bad". In short in order to define that some events are objectively good one must somehow inject goodness somewhere in the causal chain of physical events and start from there. But this initial injection requires a subjective value judgment by somebody or by a group of people or by society, and therefore is non-objective.

878. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #49723 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 13, 2007 at 6:48 am

Steve99 (503)

I wrote about God's objective to give us an experiential environment optimized for attaining virtue, and you responded:

That isn't really any kind of argument. Why would it be anything to do with virtue?

Because God, who according to my worldview is an objectively good person (i.e. a virtuous person), would like us to achieve that state too. At least it's very plausible to hypothesize that a virtuous God would want that, and the fact that our experiential environment is indeed an excellent environment for attaining virtue is powerful evidence that reinforces that hypothesis.

I fully understand the theist worldview. I used to be a theist.

There are many very different worldviews, and some of them such as fundamentalist Christianity strike me as grossly wrong. So there is no the theistic worldview. Similarly there are many naturalistic worldviews. Some of them, such as the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics (that some notable scientists subscribe to) strikes me as even more grossly wrong than Christian fundamentalism. In our discussion here I tried to center on what I find are the strongest theistic and naturalistic worldviews.

I wrote:

Now, this is not the kind of naturalistic explanation you are used to, and I can imagine that it is difficult to let go of your naturalistic intuitions and evaluate the worldview I suggest at face value.

to which you responded:

On the contrary, it is natural for many to want an all-powerful protector figure. It is not difficult to see why the idea is attractive and common.

What you are saying is an example of the naturalist fallacy. Let's assume that you correctly understand how my beliefs evolved based on naturalistic grounds. Even then, that knowledge does not in any way imply that my beliefs are therefore wrong.

For example the argument "your worldview is what somebody who would like to have an all-powerful protector figure would believe" is fallacious, because desire for a protective figure may partially explain why I have belief in God, but says nothing about whether that belief is true or not. On the contrary if God exists it's reasonable to believe that God would have given people some tendency to seek Him/Her out.

Let me elaborate on this point by turning the tables. I trust you believe that the physical universe objectively exists. Now I could suggest how this belief has evolved in your brain or what psychological needs it fulfils, but even if I were right it would not somehow imply that your belief in the objective existence of the physical universe is therefore wrong.

I could just as easily posit a supernatural being that intends people to experience a world where they gain wickedness. If you look at the world, this is entirely compatible.

Er, no, this is not compatible at all. The experiential world I live in does not at all look like optimized for growing in wickedness. Actually I am very surprised you would use that argument. My own life appears to me to be a constant ethical challenge; I am always challenged at all levels to do the right thing. On the other hand maybe it's reasonable to believe that many people fail that challenge and end up growing in wickedness (even though it's really very difficult to judge other people because one does not know all parameters). What I think is pretty obvious is that the vast majority of people does not attain a lot of virtue in this life, which is one of the reasons why it's reasonable for a theist to believe that our experiential life does not end here but continues after death.

Therefore, your worldview has no foundation. It is just your feeling, I suggest. And as anyone who has studied this area knows, that is not a reliable guide to anything.

Ah, the unreliability of subjective data, or "feelings" as you put it. Of course if you are not willing to use your subjective data then you are stuck with naturalism and all its incoherencies. Now I am not saying that one cannot go wrong based on subjective data. Of course one can (and in fact it's also possible to go wrong based on objective data). On the other hand one must rely on one's subjective data in order to reach a better understanding than naturalism provides; after all subjective data is data too. Which is not to say one must blindly rely on them. As I mentioned in a previous post there are several criteria for the soundness of an explanation, and one can use them to check whether one's worldview (whether driven by objective only or by objective and subjective data) conforms with these criteria. I find my own worldview very solid under all these criteria including the empirical criteria. If you want to suggest arguments why I should doubt its basic soundness, I am very interested to hear them.

But you have presented no evidence or argument about why this being should be connected like this.

Remember my basic argument: The failure of naturalism to account for what causes our consciousness and for the existence of objective ethics makes it plausible to hypothesize that a supernatural and objectively good realm causes our consciousness. So the connectedness is implicit in the hypothesis.

I wrote:

Did you know that the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that there are many physical universes where you and I will never die? It seems to me that naturalism works really badly even in its own natural subject matter of the physical world.

To which you answer:

I know the different interpretations of quantum mechanics in some detail. You are simply making an arbitrary value judgement here. You find this interpretation odd, so you claim that is a sign of the failure of naturalism. But that is an opinion, not evidence.

Well, opinions about plausibility do matter. Suppose a fundamentalist Christian would argue that God did in fact create the universe in 6 days about 6,000 years ago, and included much older looking geological strata and fossils (not to mention the background radiation) in order to test our faith in his holy book. There is nothing logically wrong with that worldview, and no objective evidence that contradicts it, but still I trust we both reject it because it is too implausible in comparison with other available worldviews. Similarly I feel free to note that all naturalistic descriptions of a physical universe consistent with quantum mechanical phenomena are highly implausible (not to mention fundamentally contradict each other) and that some popular ones (such as Many Worlds) is far more implausible than the most wild eyed fundamentalist understanding about reality. I wish people would study more the naturalistic proposals about how physical reality is, because it would help dispell various myths, such as that there is basic agreement about how physical reality is, or that there is objective evidence for all claims, etc.

I will agree though that the plausibility criterion by itself is not final. But if one opines that one worldview is more plausible than the other, then it is certainly reasonable to have this count in favor of the former. I mean if the only available worldviews were Christian fundamentalism or Many Worlds then I think it would be reasonable to choose the former.

Whatever you think of the Many Worlds interpretation, it is a useful tool in some physics work. This does not mean it is right - just that it helps work things out.

I agree. In particular domains it often helps to visualize reality in a way it clearly is not. For example when thinking about electrical circuits it's useful to visualize electrical charge as quantities of water and electrical connections as tubes. Some notable quantum physicists though (for example David Deutsch in his "The fabric of reality: the science of parallel universes and its implications") insist that Many Worlds is how reality actually is.

I wrote:

I hope to have at least dispelled one myth: that all theistic worldviews are incompatible with science. That can only be true for the most naive religious worldviews, for the rest seamlessly and naturally absorb science in their understanding of reality.

to which you responded:

I am afraid you have done the opposite. Your confusion about God and quantum mechanics only helps to show that many people who are religious have a mistaken understanding of the physical world and assume a need for supernatural explanations where none is needed (as in your discussion of structure and order).The only God who is compatible with science is a God that does nothing.

Our discussion about whether structure and order can arise from zero structure and order (and not just from zero structure and order here while there is plenty of structure and order there) is in any case irrelevant to the main issue. I feel dispirited that you don't see that a theistic worldview can easily be such that no contradiction with science is possible. Why, suppose it turns out that we live in the Matrix like in the movie. That does not contradict science in any way, does it? After all scientists could do exactly the same experiments and observe exactly the same results - even though the physical laws, fundamental constants or even basic nature of the "real world" might well be quite different than the world the Matrix presents them for study. If the "real world" then were God how could that possibly contradict science? Again: if God directly causes all our conscious experiences including those observations on which all scientific knowledge rests what possible conflict with scientific knowledge could there be? And a God who does all that is certainly not a God who "does nothing".

879. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #49694 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 13, 2007 at 2:16 am

USA_Limey (502):

This would be like the nazi's saying in 1943 we don't have the right to question their extermination of the jews by herding them into gas chambers until we became anti-semites, becuse we just don't 'understand' the complexities of the jewish problem. Once an anti semite; well sure then you can question whether gassing them is the right thing to do. Or is that unfair?

I think one can always question the extermination of the Jews, but the Nazi answer that in order to understand why that extermination is reasonable one must first understand why antisemitism is reasonable, is I think valid. But then we can easily show that antisemitism is wrong, which implies that the extermination of the Jews justified on antisemitism is wrong too. Similarly, if you could argue that theism is wrong then Cristianity would be wrong by implication of that. But not vice-versa.

Maybe I see where the problem is. Maybe you are thinking thus: If theism brings some people to believe in some specific Christian beliefs which are plainly nonsense then theism must be nonsense too, and I don't have to waste any time studying it. Such train of thought might at first appear to be reasonable but is in fact fallacious. Consider the following analogy: Some people are led by science and the scientific method to believe in the existence of psychic phenomena such as telekinesis (for example see: "The conscious universe: the scientific truth of psychic phenomena" by Dean Radin.) Now I trust we agree that psychic phenomena is nonsense, but the fact that some people are led by science to believe in that nonsense does not mean that science itself is nonsense. Similarly science is used by some to do evil, but this does not mean that science is evil.

Regardless, your answer to my question was complete nonsense; I have no idea what it meant quite frankly.

I expected that. Indeed from the outside you won't understand Christianity before you understand theism.

Dianelos, by all means believe in God: but the divinity of christ? Dying for our sins? Resurection? This is garbage. I BEG you to please go and do some sober research into the early christian church and the pagan religions that went before it.

My objective here has been to explain why theism is reasonable. When you say "by all means believe in God" I take it you agree that theism at least might be a reasonable worldview. As for the specific Christian beliefs you mention, as I said before I too disagree with several Christian dogmas. But I am reluctant to right now discuss Christianity – that's a different ball game. I don't at all mind trying to explain how I justify my own Christian beliefs, but I'd rather not right now make our discussion here even more longwinded and complicated than it already is. First things first. See what happened when I tried to quickly answer a specific question about Christianity: you found it complete nonsense :-)

And I HIGHLY recommend the works of Joseph McCabe:

http://www.2think.org/hundredsheep/bible/library/myth.shtml

http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/joseph_mccabe/

McCabe was an ex-Franciscan monk who was fluent in latin and greek and could not reconcile what his English language bible was telling him and what he could read, first hand, in the ancient texts he read.

It's really all about the man made constructs of religion. It always was.

I had a go at the last link. I have seen that argument before: Christianity teaches of God's death and resurrection but there were many previous pagan religions where some god also died and resurrected. So? What does this imply? After all people have thought of thousands of gods, death and resurrection are big concepts (virtually all religions everywhere taught of life after death), so it is to be expected that some of these thousands of gods would undergo death and resurrection in the respective religious beliefs. But suppose I am wrong, and that the ancient beliefs about gods who died and resurrected are really remarkable and cannot be explained on statistical grounds. Even then, how does this somehow imply the falsity of Christian belief? On the contrary if resurrection myths are really that remarkable then a Christian might argue that this evidences the truth of Christianity. How so? Well, God created people in such way that they intuitively knew about the truth of God's death and resurrection in Christ, but as Christ had not yet come they created myths to instantiate the truth they intuitively knew.

There is an entire class of fallacious arguments with the following form: "The fact that one can explain on naturalistic grounds how some belief X that opposes naturalism has evolved implies that belief X is wrong". The fallacy should be obvious: the evolution of all beliefs can be explained on naturalistic grounds, so this cannot say anything about whether any one belief is in fact true or false, and of course some are true and other are false. One could call the entire class of such fallacious arguments "the naturalistic fallacy" (the term is normally used for the special case of ethical beliefs).

Fallacious thinking is very common, and both popular theism and popular atheism are plagued with such bad arguments. A good idea for both theists and atheists is to study books written by serious philosophers and see what kind of arguments they use to defend their positions or attack the opposite one. Let nobody think that theism or atheism are trivial matters easily disproved, for if it were so philosophers would have disproved one or the other long ago. For the record I predict that no serious atheist philosopher will include Dawkins's much ballyhooed "ultimate Boeing 747" argument against the existence of God in their future books. Rather future theist philosophers might use that argument as evidence of how naively and fallaciously even intelligent and educated atheists like Dawkins think about theism.

In my judgment the most common atheist fallacy is this: To attack the most loud, popular, or even most official/dogmatic theistic worldviews, and not the stronger theistic worldviews - which is a textbook example of the strawman fallacy.

880. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #49683 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 13, 2007 at 1:03 am

Krogercomplete (501):

I am still waiting for a justification of objective morality other than: (1) my intuition tells me, or (2) I would not want to live in a world where morality was not objective.

Sorry, I don't have any justification for my belief in objective morality. It's just an intuition: it's intuitively obvious for me that to torture children is objectively wrong and not a matter of opinion or convention, and that's that. Don't you agree it's objectively wrong? Actually knowing how it is to be a human being I have trouble imagining another human who would disagree. I can imagine that some people might think that they shouldn't believe that to torture children is objectively wrong, as some people might think they shouldn't believe they have free will (because to believe these things goes against naturalism) – but as far as I know the human condition I think it's impossible to really disbelieve them.

Now intuitions can be wrong, and several were shown to be wrong in the past. In the book I am now reading, "Conversations on consciousness", several of the interviewed people pointed out how the intuition that life cannot be reduced to chemistry (i.e. the intuition that there must exist some life giving force, the "elan vital", which when injected into an adequate physical body made it alive) was shown to be utterly wrong.

Let's define intuition as "a basic belief one considers reasonable even though one cannot justify it using even more basic beliefs". Then I would like to point out the following:

1. All normal people use or believe in intuitions. For example I bet you believe that there exists an objective reality out there that causes your conscious experiences, even though there is no justification for that belief. Similarly we all believe in the existence of other minds, i.e. that other people are really conscious beings and not just behave as if they were, but naturalists cannot offer any justification for that belief. Science is based on inductive reasoning, but it turns out that one cannot justify the validity of inductive reasoning. (Inductive reasoning is when one infers from many successful cases some universal claim; it turns out that one cannot justify inductive reasoning because to do so requires inductive reasoning.) And as inductive reasoning lies at the root of the scientific method strictly speaking all scientific beliefs cannot be justified. But no scientist loses any sleep because of that. Indeed you need induction to justify the validity of logic itself, but again no mathematician looses sleep because of that. After all, reason must start somewhere by asserting some basic beliefs. (Indeed Plantinga says that belief in God is such a "proper basic belief", but I find unnecessary to to assert belief in God as a precondition.)

2. Not all intuitions are equally strong, in other words there are degrees of "obvious". I would suggest that the deepest intuitions (the ones I think one cannot really disbelieve) are the ones related to our conscious experience, such as that we are conscious in the first place, or that we have free will. Then come the intuitions about the whole of reality, such as that there is an external objective reality that causes our experiences, that other minds exist, that objective morality exists, that induction is reasonable, etc. And at a more superficial level we find intuitions about specific properties of reality, such as that a life giving force must exist, that physical space is flat, that physical space and time are independent, that no physical "spooky actions at a distance" exist, that there is a deepest mathermatical description of physical phenomena (the theory of everything, TOE) etc. Incidentally all the latter intuitions but the last were shown to be wrong.

Intuitions have implications, and if it turns out that these implications conflict with other beliefs then we must drop one or the other. In the field of the problem of consciousness there is one philosopher, Daniel Dennett, who has adopted the following methodology: define anything that people believe about consciousness that does not fit with my own ideas as "intuition" and ask them to abandon them as "unscientific". In the end other philosophers (e.g. John Searle) decided that Dennett does not believe in the existence of consciousness. Here is how Dennett comments on this in an interview: "People don't like me saying that they're not conscious as much as they thought they are, and what they are conscious of doesn't have the features that they say it has. Their reaction to this is 'Oh Dan's just denying the existence of consciousness.' No, I'm not. I'm just saying it's not what they thought it was." Of course this is like saying: "I am not denying that ducks exist, I am just saying that ducks don't look like ducks, don't walk like ducks, and don't quack liked ducks."

In conclusion, one's worldview must of course be logically compatible with one's intuitions, and there are times when one must abandon some intuition when one finds it does not fit. (Conversely some worldviews can explain why some intuitions are true, for example theism explains why there are other minds). For example, even though Einstein did not live to see it, his very strongly felt intuition that there aren't any "spooky actions at a distance" was proven wrong by experiment, so he would have to either abandon the entire experimental validity of science or else abandon this particular intuition of his about physical reality, and of course he would have abandoned the latter. On the other hand if one's entire worldview is found to conflict with some of one's most deep intuitions I think there comes a point where the most reasonable reaction is to abandon one's worldview, especially when there are alternative worldviews that are free of such conflicts and at the same time have no disadvantage compared to one's previous worldview.

Which brings us back to my argument that a (non-naive) theistic worldview is more reasonable than naturalism. Such a theism has no disadvantage when compared to naturalism, in the sense that all that works well in naturalism (science, technology, you name it) also works well in theism. But theism avoids naturalism's problems and moreover is able to answer some deep questions that naturalism can't (such as why physical reality exists in the first place, or why the human condition - i.e. how it is to be a human being, how human life is subjectively experienced - is like it is). Such explanations are not mechanistic but, rather, are contingent on God's psychology as it were. I can understand that people used to mechanistic explanations find such psychological explanations not impressive but they are still explanations, and some explanation is better than no explanation. (I personally find such explanations very satisfactory, maybe because for a long time I have considered the basic constituent of reality to be personhood and not matter.)

881. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #49589 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 12, 2007 at 1:09 pm

_J_ (548):

Interesting post; I intend to comment in detail in the future, but would like to clarify two important points right away: one, why it is really impossible for a non-naive ontology to contradict or interfere with science in any way, and two, what the hard problem of consciousness is about.

You wrote:

Suppose you go to the doctor with back pain. You have been in a car accident. The doctor inspects your back and finds damage to the muscles caused by the stress of the impact. However, after describing a course of medication and physiotherapy consistent with this damage, he moves on: 'I'm not going to prescribe that, however, because I'm not persuaded that it's the cause of your discomfort. It's at least equally possible that you have been cursed by a witch, and that this muscular damage is only a manifestation of her malevolence. We'd need to deal with the root cause and burn the witch.'

According to science (and therefore according to my worldview also) the phenomena in question in your story are to be understood as follows: the injured muscles send signals to the brain where they cause a particular pattern of neural firings in its pain centers. Science (or at least science in the traditional sense of creating knowledge using the scientific method) has nothing to say about what causes the subjective experience of pain, i.e. why the particular pattern of neuron firings in the brain caused by the reception of these signals is experienced as painful, because the subjective experience of pain is beyond the realm of objective scientific investigation. Now our doctor is not only a scientist but also knows some philosophy and has her own ontological beliefs: maybe she is a naturalist and believes that the relevant pattern of neuron firings are objectively real and cause the experience of pain themselves; or maybe she is an idealistic theist like me and believes that God causes the experience of pain as part of the goal to give us the experience of an orderly experiential physical environment; or maybe she has voodoo leanings and believes that it's a witch who causes the sensation of pain when such neural firings happen in the brain. In all three cases though, i.e. no matter her ontological beliefs about reality, she is going to prescribe medication and physiotherapy in order to stop this pattern of neural firings from taking place in her patient's brain. Why? Because by stopping that, no matter what or who causes the subjective experience of pain, her patient will feel better.

You see? Unless one uses a very naive worldview, one's understanding of reality cannot possibly contradict or interfere with scientific knowledge.

Having said that I would like to remind you that as I argued in post 492 (#49081 point 2) one must be careful not to confuse the concept of consciousness with the concept of conscious experience. Consciousness denotes the capacity of having conscious experiences in the first place. So what characterizes a conscious material system is having that capacity. And what troubles those who study consciousness from the naturalistic perspective is literally the question of how "something material could become conscious", i.e. how a particular configuration of matter could achieve the capacity of having conscious experience. If we accept that capacity as a given, it seems to me that the problem of consciousness becomes easy: the only thing remaining is to map exactly what physical processes in the brain correlate with specific conscious experiences. And that's not a hard problem.

882. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #49429 by Dianelos Georgoudis on June 12, 2007 at 12:30 am

Dr Benway (500):

If the supernatural realm is orderly and comprehensible, we ought to study it.

I completely agree.

What we learn about it can then be added to our body of scientific knowledge.

I don't think that the supernatural is amenable to the scientific method. The scientific method requires the presence of objective evidence, which can only be objectively observable physical phenomena (including human behavior and how people talk about the conscious experiences). On the other hand we can safely assume that we all share the same experimental environment (including the subjective bits of how it is to see red, how it is to perceive beauty, etc), so there is no reason why we shouldn't be able to study it together. Only I think we shouldn't call such study "scientific", because to do so would be confusing.

In the book I am reading right now ("Conversations on consciousness" by Susan Blackmore – and interesting but also sprawling book) David Chalmers (one of the brightest minds working in the field of consciousness) begs to disagree. Here is what he says:

"Sure, science is meant to be objective, and consciousness is subjective. So you might say that therefore science can't deal with consciousness. I think that's a fallacy. [snip] So now I guess the question is how to bring consciousness back into the scientific world. My own attitude is that consciousness is data. As scientists we are used to talking about data and the results of certain measurements, and we try to build a science that deals with them. Usually these are objective data, but we have subjective data too. The data of consciousness – the way things seem to me right now – are data too. I am having a certain sensation of red with a certain shape right now. I am hearing a certain quality in the tone of my voice and so on. This is as undeniable as the objective data in the world of science. And science ought to be dealing with that."

I actually agree with everything there, but if Chalmers wants science to deal with subjective data too then the scientific method must be extended. I mean one of the hallowed principles of science is that only objective data count as scientific evidence. I really think it would be confusing to change all that and keep calling it "science". But what name we should use is the lesser of worries.

883. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath