…and this is a 
Theological inanity
Category: Religion
Posted on: December 18, 2007 6:05 PM, by PZ Myers
Someday, I'm going to have to get John Wilkins to explain to me why we still have universities with theology departments, and haven't razed them to the ground and sent the few remaining rational people in them off to sociology and anthropology departments where their work might actually have some relevance. It's terribly uncharitable of me, but after reading this interview with John Haught, a Georgetown University theologian, I'm convinced that the discipline is the domain of vapid hacks stuffed full of antiquated delusions. I also feel bad for the guy since he did testify on the side of reason in the Dover trial. On the other hand, he is one of Richard Dawkins' fleas, and has a new book on the way complaining about those annoying New Atheists — which is another serious strike against theology. How is it that a book all the inmates in that moribund playroom full of pious god-wallopers despise has become the central focus of their academic careers? I could see it if they were actually addressing the arguments in The God Delusion, but they never seem to do more than squeal the same old arguments in favor of their tired dogmas.
This is an interview, so it jumps around awkwardly, which is too bad — the interviewer keeps interrupting with a change of subject as the absurdity builds. Here are a few of the rich and flaky highlights, though.
My chief objection to the new atheists is that they are almost completely ignorant of what's going on in the world of theology. They talk about the most fundamentalist and extremist versions of faith, and they hold these up as though they're the normative, central core of faith. And they miss so many things. They miss the moral core of Judaism and Christianity -- the theme of social justice, which takes those who are marginalized and brings them to the center of society. They give us an extreme caricature of faith and religion.
Speaking for myself as one of those New Atheists (you do know there are more than four, right?), I have to admit he's right. I don't know what's going on in the world of theology. And I don't give a damn. Every time I read something by one of these credulous apologists for religion, I am further convinced that they are just making stuff up.
But also, they don't seem to have much at all to do with modern religion. Huckabee is more of a representative of religious thought than Haught, yet somehow these theologians are so full of themselves that they think we have to pay attention to their enervated and irrelevant excuse-making.
Also speaking for myself, I certainly don't regard the extremism as normative. I consider the feeble gullibility of, for instance, the average Lutheran church member to be the real problem — that our country and our culture as a whole endorses institutions that encourage credulity in the face of religious baloney. Even if the radical fringe weren't throwing bombs, I'd still be asking people why the heck they believe in such patent nonsense.
The new atheists don't want to think out the implications of a complete absence of deity. Nietzsche, as well as Sartre and Camus, all expressed it quite correctly. The implications should be nihilism.
Here we have yet another believer trying to tell us what the logical conclusion of atheism should be: in this case, nihilism. Doesn't the fact that none of the New Atheists that I know of are nihilists matter? I guess if you're willing to abandon any requirement for evidence, you can also ignore any evidence that counters your opinion.
How do we account for the courage to go on living in the absence of hope? As you move to the later writings of Camus and Sartre, those books are saying it's difficult to live without hope. What I want to show in my own work -- as an alternative to the new atheists -- is a universe in which hope is possible.
NOT nihilists, 'k? Complaining that the New Atheists is about hopelessness completely misses the point.
But in the new cosmography, it seems that mindless matter dominates the whole picture. And many scientists, like Dawkins and Gould, have said evolution has destroyed the notion of purpose. So one thing I do in my theology is to say that's not necessarily true.
There is an apparent lack of cosmic intent in the universe; that's simply the way it is. If anyone wants to claim that there is, then it's up to them to provide the evidence for it. This, of course, is not the same as saying that humans lack any kind of purpose — as conscious, intelligent agents, we can certainly come up with purposes for our lives.
What do you say to the atheists who demand evidence or proof of the existence of a transcendent reality?
The hidden assumption behind such a statement is often that faith is belief without evidence. Therefore, since there's no scientific evidence for the divine, we should not believe in God. But that statement itself -- that evidence is necessary -- holds a further hidden premise that all evidence worth examining has to be scientific evidence. And beneath that assumption, there's the deeper worldview -- it's a kind of dogma -- that science is the only reliable way to truth. But that itself is a faith statement. It's a deep faith commitment because there's no way you can set up a series of scientific experiments to prove that science is the only reliable guide to truth. It's a creed.
I'm used to hearing people complain that atheism is a religion (at least Haught specifically denies that in the Dover transcript), but now science is a religion? Piffle. Science is pragmatic and operational. We don't demand or expect proof of anything, but we do demand at least a little bit of evidence for any claim. Not as an article of faith, mind you, but simply because it has worked well before, and we've had a lot of mileage out of that expectation.
Is science the only way of knowing? It is a way, and it's effective. I've noticed that those who complain about scientists always demanding evidence and material causes and testable hypotheses and such nuisances never seem to get around to telling us what their alternative method might be. Haught is no exception. Here he is, complaining about our elitist exclusivity and our "faith" in the scientific method, and he can't be bother tell us how else he proposes we figure things out. Shall we pray for answers? Will divine revelation help us understand how, say, nerves conduct action potentials, or how genes specify body plans, or whether that girl likes us enough to say "yes" when we ask her to dance?
So tell us, John Haught, what is another reliable way to truth?
The traditions of religion and philosophy have always maintained that the most important dimensions of reality are going to be least accessible to scientific control. There's going to be something fuzzy and elusive about them. The only way we can talk about them is through symbolic and metaphoric language -- in other words, the language of religion. Traditionally, we never apologized for the fact that we used fuzzy language to refer to the real because the deepest aspect of reality grasps us more than we grasp it. So we can never get our minds around it.
Huh. I thought that mathematics was the way we talked about reality. It sure beats the useless language of religion.
And I think religion has been utterly useless in telling us anything about the nature of the world. If it were up to religion, we'd still be slaughtering goats to try and make it rain.
Let's skip a lot of nonsense about neuroscience and evolution from this guy, and jump ahead to how he defines reality.
But let me get to my third understanding of religion. That's a belief that this ultimate reality is at heart personal, by which we mean it is intelligent and is capable of love and making promises. This is the fundamental thinking about God in the Quran and the Bible -- God is personal. Theologically speaking, personality is a symbol, like everything else in religion. Like all symbols, "personality" doesn't adequately capture the full depth of ultimate reality. But the conviction of the Abrahamic religions is that if ultimate reality were not at least personal -- at least capable of everything that humans are capable of -- then we could not surrender ourselves fully to it. It would be an "it" rather than a "thou" and therefore would not reach us in the depth of our being.
I'm sorry, but that is an awful lot of bullshit. He demands a personal god because personal authority is all he understands…but that, of course, is no evidence for this god's existence. It's only evidence for why he has gone through all these silly rationalizations to convince himself that this being is real. It's how he justifies nonsense like this:
Let's take the example of prayer. You are a Christian. Do you believe God answers your prayers?
Yes, but I have to go along with Martin Gardner here and ask, what if God answered everybody's prayers? What kind of world would we have? I also have to think of what Jesus said when his disciples asked him to teach them to pray. What he told them, in effect, was to pray for something really big. He called it "the kingdom of God." What that means is praying for the ultimate fulfillment of all being, of all the universe. So when we pray, we're asking that the world might have a future. I believe God is answering our prayers but not always in the ways we want. In the final analysis, we hope and trust that God will show or reveal himself as one who has been accompanying our prayers and responding to the world all along, but not necessarily in the narrow way that the human mind is able to conjure up.
Sometimes god answers your prayers, sometimes he doesn't, sometimes he does something completely unexpected. There's no pattern, no predictability, no rules — god is a cosmic slot machine. This is sophisticated theological thought?
And it just gets worse.
What do you make of the miracles in the Bible -- most importantly, the Resurrection? Do you think that happened in the literal sense?
I don't think theology is being responsible if it ever takes anything with completely literal understanding. What we have in the New Testament is a story that's trying to awaken us to trust that our lives make sense, that in the end, everything works out for the best. In a pre-scientific age, this is done in a way in which unlettered and scientifically illiterate people can be challenged by this Resurrection. But if you ask me whether a scientific experiment could verify the Resurrection, I would say such an event is entirely too important to be subjected to a method which is devoid of all religious meaning.
Apparently, the resurrection happened, but it was just too darn important to be supported by that ghastly non-religious "evidence" stuff. Nice dodge. You'd have to be an idiot to fall for it, though.
Now are you ready for some real hilarity?
So if a camera was at the Resurrection, it would have recorded nothing?
If you had a camera in the upper room when the disciples came together after the death and Resurrection of Jesus, we would not see it. I'm not the only one to say this. Even conservative Catholic theologians say that. Faith means taking the risk of being vulnerable and opening your heart to that which is most important. We trivialize the whole meaning of the Resurrection when we start asking, Is it scientifically verifiable? Science is simply not equipped to deal with the dimensions of purposefulness, love, compassion, forgiveness -- all the feelings and experiences that accompanied the early community's belief that Jesus is still alive. Science is simply not equipped to deal with that. We have to learn to read the universe at different levels. That means we have to overcome literalism not just in the Christian or Jewish or Islamic interpretations of scripture but also in the scientific exploration of the universe. There are levels of depth in the cosmos that science simply cannot reach by itself.
Wow. The amazing disappearing camera. If something theologically significant were ever to occur, god would conveniently make all the evidence disappear.
This guy is completely batty. If this is an example of theological thinking, I'm entirely justified in dismissing this entire academic discipline — these guys are the equivalent of astrologers, still lurking in the spider-webbed corners of our universities.
Comments
"Sometimes god answers your prayers, sometimes he doesn't, sometimes he does something completely unexpected. There's no pattern, no predictability, no rules -- god is a cosmic slot machine. This is sophisticated theological thought?"
Sounds like George Carlin except that George has a sense of humor.
Posted by: Fernando Magyar | December 18, 2007 6:16 PM
Oh, the blithering wrongness!
This man is supposed to be a serious scholar, but he sounds like he had a run-in with a brick wall and an Orangina bottle. The upside is that with every breath, he proves his irrelevance to the megachurch mainstream of American religion.
I don't think James Dobson would say that.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | December 18, 2007 6:19 PM
There are only "new atheists" because there are "new theists", provoking new, deadly attitudes and dumb behaviour! For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You have to have theists first, for any kind of atheism to have any meaning.
Posted by: PeteK | December 18, 2007 6:23 PM
So saith the theologian:
So, you're telling me that the Grand Canyon has to be a person in order for me to feel impressed when I stand on the rim of it? Utter frothing lunacy. The fact that it is much bigger and much older than myself or any other human — indeed, much older than human civilization — only makes it more awe-inspiring.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | December 18, 2007 6:25 PM
I remember being slightly swayed 10, 15 years ago with Haught's type of arguments--not that a god existed, but that real religion was all this fuzzy symbolic "warm glowing warming glow" (as Homer Simpson once said of television) and that the fundies were missing the point with their childish literal-mindedness.
Yes, I was knee-deep in books by Joseph Campbell, Mircea Eliade, Elaine Pagels, Karen Armstrong, John Dominic Crossan, John Shelby Spong, etc. But after a couple years I just realized even this view of religion was too heavy to keep dragging around. It was after reading S.T. Joshi's biography of H.P. Lovecraft in 1996 where Joshi showed how the Cthulhu mythos was actually a parody of religion. And it all suddenly made sense: "the transubstantiation of the Eucharist" or "There is no god but God" had as much explanatory power of reality, symbolic or otherwise, as "Ia! Ia! Cthulhu ftagn!" or "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn." That is to say, none whatsoever. And Lovecraft knew it. And then I knew it.
And so then I put away childish things--not fundamentalist religion that Haught seems to think atheists are obsessed with, but the liberal, "tolerant" and "symbolic" kind that reduces everything to everything else, a huge mish-mash of wishful thinking, truly an intellectual dead end. Now that's nihilism.
Posted by: Will E. | December 18, 2007 6:32 PM
I would actually love to see one of these asshats get booed off a stage at a megachurch. Or, Hell, even a nice, quiet Baptist church that seems perfectly sensible and serene -- until he tells them that they don't believe what they think they believe, that really Christianity is so much more sophisticated than to believe that the Resurrection actually happened. At which point, well, they'd probably burn him for a heretic or something.
That's certainly what would have happened to a guy like this at my old church, anyway.
Posted by: Joshua | December 18, 2007 6:33 PM
Yes, I see the same games being played with words, concepts, and categories which dance, jump around, and switch sides as they try to play tennis without a net. A nice, smug little scold which apparently fails to ever engage with any actual issues.
When religion contains something wise, profound, moving, and meaningful to atheists -- and it often does -- that means that the religion has encroached onto philosophy, psychology, ethics, art, or science. In other words, it has gone into secular territory -- or else it would not have managed to make sense to people who don't belong to the religion or believe in the God. Complaining that atheists don't pay enough attention to those things misses the whole point. You can't indicate common ground so you can establish that your ground is higher.
Haught said:
Reading what PZ quoted here, I would say that he really means that "we trivialize the whole meaning of religion when we start asking 'Is it true?'" Who cares? It's all symbol and metaphor and comfort and let's pretend. Don't take it literally for God's sake. Except when we do.
Posted by: Sastra, OM | December 18, 2007 6:34 PM
Blake Stacey #4 wrote:
No, no, no -- the Grand Canyon has to be made by a Person in order for you to be impressed when you stand on the rim of it. It has to be made by Someone just for you to feel impressed -- or you'll become a nihilist and throw yourself into it. I guess.
Posted by: Sastra, OM | December 18, 2007 6:38 PM
Someone get me some mustard for that brain pretzel.
Posted by: Justin H. | December 18, 2007 6:41 PM
I'm waiting for the day that the neuroscientists get around to proving that faith itself does not exist, that it is an ontological argument without a referent in objective reality. Only then will we be able to describe how it is that people come to believe this batshit.
Is it genetic, epigenetic, memetic, etc.? Believing in even the possibility of such a thing as faith begs questions in metaepistemology that the theologians need to address, e.g. In what situations should one use reason over faith, and vice versa. If one has a headache, should one pray, take aspirin, or both? What does the answer say about the ideas of non-contradiction and objective reality?
Until we know more about how our minds model reality and form beliefs, we will not be able to fully shake the opinions of people who believe that faith is real, and a viable form of cognition.
Posted by: ennui | December 18, 2007 6:43 PM
Re: "The new atheists don't want to think out the implications of a complete absence of deity."
I am an atheist, have been for 68 years, so I don't know if I am an old one or a new one. But, PZ, I think he is right. I think that George Carlin's analysis is correct: (paraphrase) Think how stupid people are who have an IQ of 100, and then realize that half the people in the world are stupider than that.
We the atheists, may be right about the non-existence of God. But, if there were no religion, most of the people in the world would feel hopeless, valueless and completely lost. I know that this doesn't apply to the rest of the world, but, in this country we should spend less time trying to convince people about non-existence and more time enforcing the First Amendment. Let them have their "blankie" to snuggle up to for warmth and comfort, just don't let them insist that everyone else has to snuggle up with them.
Posted by: Karl | December 18, 2007 6:44 PM
I can't interpret his view on prayer as anything other than that god will give you anything you want, as long as you don't ask for anything. And that seems to be the same kind of argument he uses for everything else as well. Is this actually convincing to anyone who thinks about it, even for a second? And this guy has made a career out of this? Along with countless others? Boy, did I choose the wrong thing to study.
And I've really got to buy that Lovecraft biography.
Posted by: Ted D | December 18, 2007 6:44 PM
Posted by: Sili | December 18, 2007 6:45 PM
The disappearing camera trick just blows my mind. The event sort of not quite really happened, in that it really occured in a not-literally sort of way, even though the events are portrayed accurately, and it just isn't fair to ask questions that would make thinking about them less, err, transcendental and non-imaginary. But in a deeply meaningful and extremely sophisticated sort of way, obviously (did I get that about right?).
That's some serious heavy duty doublethink going on there. Sorry, I mean sophisticated theological thought.
Posted by: Brain Hertz | December 18, 2007 6:46 PM
Posted by: Bobby | December 18, 2007 6:48 PM
It has to be made by Someone just for you to feel impressed -- or you'll become a nihilist and throw yourself into it. I guess.
Tsk, you're not thinking like a christian; you'll throw other people and puppies into it. ;-)
Posted by: RamblinDude | December 18, 2007 6:50 PM
No no, you are not reading the fine print. Of course there's a pattern! God answers serious prayers coming from respectable theologians like Haught, but not everyone's prayers, it simply wouldn't do if God got bogged down with all sorts of frivolous requests coming from the rabble!
Posted by: windy | December 18, 2007 6:55 PM
I took a stab at tearing this thing apart last night:
http://scaryreasoner.wordpress.com/2007/12/18/john-haught-is-a-terrible-philosopher/
One thing I noted is that even if atheism actually did invariably lead to nihilism, this is not a good argument for the truth claims of religion. Complaining that atheism leads to nihilism is making an argument from consequences, -- that nihilism is undesirable, therefore atheism is false -- which is a logical fallacy.
Posted by: SteveC | December 18, 2007 6:58 PM
Re: Disappearing Camera
I think he was saying that the camera would not record anything.
In other words, without faith there is no violation of rules. (This makes his beliefs in miracles kind of batty - would only he be able to see his healthy daughter while everyone else would think she died?)
Posted by: Chris Bell | December 18, 2007 7:08 PM
Theology is a philosophy created solely by people in an altered state of consciousness. It is like a stoner that thinks his poetry totally kicks ass, if the bastard were to sober up, he would look at it and say... "Maybe I need to cut back..." But theologists never sober up, they just keep pumping out the Peace, Love and Understanding crap, while the Huckabees out there are jacked up on PCP going at the windows with a baseball bat.
We don't need to read through the three book epic, Ode to a Bag of Cheeto's, to know that all of it is crap.
Posted by: Frito | December 18, 2007 7:10 PM
Once upon a time, I was immersed in a fairly moderate christian environment and belief system. Speaking only from my n=1 perspective, I've found it a LOT easier to find optimism and hope in my own life as an atheist that I *ever* did as an aspiring christian.
At the risk of sounding like an echo, {hopelessness | depression} != atheism != nihlism.
Posted by: Steve in MI | December 18, 2007 7:14 PM
"We trivialize the whole meaning of the Resurrection when we start asking, Is it scientifically verifiable?"
I don't remember Doubting Thomas being struck blind in the Resurrection story when he asked for some damn evidence. Did Jesus say "Go ahead and finger my undead body, as long as you don't make any repeatable measurements"?
Posted by: windy | December 18, 2007 7:15 PM
I don't think he's saying that camera would have disappeared or that it would have failed to record anything. What he's saying (if I'm reading it right; it's awfully hard to tell) is that the theologically significant event didn't happen in that room; it happened inside people's heads. So there would have been nothing visible there for the camera to record, except a lot of blissful Apostles.
In other words, the proper interpretation of the Resurrection is as a case of the Emperor's new clothes. Only a vulgarian would insist on an actual, physical Resurrection.
Posted by: Gregory Kusnick | December 18, 2007 7:16 PM
"You'd have to be an idiot to fall for it, though."
Yup, that seems to be the way it works.
I once pointed out some obvious absurdity to my brother. He huffily replied that some very intelligent people have spent a lot of time thinking about these issues.
Right, starting from idiotic principles.
Posted by: BaldApe | December 18, 2007 7:20 PM
I understood Haught to be saying that a camera would not have recorded Jesus as physically present among the disciples, not that the camera would vanish. He is suggesting that these stories are symbolic, and that they encapsulate in narrative form experiences that were subjective rather than physical in nature. Why would you criticize him for admitting this?
I don't see what the problem is. Plenty of things are studied at universities which I don't particularly have an interest in or an appreciation for. Surely you aren't suggesting that we should keep or cut departments and programs based on whether everyone appreciates them.
I wonder what you'd make of some appreciative comments about theology an atheist made on my blog recently. Do take a look - I have more to offer than just parody video games and critical reviews of O'Leary's books! :)
Posted by: James McGrath | December 18, 2007 7:21 PM
PZ,
I understand why you don't care what is going on in theology, but I still have to ask, why is it the religious always assume that those who aren't religious simply "don't know." They all seem to think we, the non believers, grew up in a cave in Antarctica or something, if we simply knew then we'd believe. Every single conversation inevitably gets the the point where they say something to the effect of, "you should read/study the Bible." To which I explain that I have, thank you, as well as the Koran, Talmud, Hindu Vedas, and Buddhist texts, and with the exception of latter, they're all equally full of crap. The only one of the above I don't find ridiculous is the school of Buddhism that effectively says whether there is a God or not is irrelevant, how you act is what matters.
Why is it they assume ignorance on their part, are they so arrogant as to believe that they're qualified to "teach" us?
Posted by: dogmeatib | December 18, 2007 7:21 PM
To my "narrow" mind, this is just a long way of saying, "Pray for things to turn out however they turn out," which completely contradicts the meaning of the word "prayer". I mean, when someone says, "pray tell..." are they saying, "I hope you end up saying whatever you end up saying in whatever way you end up saying it"?
Posted by: Wes | December 18, 2007 7:24 PM
And so then I put away childish things--not fundamentalist religion that Haught seems to think atheists are obsessed with, but the liberal, "tolerant" and "symbolic" kind that reduces everything to everything else, a huge mish-mash of wishful thinking, truly an intellectual dead end. Now that's nihilism.
*applause*
indeed, just like with most of the religious, Haught projects his own unconscious realization of the intellectual dead end that is religious apologetics on to the rest of us.
they only are barely consciously aware that they are on a sinking ship, and assume that everyone else around them is in the same boat.
instead, the rest of us are sitting pretty on a nice yacht, wondering why in the hell these folks aren't jumping off that ship.
Posted by: Ichthyic | December 18, 2007 7:29 PM
They all seem to think we, the non believers, grew up in a cave in Antarctica or something, if we simply knew then we'd believe.
it's not an uncommon thinking pattern to assume that if your audience only could see the things you have, or experienced the same things you have, that they would think the same way about them.
I used to think the same way about science. "If everyone could just see how selection actually does work to shape the direction of phenotypes in a population, they would of course see the value of the ToE"
rather naive thinking, now that I look back on it after 20 years of trying to convince the unconvincable of the evidences supporting the ToE.
the only difference between religious apologists and scientists in this matter, is that scientists have independently verifiable evidence to support their conclusions.
apologists don't, and never will.
hence, logically, I have to agree completely with PZ that schools of theology are intellectual dead ends and a complete waste of time.
the positive contributions from theology are philosophical or sociological in nature, not actually theological (they simply can't be - you'd have to have conclusions verified by a deity!), so while theologists might point to positive contributions they have made, they would have made the exact same contributions working within the framework of a dept. of sociology or philosophy.
Posted by: Ichthyic | December 18, 2007 7:38 PM
I don't remember Doubting Thomas being struck blind in the Resurrection story when he asked for some damn evidence. Did Jesus say "Go ahead and finger my undead body, as long as you don't make any repeatable measurements"?
LOL
gotta remember that one.
Posted by: Ichthyic | December 18, 2007 7:41 PM
All i can say is Wow. I love the concept that any religious miracle is indistinguishable from hearsay. I could use this man to testify while registering my local chapter of the pastafarian church.
Posted by: Dutch Delight | December 18, 2007 7:47 PM
Just yesterday I recall someone commenting on how atheists bend the definition of religion to include things not traditionally thought of as religious. I think this interview is a perfect example of the bending of the definition of science by the religious, mixed with a healthy dose of projection. Why do all their arguments come down to atheism is a dogmatic religion? You can see them moving in that direction before they even get there. And as usual, they never define this religion of atheism.
The guy is attributing religious connotations to things that are not such. If everything is a belief, then everything is religion. And if science is in fact a religion, it's still the only one with any evidence of its existence. Science's other key difference was that it was discovered, not revealed.
And when will someone point out the obvious, that if religion then exists only to provide "hope", then is not its fallacy completely revealed? Is it not then the world's oldest placebo?
Posted by: BlueIndependent | December 18, 2007 7:48 PM
Can Haught really not understand that his method of argument can be used to "prove" anything including both theism and atheism?
Posted by: Patrick Quigley | December 18, 2007 7:50 PM
Theology, huh, yeah
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Uh-huh
Posted by: JohnnieCanuck, FCD | December 18, 2007 7:54 PM
Yes, I understand that the camera wouldn't literally disappear -- having apparatus mysteriously vanish would actually be weak evidence for the supernatural event. It just wouldn't work, or wouldn't record anything.
Posted by: PZ Myers | December 18, 2007 8:05 PM
PZ,
I think you handled this article long before it was written, and in just two words: Courtier's Reply.
Posted by: G | December 18, 2007 8:05 PM
This is nonsense. Science gives an account of every causative influence in your local environment. Unless you think knowledge gets into your head by way of magic or miracle, science is your only means of knowing anything about anything, as science has ably demonstrated through science. Haught's "scientific experiments to prove that science is the only reliable guide to truth" amount to every scientific experiment ever performed from Galileo until now. Scientific imperialism didn't have to be true - we started out with only the most mundane slithers of knowledge, nothing like the great systems of knowledge the philosophers and theologians laid claim to, and there was no reason to think it would consume everything in its path - but now it's just a raw fact that science is "the only reliable way to truth." We won. You lost. Get over it.
Posted by: poke | December 18, 2007 8:07 PM
When I read Haught I'm reminded of (I think) Hitchens's commentary that the intellectual contortions required to justify religion are themselves arguments against religion. I'm trying to comprehend his description of the great warm fuzzy that is "ultimate reality," but it just bounces around in my head before flying out again. Just what is "ultimate reality" anyhow? It sounds to me like the kind of gibberish I would hear from Depak Chopra.
My great frustration is that I am fairly sure people like Haught are well meaning, but for the life of me I can't figure out what that meaning is. Do we even speak the same language? This airy sort of religious talk is the background I grew up in. In it's way it's preferable to the more literal kind, but even as a small child it never made any sense to me at all. For years I wondered if there was something wrong with me that it all seemed so meaningless. Now I'm certain the problem is I just never learned to speak bullshit.
Haught's worst argument, imo, is that it shouldn't matter that we could never get scientific confirmation of Jesus's ressurection. What!? Either it happened or it didn't. If not, what great news for mankind! What powerful confirmation that all that love he ascribes to the early church is accessible to us at any time, without need for imaginary deities, ridiculous domgmas, or the abandonment of reason. That would indeed be a gospel worth spreading.
Posted by: observer | December 18, 2007 8:08 PM
Why do all their arguments come down to atheism is a dogmatic religion?
i assume you meant that rhetorically, since the obvious answer drawn from the rest of your post is:
projection.
the more interesting question is:
what does it mean psychologically when the primary arguments coming from theologians (and all the religious, frankly), commonly start with such massive levels of projection?
projection and denial are psychological defense mechanisms.
are they just defending a worldview that subconsciously even they realize is undefendable, so end up reacting by putting up psychological defense mechanisms?
Posted by: Ichthyic | December 18, 2007 8:08 PM
(long time in uffish thought he stood)
PZ, PZ, PZ. Haught, whatever his faults, is not claiming that science is a religion. He's saying that the metaphysical stance adopted by many practicing scientists about the natural world, often incorrectly conflated with science, seems to go hand-in-hand with the enthronment of science as the 'only way to Truth'. I think that's a fair statement in and of itself, though one could certainly ask what concept of 'Truth' is being discussed, and whether it is coherent with the practice of science....
Anyway, Haught is in the business of constructing meaning for claims that can not, by definition, be tested. As long as there are people who feel that untestable claims must be made meaningful there are going to be jobs for theologians. And philosophers. And poets. And Tin Pan Alley tunesmiths, etc. Granted that all of this hemming and hawing by God-whallopers is vague and not terrible useful to the practice of science, do most of us really want to live in a Joe Friday Universe, devoid of everything but the facts, ma'am?
Besides, even if some of us really did want that, it would never happen. Secular society would continue to pursue metaphor and ambiguity for a number of reasons, among them aesthetic, and the scientific community would still have questions that not only lack answers, but which lack any confirmed correspondence with reality. You may not like to hear this, but many popularizations of science function very much like theology. That is, they employ metaphor and are often ambiguous about the sort of conclusions that can be drawn from them. I confess to feeling conficted about what this might mean. Certainly I would never say that science is religion, or that each 'way of knowing' is equally justified on logical grounds, or that each is equally effective at looking at the natural world. But I also feel impoverished by the idea that any thing by itself is a source of 'Truth' with a capital 'T'. Not saying you're saying that, mind, just demarcating my little hill of angst.
Speaking of that elusive truth, it seems plain to me that Haught is not congenial to atheists Old or New, and despite having been an ally of mainstream science in the creo/evo wars, he now has the cheek to be one of Dr. Dawkins's fleas. And this grates on some, and now you've called him on it, and not just him, but his whole academic discipline, his preferred mode of thought, etc.
(trollishly) I'm not concerned or anything (wink wink), but don't you think there might be a baby or two in all that bathwater?
Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | December 18, 2007 8:10 PM
PZ, PZ, PZ.
you've been here long enough to know that condescension doesn't play well, Scott.
it's a warning sign right off that you think your argument might be weak.
As long as there are people who feel that untestable claims must be made meaningful there are going to be jobs for theologians.
exactly the whole point of the thread, and exactly why logically theologians are in a dead end job.
trying to form a convoluted reasoning process to defend one's position is logical, but the arguments themselves raised by Haught are not.
Posted by: Ichthyic | December 18, 2007 8:16 PM
It's also an argument from consequences. "But look, atheism makes you hopeless! Do you really want that?"
I completely agree that we don't and can't know if science is a reliable way to truth. Science is the only reliable way to reality.
Now, whether any truth exists behind reality is an untestable and therefore boring and time-wasting question. :-|
And how is theology supposed to answer it? By simply assuming an answer? How would it find out if it were wrong?
-------------------
Interesting. That's the opposite metaphor from what I use: it simply hangs in the air (without any connection to the ground of evidence). Iä! Iä! :-)
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windy for Molly.
Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | December 18, 2007 8:17 PM
(trollishly) I'm not concerned or anything (wink wink), but don't you think there might be a baby or two in all that bathwater?
we've looked carefully.
nope.
safe to toss out the whole thing.
Posted by: Ichthyic | December 18, 2007 8:17 PM
test
Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | December 18, 2007 8:18 PM
Well, you know what they say about dazzling with brilliance or baffling with bullshit.
Frito: In honor of your comment, I am going to start a thrashcore band and name it "Huckabee on PCP".
Posted by: Rey Fox | December 18, 2007 8:19 PM
test
test
test
Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | December 18, 2007 8:20 PM
1) All elephants are pink.
2) Bob (or Jesus) is an elephant.
3) Bob is Pink.
Theologians are people who spend millenia explaining all of the complex ways in which this syllogism can be interpreted. They write innumerable books with differing definitions of 'pink.' They burn one another at the stake over what constitutes an elephant.
And the one thing that causes them to close ranks and huff is we atheists, who keep telling them that elephants aren't pink.
Steve "Garbage in, theology out." James
Posted by: longstreet63 | December 18, 2007 8:22 PM
The Bible is a symbol of stupidity and wishful thinking, nothing more.
There's nothing wonderful about it.
Haught, you are purveying recycled, second-rate religious bullshit.
Stop conning people.
Stop wasting people's time.
Posted by: CalGeorge | December 18, 2007 8:26 PM
David,
Is it even an argument from consequences? Isn't it more like, "what's wrong with you guys? Don't you know that Atheism is supposed to make you hopeless? Why aren't you hopeless?"
Posted by: observer | December 18, 2007 8:30 PM
And how is theology supposed to answer it? By simply assuming an answer? How would it find out if it were wrong?
there's only one way, and "god" ain't talkin'.
Posted by: Ichthyic | December 18, 2007 8:33 PM
Theologians are people who spend millenia explaining all of the complex ways in which this syllogism can be interpreted. They write innumerable books with differing definitions of 'pink.' They burn one another at the stake over what constitutes an elephant.
well, you know what they say...
"idle hands are the devil's playground"
:P
Posted by: Ichthyic | December 18, 2007 8:35 PM
here is my Christmas prayer:
God it is the 21st century. we have Tivo, we have You Tube, We have 24 hour cable news. They have some great entertainment but they also show us jihad, suicide bombings, beheadings, and people who think Mike Huckabee would make a good president. Please stop asking 6+ billion people to leave the salvation of their eternal soul to the mistranslated ramblings of a few illiterate goat herders and camel jockeys.
God, please put in an appearance, take over all the networks, (not ESPN on Sundays, though), speak in all languages, post your eternal word online with a Creative Commons license. No burning bushes. No whispering to unwashed prophets living alone in a desert. I am asking for you to take an hour of prime time to set the record straight. We'll still be able to sin, We'll still have free will. we just won't have a reason to kill each other over who is right and wrong.
Posted by: Kevin | December 18, 2007 8:37 PM
Here's what struck me in all the bibble:
He keeps going on about hope. How theism offers hope; how atheism doesn't.
I assume that by "hope" he means "hope for immortality." In my experience, that's usually what Christian theologians mean when they talk about "hope." And that is the main thing believers hope for that atheists don't. After all, I have hope for lots of things. I hope my new book does well; I hope my baby niece will be healthy and happy; I hope global warming gets handled before the climate changes so drastically that civilization collapses. None of these hopes require God or an afterlife.
So basically, he's saying that life is meaningless and hopeless unless you get to have it forever.
How unbelievably greedy.
To riff off of Dawkins' "We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones" piece: The fact that we got to be born at all makes us impossibly, astronomically lucky. To complain about the fact that you get roughly 70 or 80 years instead of infinity... it's like winning a million dollars in the lottery, and complaining about the fact that it wasn't a hundred billion.
No, worse. It's like winning a million dollars in the lottery, and complaining because it isn't infinite access to all the riches and wealth in the world.
What a whiner.
Posted by: Greta Christina | December 18, 2007 8:38 PM
I am extremely hesitant to dismiss an entire scholarly field, even the field of theology. However, I've got to agree that if this interview is representative of theology, then it deserves to be dismissed.
A few specific comments:
I caught him using the naturalistic fallacy to argue that the purpose of the universe is the "intensification of consciousness". I suppose most of the rest of the universe outside of Earth is inherently evil, since it doesn't promote consciousness?
I've argued that science is in fact the only way of knowing (under a broad definition of science). In brief, the only way to verify another "way of knowing", is to compare its results to the scientific results.
Surely he should realize that the eyewitness accounts of Jesus' resurrection, in principle count as scientific evidence, albeit very weak evidence?
Posted by: miller | December 18, 2007 8:42 PM
Not relevant to theology, but this bit made me chuckle:
I guess he's too busy theologizing to make his own damn tea.Posted by: Gregory Kusnick | December 18, 2007 8:49 PM
Posted by: IanR | December 18, 2007 8:49 PM
This guy's position seems very familiar - it's essentially that of my parents, Catholic science graduates: Teilhardism, Vatican II and doublethink (naturalism + final cause). Consequently it seems, to me, to be mainstream (however rare) and the least wrong kind of religious belief. Nevertheless, it's obviously a load of bullshit that can only tend to make the world safe for fundamentalism, as it always has.
Posted by: John Scanlon, FCD | December 18, 2007 8:51 PM
One last comment:
Haught has a very confused perspective on what sort of meaning atheists find in life. First, he says atheism logically implies nihilism, and the new atheists refuse to admit it. Then he says the new atheists say "evolution destroys the notion of purpose". Which is it?
The typical atheist opinion on these things is not to hard to state. There is no cosmic purpose, only a human-derived purpose, and that suffices. I hear this so often, I don't know how Haught could have missed it when writing his book.
Posted by: miller | December 18, 2007 8:54 PM
If you had a camera in the upper room when the disciples came together after the death and Resurrection of Jesus, we would not see it.
Suddenly this all makes sense to me. Jesus dies and comes back after three days, tells his followers that they can live forever by drinking his blood, and after his rebirth he doesn't show up on film. Obviously Haught believes Jesus is a vampire. It's the theology of Buffy.
Posted by: Patrick Quigley | December 18, 2007 8:59 PM
As an atheist that spent two years in seminary, theology departments aren't a waste. They tend to serve as a good source of education for people studying religion and not theology.
Posted by: thadd | December 18, 2007 9:11 PM
Unless you think knowledge gets into your head by way of magic or miracle, science is your only means of knowing anything about anything
I don't agree.
There are alternate paths to knowledge, to awareness and new realizations--art is one. Listen to Schubert's fifteenth quartet, or Brahm's Op. 51, no. 1, or Metallica's new Orion or watch a ballet choreographed by a master and done by great dancers, or poetry, or great cinema. Scientific knowledge isn't the only kind of knowledge.
LOL. Not trying to be condescending here, just accurate.
Posted by: RamblinDude | December 18, 2007 9:13 PM
"But if you ask me whether a scientific experiment could verify the Resurrection, I would say such an event is entirely too important to be subjected to a method which is devoid of all religious meaning."
Is the walking on water thing also too important to be subjected to the scientific method?
Feeding thousands with a couple of loaves of bread? Is that in "no trespassing - important religious stuff" zone also?
Maybe he could tick off all the things in the Bible that he considers to be beyond the bounds of science.
Then we could all try to respond with our feelings to those things.
What a bullshitter.
Posted by: CalGeorge | December 18, 2007 9:13 PM
The great thing about miracles is that even when they happen (snicker), they don't. God created the Grand Canyon (but all the evidence says water erosion and time). Theologically 'sophisticated' arguments amount to God works VERY hard to hide evidence of his labors- both sophistry and nihilism.
Incidentally, many millions of cockroaches thrive on batshit. Funny thing about cockroaches, some of them aren't even metaphorical.
Posted by: mothra | December 18, 2007 9:14 PM
Personally, I prefer the theology of that great thinker Bill O'Reilly: Namely, "Sun comes up. Sun goes down. Tide comes in. Tide goes out". Repeat ad nauseam. Theology is a meaningless game played by people who are unwilling to accept reality.
Posted by: Sceptical Chymist | December 18, 2007 9:14 PM
Good timing, this. I was just reading Matthew Chapman's book about the Dover trial, "40 Days and 40 Nights" and last night I got to the chapter on Haught. Chapman, while profesing to be an atheist, goes on at great length about how he adores Haught. He quotes Haught extensively and I could think as I read this chapter was, "So this is an impressive argument?" Except for the Haught worship I have enjoyed Chapman's decidedly breezy account so far. Anyone else read it?
Posted by: Diego | December 18, 2007 9:19 PM
"'m used to hearing people complain that atheism is a religion (at least Haught specifically denies that in the Dover transcript), but now science is a religion? Piffle. "
Let's make everything a religion. That way we'll get more respect, and tax breaks!
Posted by: pablo | December 18, 2007 9:23 PM
So much stupid from one person. One could build a course on logic and rhetoric around the fallacies of this interview.
The Salon letters to the editor are encouraging, though; here's one good one:
Posted by: truth machine | December 18, 2007 9:24 PM
Along with eliminating "Theology" schools from public college campuses, we need to eliminate schools of "Economics" and "Political Science", two groups composed of contradictory & conflicting religious beliefs, with minimal relevance to reality, masquerading as "science".
In the same way that the real-world aspects of Religion belong in the Psychology, Sociology & Anthropology departments, the real-world aspects of "Economics" belong in the Accounting department and the real-world aspects of "Poli-Sci" belong in the History, Sociology & Psychology departments. The "theoretical" aspects of both belong in the Philosophy department.
We would also be better served if the Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology & History departments were combined into a single "Human Behavior" department. This would entail placing select aspects of the original "disciplines" into the Biology/Medical, Literature/Language, and Philosophy Departments.
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