William James (1842–1910)

Atheist pundit Austin  Cline can often be found pontificating about religion on about.com. He has an article around religious experience as a God argument, [1] his prejudicial dismissal of the argument is tailormade for my new book, The Trace of God: A Rational Warrant for Belief, by Joseph Hinman (paperback, soon to be e book available on Amazon) to answer. First I want to clear the way by a knit pick. the phrase "Do we experience God's existence?" is an awkward and odd phrase. It's redundant because the only way we could actually experience God as a reality is if God is real, what we call "existing," thus even though this is a misuse of the term on his part according to Paul Tillich's theology [2] to experience God is to say that God is real and thus the idea that we are experiencing God's existence is just redundant. If we experience God as a reality then God must be real or we are not truly experiencing God's reality. We don't say that we experience the existence of things apart form experiencing those things. I've experienced losing my parents, I don't say 'I have experienced the existence of my parent's deaths.'

Be that as it may Cline opens his argument:

According to the Argument from Religious Experience, people have “religious experiences” — experiences of the supernatural, like heaven or angels or even a god. Because we believe other experiential claims people make — like that they went to the store or own a car — then we should believe these claims as well. It is also argued that when skeptics apply higher standards for claims based on religious experiences than they do for claims based on other experiences, they exhibiting a prejudice against religious claims. This prevents them from understanding and ultimately believing. 

 Here we see a totally inadequate understanding of religious experience. There is no sense here that religious experience is mystical experience or "peak" experience or that it is even a form of consciousnesses. He tries to justify the kind of dismissal tactics atheists use to reduce and mislabel religious experience. He's already demonstrated that he's mislabeling it. The understanding of super nature such that religious experience is "experience of the supernatural" is merely the modern enlightenment misunderstanding of the concept. Super nature is the power of God to raise human nature to a higher level (of consciousness) thus "the supernatural" is mystical experience. See my article "the Empirical Supernatural."[3]

 Cline bases his argument on the work of William James:

William James offers a classic version of this argument in his influential Varieties of Religious Experience. He argues that all normal persons have religious experience and, since experience is the final arbiter of truth, then God — as the object of religious experiences — must be accepted as factually true. James further observes that the religious experiences in question tend to have a profound effect on the lives of people and even whole societies, implying that such effects cannot reasonably be attributed to hallucinations. Instead, it is much more reasonable to believe that a real God is responsible for religious experiences than to attribute the profound effects of those experiences to a mere imaginary being. 

 As profoundly important as James still is in the study of religious experience, and this argument is good in so far as it goes, there are better and more updated versions of the argument. Notice he doesn't  take on William Alston, who is one of the major philosophers of religion of the late twentieth century. Nor does he deal with any of the modern empirical scientific data in favor of religious experience.[4] Cline decides to pick on James as the best example of the argument.

The first problem is in James’ assertion that “all normal people” have “religious experiences.” It is uncertain what exactly he means by this, but it is a much easier assertion to make than to support. If he means experiences of the supernatural — gods, angels, etc. — then he is wrong. If he means something much more vague, like that everyone has experienced awe when contemplating the universe, then he might be right but he isn’t supporting his claim.[5]

 I doubt that James said "normal people" I can't find where he did say it. I notice that Cline doesn't document  it. That could be crucial weather or not he ascribes it to normality. What he actually says is referenced by Wuthnow in his study (this can be seen in my book) where he says there is a continuum in experience that all people (I don't think he says "normal")

As far as the argument itself goes it is perfectly logical. We don't experience things that are not real. We could actually mistake experiences of one thing for another, so that must be answered. We might also have a false experience, that is hallucination or some other trick of the mind. These things are easily disproved in the case of mystical experience. The argument I sustain throughout the Trace of God is designed to answer this argument. The first answer I would give is:

 (1)  that I go to great lengths in my book to show that we habitually use a certain criteria for judging the reality of experience. The studies on religious experience, with the aid of Hood's M scale show us that religious experience of the mystical kind meets this criteria. Thus we must on principle accept it as real and trust it, or doubt our own existences.[6] This arguemnt is made in a simpler way on my lis of God arguments, no. 8 "The Thomas Reid argument," or "Argument from epistemic judgement."[7] The criteria is that we judge experiences real if hey are regular, consistent, shared (inter-subjective) and enable navigation in the world. If other forms of coutner causation are eliminated so that we can be fairly certain that we not expericing falsely logic forces us to conclude that we are experiencing rightly and there is something there to be experinced.

(2) the effects of the experience of are real. I go to great lengths to show (see all of chapter 2) that the outcome of having such experiences is life life transformation, that is a bold dramatic positive long term life changing result. I further argue that long term positive changes consistently are indicative of reality. Pathological states, mental illness and delusion are degenerative, they bring us down and destroy us over time. Nothing false builds us up and is vital too our well being over a long term period. These experiences are transforming over the long term.

(3) At the end of Chapter 7 I present eight tie breakers. The "tie" is conceived of as between brain chemicals as the most likely explanation for the origin of the experience, vs. brain chemistry as merely God's tool for enabling us to experience his presence. That's a stand off it could be either option. The tie breakers tell us it makes much more sense to accept the latter as the most likely possibility.

(4) I also rule out placebo effects in chapter 7. placebo requires that one expect the desired result, but in that chapter I show several ways in which religious experience does not conform to expected norms but often surprises such that it is often unsought, unexpected, a conversion experience, or also it can contradicts cherished doctrines.[8] For some of the studies as much as half the sample received their experiences in childhood. I show that children are not hung up on doctrines so they are not expecting experiences to conform to doctrines. Yet they have these uniform experiences that indicates the experiences are really of  an objective reality.[9]

Cline sticks with his sustained attack against James.In any case his arguments are easy to answer if one knows Jame's  works. My understanding of James is only passing fair. In my book I bring together a much larger body of empirical work which has been done over the last 50 years, armed with this knoweldge it is easy to pick off Cline's bromides. Cline refuses to think past cultural influence  and makes the argument that difference in religious traditions disprove the idea of one reality behind them all. Here's he's trying to play the old atheist divide and conquer game:

The second problem is in the variety of religious experiences: if there is just one God, why is there such wide variety in the reports of religious experiences? Indeed, they are mutually incompatible. They can’t all be true, so at least some must be false. How do we differentiate? What reasons can the religious believer give to accept her reports over the reports made by others? 

 I would argue that the studies on Hood's mysticism scale ("M scale") prove that mystical experience around the world is universally experienced in the same way. They are not conditioned by doctrines, even though they are explained by doctrines and culture that makes them seem different. When the explanation is ignored and the experiences themselves are compared they are the same. That means they have a good reason to assume they are expericing something real, something objectively there (since it's not just a matter of culture of psychology). A more detailed version documented by Hood's M scale studies can be found on The Religious  a priori.[10]

 Cline asserts that there is no criteria that enables us to determine false from true experiences. While I agree that there is no criteria that proves the difference, I have already demonstrated that he's wrong in his assertion:

There are no independent criteria we can use to separate the genuine experiences from false or flawed experiences — not only in the reports of others, but in ourselves. The only criteria which might exist rely upon the validity of some religious system. For example, some argue that a religious experience which does not agree with the Bible is flawed or false — but since this ultimately assumes the truth of what is supposed to be proven, such criteria are unacceptable. 

There is a criteria that we habitually use to assert the reality of experience, we go by that criteria every time: regular, consistent, sheared, navigational. We don't think about it. We dont say to ourselves "I'm going to use that criteria" we just do it. If an experience is anomalous, it's not regular or consistent we assume it's bogus. If we experience things they same way all the time we assume it's normal and its alright. It's only the stuff that stands out as rare or one of a kind that bothers us. If we want confirmation of our view we seek it in others, "is it hot in here to you?" "Did you see that?" If it works we can live by it we assume it's true. Thus we don't stand on the freeway deliberating about Cartesian doubt we get out of the way of oncoming traffic. The studies on religious experience that are discussed in the Trace of God demonstrate that religious experiences fit that criteria thus we should trust them as indicative of reality.[11]

 From there Cline tries to disparage the link between the effects of the experience and an assumption of its truth aptness:

The third problem is in the idea that the profound effects these experiences have is any indicator of the truth. We can grant that people have some sort of experience and we can certainly grant that the experiences have a profound effect; but does this mean we must accept the reported content of these experiences — that they were of a supernatural nature? No. 

 Again he raises the false specter of the hijack version of the supernatural. Real supernatural--the original meaning of the term--referred to mystical experience not to some ookie spookie reality zone that houses all manor of stings that go "bump" in the night. Mystical experience is proved to be real. It is a real phenomena that people have such experiences and those experiences tend to have a certain effect upon the lives of those who have them. The atheists try to turn that phrase "SN" into some kind of badge of dishonor, the fantasy world one dare not believe in. In resorting to that ploy he is dogging the real issue that he himself raised, do these effects of having had such experiences indicate the truth of the object of experience? He says "no" based upon the proviso that it is indicative of the forbidden realm. But if we ask the question in terms of reality and the object of the experience we must say yes.

First of all atheists are inconsistent in that they will argue that the advantage of having an experience is not indicative of truth but then they turn around and affirm this very idea of scinece. Every time I ask atheists how do you know science is true? They always say "because it works, you are using a computer aren't you? Science produced that computer because it works." All hail science! In any case, so saying the affirm the principle that working is related to being true. This is one of my tie breakers in chapter 7. Then Cline dazzels us with more of his fallacious reasoning: "Real experiences that have a profound impact on a person can have completely natural sources without any divine connections."

That just illustrate the atheist misunderstanding of the true concept of SN and the way they use it as a ploy to ward off belief in God by lumping it into the forbidden zone of belief. They make still absurd dichotomy anything natural must lack God and could be the product of evolution. That is an assumption not in evidence. A Gambler getting 100 royal flushes in a row as random chance would be naturalistic but it would not be natural, it would be the greatest of flukes. God created the natural realm and he works in all the time. The assumption atheists make that if it's naturalistic then God can't be in it is absurd. That's why we need the tie breakers, because the naturalistic element of brain chemistry could go either way. It  could be indicative of a Godless origin or it could be God's tool in giving us a sense of his presence.

Yet Cline goes further he makes a foolish assertion that: "Mystical experiences can be reproduced in anyone, both with chemical substances and mechanical equipment. With this being the case, what reason is there to think that other reports actually stem from a supernatural, rather than a natural, cause?" Well if you really want to know:

(1) buy my book and read the end of chapter 7 for the eight tie brakers and you have eight different reasons to assume the answer to that.

(2) The assertion that religious experiences can be reproduced is not proved. There are tons of claims to that effect, but in the book I point out (ala Philosopher John Hick) that those researchers do not have a standard criteria for control in understanding what constitutes religious experience. They do not use the M scale or any other valid scale to determine this. [12] I analyze the Borg study which is hostile to religion and show that their standard is totally unsuited.[13] Because they do not use such criteria they cannot prove that ever produce religious experience. They merely take the presence of cultural icons of religion as indicative of religious experience but there's no sense of consciousness. As I have said dichotomizing bewteen natural and SN is not a valid means of determining God's handiwork since God can work int he natural as easily as he can in the SN. Rather it is God's power to life us up to a higher state of consciousness that is Super nature. The basic state of such consciousness is a matter of fact, regardless of proof about it's origin.

Cline goes on dictonomizing:

If at least some of the alleged religious experiences are wholly natural, how do we separate them from the “truly” supernatural ones? Even if an experience changes the course of a society, that does not testify that the experiences had supernatural origins. At most, it might point to the persuasiveness of the believers or the appeal of the claims. 

 As I said already we do that by buying my book and reading the end of chapter 7 where I list the tie breakers. Then at the end of the article he takes on Swinebrune's argument:

Some, like Richard Swineburne, argue that the degree to which it seems to a person that something has happened should translate into the probability that something has happened. It is true that when people say that it seems to them that a chair is in a room that, therefore, we tend to accept that a chair is in the room. It is not true, however, that every time someone genuinely and seriously believes something, we also accept that whatever they believe is probably true.
We only accept this when it comes to more mundane things which we all have experiences of. When someone says that it seems to them very strongly that an elf is in the room, we do not accept that there is probably an elf in the room, do we?

 I don't argue Swineburne's argument. I've only read it one time. So I wont try to defined it here except to say that the condition of the argument seems to be the extent to which is seem that the person has actually experinced something. We are talking about warrant. If there is a warrant to believe this then there is no logical reason to discount it on face value. That doesn't mean one can't come up with an argument, it does mean the burden of proof is on the sketpic to show that the warrant is invalid and that there is good reason to doubt. Playing dichotomy game and hinting that "O no this leads to the forbidden zone of he SN" is not going to cut it. That is an ideological assumptino that some aspect aspect of reality must be doubted because it is the aspect that it seems to be and and brings too close to God so we must doubt it.

At this point Cline leaves us with the most dubious argument of tall, that failure to obtain mystical experience is a reason to doubt it's validity.

 Even if we accept Swineburne’s argument, we must also accept that when people try to have an experience of a god and fail, that this is good reason to believe that a god probably does not exist. After all, it would be prejudiced to dismiss the experiences of nonbelievers but privilege the experiences of those who already believe.

This argument is open to immediate reversal becasue then one must accept results as indicative of truth. If this is the case then why don't successes reflect that reality of God? The fact that it works has to be understood as truth indicative. Moreover, if results are indicative the fact that the experience is transformative and that being such it fulfills the basic function religion promises to fill in the first place, offers a rational warrant for belief that it is true. I suspect that Cline based his argument upon the arrangements I make because his contains all the basic elements of mine but he didn't bother study how I defend them. Or that may be my own arrogance and conciet.

Either way the Trace of God, my book,  arms the chruch with a power body of scientific data that backs up this and all other experience based arguments. This work injects fiber into the content of experience arguments and no Christian ever need fear the atheists jibes about no facts, no God, atheism has scinece. Atheists have not touched these arguments in five years of battle on CARM. This book serves as a compindium that will enable anyone to defend experience arguments against all commers.

Order The Trace of God On AMAZON in paper back, (soon to be avaible in Hard back and Electronic).

Sources

[1] Austin Cline, "Argument from Religious Experience:Do We Experience God's Existence?" About.com. no date listed. http://atheism.about.com/od/argumentsforgod/a/religexperience.htm  accessed 6/27/14

[2] Tillich famously argued that we can' use the term "existence" in relation to God becuase exist is what contingent things do. God is being itself and thus is above the level of mere "existing." see Shaking of the Foundations, by Paul Tillich.

[3] Metacrock, "The Empirical Supernatural," The Religious a priori, no date given.http://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-empirical-supernatural.html accessed 6/28/14.

[4] Willam Alston,Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993, no page indicated. see also The Trace of God, the entire book is about this huge body of data that has heretofore been neglected by both atheists and theists.

[5] Cline, ibid.

[6] Joseph Hinman, The Trace of God: Rational Warrant for Belief.  Colorado Springs: Grand Viaduct Publishing.2014, see the whole of chapter 2.

[7] Metacrock, "8, on list of God arguments: The Thomas Reid Argument,"  Doxa, website, http://www.doxa.ws/experience/Reid.html  accessed 6/27/14. 

[8]  Hinman,The Trace of God... op cit., 286-296.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Metacrock, "The M Scale and The Universal Nature of Mystical Experience," The Religious a priori, website, http://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-m-sacle-and-universal-nature-of.html accessed 6/26/14.

 [11] Hinman, The Trace of God, op.cit, 103-127

 [12] Hinman, Ibid.,262-3, 306.

 [13] Ibid., 309

 

 Order The Trace of God On AMAZON

The Ideology of Scientism (part 2)

 

 We left off talking about E.O. Wilson.

Wilson started sociobiology and then it transmogrified into evolutionary psychology.

            Evolutionary psychology seeks to explain psychological traits in terms of direct relation to evolutionary needs. Wilson didn’t just invent evolutionary psychology out of the air, there were other thinkers involved. From 1963 to 1974 William Hamilton, George Williams, Robert Trivers, John Maynard Smith pioneered in the sort of understanding we find in evolutionary psychology.[1] Wilson galvanized this trend with his work Sociobiology: the New Synthesis which has been said to mark the epoch.[2] In speaking of the spread of evolutionary psychology Wright says “a new world view is dawning.”[3] He uses the phrase world view literally. He says it’s a body of theory and fact, much like quantum theory, or molecular biology, but unlike that, “it’s also a way of seeing every day life. Once truly grasped (it is easier to grasp than either of them [quantum theory or molecular biology]) it can entirely alter one’s perception of social reality.”[4] Well that’s actually one good definition of ideology. That fits my concept of ideology: One idea that defines the world and determines how one sees everything filtering all perceptions through the lens of its truth regime.

The Questions addressed by the new view range from the mundane to the spiritual and touch on just about everything that matters: romance, love, sex (are men and/or women built for monogamy? What circumstances can make them more or less so?); friendship and enmity (what is the evolutionary logic behind office politics—for that matter politics in general; selfishness, self sacrifice, guilt, (why did natural selection give us that vast guilt repository known as the conscience? Is it truly a guide to moral behavior?)…[5]

Evolutionary psychology draws biologically oriented thinkers and is rejected by social science types such as anthropologists and sociologists, who chafe under the reductionism of the view point. They refuse to accept the explanatory power of naturalistic models. This is largely either the result of or fueled by the nature vs. nurture debate.[6] There have been criticisms of evolutionary psychology to the extent that it is seen as ideological. Stephen J. Gould, as David J. Buller tells us, “disparaged evolutionary psychology as ‘pseudo science’ and Darwinian fundamentalism.”[7] Buller goes to on to talk about the nature of his own flirtation with evolutionary psychology. He was lured into interest and then  “once I began to focus on evolutionary psychology, I seemed to encounter it everywhere I turned…it seemed to be all over television, not just on highbrow channels like PBS…ABC Special Report with John Stossel examining the evolutionary psychology of sex differences…” [8] This was in the period where there was also some popular idea like “Men are From Mars, Women are from Venus,” or men hunt and women nest, a lot of it backing the so called “Regan Revolution.” He goes to describe falling out of love with the theory.

Initially I was completely captivated by evolutionary psychology, I was certain that it was providing a deep and accurate understanding of human mentality and behavior…after six months research it was unclear to me how everything that went by the name ‘evolutionary psychology’ fit together and I began having serious doubts…a years research latter, it was clear to me that there were distinctly different lines of research being conducted under the evolutionary psychology label. I became convinced that the line of research that had garnered the most attention, both within academia and through popular media was wrong in almost every detail.[9]

            The first aspect that seemed to draw Buller to evolutionary psychology was a sense that genes almost have a mind of their own, they are the one’s actually guiding our moves. “I recalled a vivid passage in Richard Dawkins’s Selfish Gene that describes us as survival machines for our genes, which created us body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rational for our existence.” [10] The way he describes his infatuation, and subsequent disillusionment, sounds like a teenager’s crush or a young student turning to the Romance of Marxism and protest in the sixties. One can see how easy it might be to get caught up in such a romance. At least at one time, almost everyone who took an intro psychology class in college would go through a phase of spouting pop psychology at everyone and trying to diagnose problems with pseudo Freudian sounding labels. That process might even be more alluring if tied to Darwin and modern research. Evolutionary psychology has generated a fiercely loyal following. Buller again, “…I found evolutionary psychologists dismissing their critics as anti-scientific, politically correct postmodernists, or closet creationists. Any skepticism about the claims of evolutionary psychology was typically portrayed as a product of dogmatic indoctrination in the social sciences…”[11]

Exacerbating the conflicts, some evolutionary psychologists present their paradigm as replacing, rather than coexisting with, current paradigms, alienating advocates of epistemological diversity. An alternative explanatory model is presented - one that is grounded in evolutionary theory, reflects recent advances in cognitive neuroscience and developmental psychology, and achieves a dialectical balance between nature and nurture.[12]

Evolutionary psychology seems to present a totalizing view that some times overshadows even other scientific work, not as a result of careful scholarship, but merely because it is the word form the camp.

            We can see the same kind of ideological defense at work in the wanton attacks upon Thomas Nagel’s book Mind and Cosmos. [13] Nagel is a philosopher at NYU and achieved fame and respect for his 1974 essay “What’s it like to be a Bat?”[13] This work has become a standard among those who seek to disprove the reductionist’s take on brain/mind issues. His Mind and Cosmos has drawn fire from many quarters, no doubt including evolutionary psychology. It’s not clear what he means by “Neo Darwininan” but no doubt it must include evolutionary psychology. By labeling it “materialist” he’s taking in the largest possible group since that would include not only materialists but most naturalists and physicalists. He’s arguing that we can’t have a grand theory of everything as long as that theory is coming out of a ideological camp that only allows one view point. That is essentially the nature of the Neo Darwinian understanding. That’s not such a radical thing to say, but the tendency of the scientistic Zeitgeist won’t allow him to say it; the tendency is to reduce all knowledge to one form of knowledge. Not so much because it’s connected to atheism, although atheism is a part of it, but because it’s accepted as scientific fact in modernity, Neo Darwinian view point predominates because science predominates. Philosophy and Religion are not treated as knowledge, so they are not treated as valid alternative view points.

            The major thrust of the attack as been to label Nagel as “creationist” or “Intelligent Design” which he famously is not. It doesn’t help him that the Intelligent Design’s Discovery Institute has lauded the book. Brain Leiter and Michael Weisberg began the assault by attempting to tear it to pieces in The Nation, then Harvard psychologist, champion of evolutionary psychology Steven Pinker dismissed it as “shoddy reasoning,” not likely. New York Times Review of Books and London Review of books panned it. The Guardian (America) named it the “most despised science book of 2012.”[15] Alva Noë argued that Nagel is being confronted by Orthodoxy, “and they are responding the way the Orthodox respond.”[16] Nagel didn’t attack evolutionary psychology per se but one assumes that’s part of the “Neo-Darwinan” crowd. The reaction of anger certainly betrays and ideological vent, a “them and us,” a certain mentality of solider confronting the enemy.

            There is a cadre of physicists who are busy beating up on philosophy, even though their views can actually be described as philosophical. This is another aspect of the ideological tentacles claiming their grasp on a slice of science. These physicists are primarily but not exclusively part of the new atheist movement. Professor Massimo Pigliucci (City University of New York) complains about how in the days of Einstein and Bohr Physicists were intellectually sophisticated and respectful of other branches of knowledge. They were honored to work together with philosophers and theologians. [17] In fact there is a picture of the young theologian Paul Tillich together with Einstein and other physicists, philosophers, and theologians at a conference in Davos Switzerland, march 18, 1928.[18] That meeting may have had some influence on the production of Einstein’s publication arguing against the personal God. Tillich responded with an article, not chiding Einstein but lauding his views, yet putting them into a larger theological perspective that didn’t confine God to the realm of dead matter, nor did it defend God as a magnification of human psyche.[19] This is the kind of exchange that used to exist between philosophers and physicists. Now, Pigliucci complains, it seems physicists are more concerned with attacking philosophy. “These days it’s much more likely to encounter physicists like Steven Weinberg or Stephen Hawking, who merely go about dismissing philosophy for the wrong reasons.” [20]

Nonetheless, let’s get to the core of Krauss’ attack on philosophy. He says: “Every time there's a leap in physics, it encroaches on these areas that philosophers have carefully sequestered away to themselves, and so then you have this natural resentment on the part of philosophers.” This clearly shows two things: first, that Krauss does not understand what the business of philosophy is (it is not to advance science…); second, that Krauss doesn’t mind playing armchair psychologist, despite the dearth of evidence for his pop psychological “explanation.” Okay, others can play the same game too, so I’m going to put forth the hypothesis that the reason physicists such as Weinberg, Hawking and Krauss keep bashing philosophy is because they suffer from an intellectual version of the Oedipus Complex (you know, philosophy was the mother of science and all that... you can work out the details of the inherent sexual frustrations from there).[21]

He continues amusingly in the vain. Basically he shows that the physicists want to deal with philosophy as though its goal is to reproduce science. All of their criticisms are oriented around the notion that philosophy is not contributing to scientific understanding but is reacting to it. Essentially Pigliucci’s entire publication is in reaction to this movement he perceives of science types fighting against and trying to take over philosophy (and liberal arts in general) this is made explicit and typified in is article “on the Difference between Science and Philosophy.” [22] George Musser sums it up by affirming that in the days of Einstein philosophy and physics were close. As a sign of the drift apart he points to the Weinberg chapter title “Against Philosophy,” from the book Dreams of a Final Theory (Vintage 1994).[23] He also points to what may be a trend of the move back to reunion due to a sense that the search for grand theory is stalling. “At meetings where the two groups come together, they strike me as quite compatible. The philosophers in attendance tend to have training in physics, and the physicists, even if they can’t tell their Hegel from their Heidegger, are eager to learn.”[24] But are they compatible because they are becoming more attune to tolerating diverse opinion or because they are all becoming scientism’s pawns?

 

            There seems to be an amalgam of several ideologies that turn on the same naturalistic assumptions and that really go together. It’s often the case that one holds all of them at the same time, they include: materialism, physicalism, naturalism, and reductionism. Reductionism is a mythological procedure or assumption in many scientific fields. It also amounts to a philosophical stand within naturalism, et al. All of these “isms” go together, bleed into one another, and form an overarching set of ideas or a sort of “meta ideology,” so to speak. We could break it down endlessly into types of reductionism and so forth, but there’s no point in doing that. For brevity sake I’ll just refer to this whole amalgam as “Scientism,” when speaking in general of the major flow of ideas around that admixture, and as “reductionism” when talking about the connection to the assumptions of any form of reductionism. There are different kinds of naturalism and this may become confusing but I basically mean scientific naturalism as an opposition to religious thinking. The terms materialism and physicalism are related. They can be used interchangeably but have different histories. Phsyicalism is usually preferred as it recognizes that matter is also a form of energy so while matter isn’t all there is, it’s not necessarily the basis of all there is, it’s related to energy. That term reflects the reality of a modern understanding of science. Materialism is the older word and came out of the mechanistic era when the workings of the physical world were compared to a machine. “Materialism” was used in opposition to the concept of spirit. Physicalism was introduced in the 1930’s by two prominent members of positivism’s Vienna Circle, Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap.[25] Naturalism is the more general term. Turning to an atheist movement understanding of these terms:

Materialism (or physicalism) can signify either a broad metaphysical view, or, more narrowly, a type of theory of mind. Metaphysical materialism is a specific kind of naturalism which contends that everything that exists is either physical or dependent upon the physical. Broadly understood, reductionist materialism maintains that everything is strictly physical; more narrowly, it maintains that the mind (at least) is purely physical. Nonreductive materialism also allows the existence of nonphysical properties that inhere in, or emerge from, a physical substrate. Consequently, it is sometimes called emergent materialism or property dualism. In the broad sense, nonreductive materialism holds that everything is physical or at least dependent upon the physical; and in the narrower sense it holds that the mind can have both physical and nonphysical aspects even though it must be instantiated in a physical system like the brain.

While metaphysical materialism entails a materialist theory of mind, one can be a materialist about the mental without believing that everything is physical (e.g., some theologians are nonreductive materialists about the human mind but believe that God is neither physical nor dependent upon the physical; and some philosophers who think that the mind is purely physical also believe in nonphysical abstract objects).[26]

            Even within their own movement those who understand the terms acknowledge that they are metaphysics and don’t try to pass them off as science. “Philosophical materialism (physicalism) is the metaphysical view that there is only one substance in the universe and that substance is physical, empirical or material. Materialists believe that spiritual substance does not exist. Paranormal, supernatural or occult phenomena are either delusions or reducible to physical forces.”[27] The amalgam we are talking about doesn’t necessarily limit itself to atheists. E.O. Wilson is not an atheist. Nevertheless, in some quarters of the atheist movement adherents are constantly beating the drums for these philosophies while denying that’ it’s a movement and trying to pass them off as science proper. They try to juxtapose their view of the world, which they claim to be factual and scientific, while at the same time imposing these philosophical ideas as we see Thomas doing above. At the philosophical level academics make no attempt to hide the fact that this is philosophy, no holds barred. Geoffrey Hellman and Frank Wilson Thompson state:

In [11] we laid the groundwork for a comprehensive materialism based upon physical science which the problems of ontology and of the interrelations between higher order sciences—biology, psychology, social theory, and so forth on the one hand, and basic physical science on the other could be correctly stated and accessed. It was our aim to formulate principles of phsyicalism which are strong enough to incorporate the kinds of appeals to the comprehensive and fundamental character of physical science that materialists have sought to make…[28]

Materialism and phsyicalism are metaphysical assumptions. Both of these constitute philosophical positions; they are going beyond the domain and nature of science.

            There are several types of phsyicalism. Supervenience physicialism, for example,  and minimal phsyicalism. The word supervenience is currently enjoying a renaissance in philosophical circles. It basically means, as used in philosophical circles, that there are two sets of characteristics and one set is dependent upon the other or connected with it in such a way that a change in one means a change in the other. The concept came out of meta ethics but is being used in physics and philosophy of mind and other venues.[29]

            Daniel Stoljar illustrates supervenience with the use of an analogy by David Lewis. The analogy is to a dot-matrix picture, that is just dots and the global properties are formed solely from patterns in the dots. The pictures supervene on the patterns of dots and non dots. No two pictures could differ in their global properties unless they differ in the placement of dots.

Lewis's example gives us one way to introduce the basic idea of physicalism. The basic idea is that the physical features of the world are like the dots in the picture, and the psychological or biological or social features of the world are like the global properties of the picture. Just as the global features of the picture are nothing but a pattern in the dots, so too the psychological, the biological and the social features of the world are nothing but a pattern in the physical features of the world. To use the language of supervenience, just as the global features of the picture supervene on the dots, so too everything supervenes on the physical, if physicalism is true. [30]

Lewis says that “no two pictures can be identical in the arrangement of dots but different in their global properties”.[31]

The other versions of Physicialism include “minimal,” “token and type,” “reductive and non reductive,” and “a priori and a posteriori.” Minimal physicalism is tied up with philosophy of mind. That’s the version that’s always discussed wherever people discuss the brain/mind issue. It’s in this venue that we most often find arguments about the falsehood of physicialism.[32] Minimal physicalism is basically the core commitment of all phsyicalism. Supervenience physicialism is neutral in a good many issues. Minimal physicalism is the basic core belief of the physical nature of everything.

            There can be no doubt as to the philological basis of these ideas. While rank and file atheists profess their disgust for philosophy because “it’s making stuff up” the leaders of their movement have always and still are basing their world view and their movement upon obviously philosophical view points. Materialism is in line with the classic definition of metaphysics, reasoning about that which is beyond our observation, and phsyicalism takes up where materialism left off. Physicalism is completely rooted in philosophy of mind. Physicalism serves as the basis for atheist thinking. 

            Andrew Brown, himself an “old” kind of atheist, identifies and summarizes the ideology of the new atheists based upon the works of their major leaders and spokesmen.

So, who are they? The ideas I claim are distinctive of the new atheists have been collected from Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Jerry Coyne, the American physicist Robert L. Park, and a couple of blogging biologists, P Z Myers and Larry Moran. They have two things in common. They are none of them philosophers and, though most are scientists, none study psychology, history, the sociology of religion, or any other discipline which might cast light on the objects of their execration. All of them make claims about religion and about believers which go far beyond the mere disbelief in God which I take to be the distinguishing mark of an atheist….

❄ There is something called "Faith" which can be defined as unjustified belief held in the teeth of the evidence. Faith is primarily a matter of false propositional belief.

❄ The cure for faith is science: The existence of God is a scientific question: either he exists or he doesn't. "Science is the only way of knowing – everything else is just superstition" [Robert L. Park]

❄ Science is the opposite of religion, and will lead people into the clear sunlit uplands of reason. "The real war is between rationalism and superstition. Science is but one form of rationalism, while religion is the most common form of superstition" [Jerry Coyne] "I am not attacking any particular version of God or gods. I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever they have been or will be invented." [Dawkins]

❄ In this great struggle, religion is doomed. Enlightened common sense is gradually triumphing and at the end of the process, humanity will assume a new and better character, free from the shackles of religion. Without faith, we would be better as well as wiser. Conflict is primarily a result of misunderstanding, of which Faith is the paradigm. (Looking for links, I just came across a lovely example of this in the endnotes to the Selfish Gene, where lawyers are dismissed as "solving man-made problems that should never have existed in the first place".)

❄ Religion exists. It is essentially something like American fundamentalist protestantism, or Islam. More moderate forms are false and treacherous: if anything even more dangerous, because they conceal the raging, homicidal lunacy that is religion's true nature. [Sam Harris]

❄ Faith, as defined above, is the most dangerous and wicked force on earth today and the struggle against it and especially against Islam will define the future of humanity. [Everyone]

All of these propositions will be found in the authors I have cited as well as in the comments to religious articles here. I sometimes think that only the last two are unique to the new atheists: you can certainly find the others in earlier authors. But those are the six doctrines which I would reject when saying rude things about the new atheists.[33]

Each of these opinionated positions summarized by Brown appeals to science as its justification; none of them can really be based upon science. Take the counter intuitive opinion that moderate religion is more dangerous than extreme religion because it’s somehow concealing some hidden lunacy (there’s a clinical scientific term, “lunacy.”) within it. That’s the sort of scientific thinking that motivated the mental health industry in the days of witch trails and brain stones. There is no data justifying this bromide. It’s obviously a slogan serving to energize the base and prevent defection to more reasonable versions of religion. At the same time it casts the aura of science over the evil essence of religion. The implications of essentialism alone mark it as totally unscientific. Science, in the hands of the new atheist leaders, takes on a role and a make up that real scientists would never recognize as scientific. It becomes more than ideology, something close to religion itself.

            These view points bear the ear marks of ideology. They reduce knowledge to one kind of knowledge and they reduce the world to one idea that fits everything. They form the basis of a kind of politics as they motivate and urge and define society in terms of negative results based upon the following of the antithetical ideas they seek to challenge. In that sense they are very reminiscent of Marxism: Marxism has the eternal struggle between the worker and the owner. The working class is exploited by the ruling class, and all the ills of society are due to that exploitation. The ruling class justifies itself through a false consciousness, if that consciousness was property cleared up by the “truth” of the proper van guard understanding, the workers paradise would be inaugurated. The same is true of atheism. According the ideas Brown discusses, there’s a great evil that spawns all the social ills, created by the false consciousness of religious belief. The priest class keeps the believer enthralled with “superstition” as the ruling class keeps the workers enthralled with promises of wealth. In Marxism the workers are save by the revolutionary van guard of the party. In new atheism the brain washed believers are saved by the van guard of science.  Workers are liberated by the party line, believers are liberated by the facts of science.

Making a chart like this is not meant to suggest that there is no truth in Marxism or that reduces neatly to just these points. In fact Christianity can also be put on such a chart. Yet is does illustrate the fact that these ideas lend themselves to an ideological perspective and unwary can be led down the garden path into some tempropal human idea of an eternal struggle for the good.

	Marxism	New Atheism
Great struggle	Class struggle	Brain washing of believers
Victims	workers	everyone
Enemy of people	Capitalists/owners	Religion/religious people
Van Guard	party	Scientists/atheists
Knowledge (gospel)	Party line	Science/skepticism
eschatology	Workers paradise	Secular society
means	Propaganda	Mocking and ridiculing reiligion

Christianity

Great struggle	Sin/evil
victims	Human race
Enemy of people	Satan
Van Guard	church
Knowledge	Gosepl
Eschatology	End of times, second coming, judgment
Means	Preach gospel

Does the fact that Christianity can be subjected to ideological analysis mean that it is an empty ideology? No more so than science. The fact that science can be distorted and laced with ideological assumptions doesn’t mean there is no clear idea of science, nor does it mean that science doesn’t have a valid basis. Ideology can take over any view point. Any truth can become reduce to an ideological understanding if one is not careful. While we might consider that Christianity is like the prototype, ideology the copy. Although Christianity was not the first religion thus we could say religion as a whole is the prototype and these other versions are the ideologies. Yet we know religion can be ideological as well.

            One of the major examples of religion as ideology is creationism. Of course in saying that we have to aware of the fact that the counters to creationism can also be very ideological.

            The ideology of new atheism is a subset of the larger ideology of scientisim. Not all scisentistic types are atheists and not all atheists are scientistic. There is an atheist ideology that is an outgrowth and subset of the lager umbrella of scientism. What the umbrella has in common all of its many departments is the reduction of all knowledge to one thing; that one thing is the illusion of technique. In even the one thing is an illusion because the ostensible one thing is “science.” Yet it’s not really science because science is about hypothesis testing and this is more what William Barrett called “the illusion of technique.” The illusion of technique is the manipulation of all knowledge and fact, all feeling and questions into the closed realm of discourse. The reduction assumes the only possible questions and the only possible answers go back to the same circular concept, both problem and solution: the reduction of all knowledge not to science but to technology. It’s the bait and switch, the substitution of science for technology. Science leaves off with debunking what it could and then the offering of possible knowledge in the form the best explanation.[34] Yet technology assumes we have the answers. Technology assumes we have the answers and we are going to apply them. It assumes either we know the truth or it doesn’t matter. What is replacing truth is the ability to control things.Science is put over as “the truth” when in fact its’ only a means of hypothesis testing. That leaves us with a void in our understanding of the nature of truth.

---

[1] Robert Wright, The Moral Animal: Why We are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology. New York and Canada: First Vantage Books edition, Division of Random House. 1995.4.

Robert Write is an award wining American Journalist, writes scholarly books about science is respected for his scholarship.

[2] Ibid. 4

[3] Ibid. 4

[4] Ibid., 4-5

[5] Ibid., 5

[6] Harvey Whitehouse, “Introduction,” The Debated Mind: Evolutionary Psychology Vs. Ethnography. Oxford, New York: Berg Publishers. 2001,1.

[7] David, J. Buller, Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for human Nature. Cambridge Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2005, 4.

[8] Ibid.3

[9] Ibid., 3

[10] Ibid., 2

[11] Ibid., 5

[12] Linda Gannon, “abstract,” “A Critique of Evolutionary Psychology.” Psychology, Evolution, and Gender. Volume 4 Issue 2, (2002), 173-218, 173.

[13] Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. no page cited.

[14] Thomas Nagel, “What’s it Like to Be A Bat?” The Philosophical Review, Vol. 83, No. 4., (Oct. 1974) 435-450.

[15] Jennifer Schuessler, “An Author Attracts Unlikely Allies,” New York Times, Feb 6, 2013, ON line copy 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/07/books/thomas-nagel-is-praised-by-creationists.html?_r=1& accessed 10/18/13.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Massimo Pigliucci, “Lawrence Krauss: Another Physicist With an Anti-Philosophy Complex.” Rationally Speaking, online publication, http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.ca/2012/04/lawrence-krauss-another-physicist-with.html   accessed 9/27/13.

[18] Krista Tippett, “Einstein’s Refutation of Personal God,” On Being, online publication http://www.onbeing.org/program/einstein039s-god/particulars/1930  accessed 9/27/13.

Photograph from conference in Davos Switzerlan, March 18, 1928, courtesy of Image Archive, ETH-Bibliotek, Zurich. Published, On Being,

[19] Paul Tillich, “The Idea of a Personal God.” Online article from a blog by Krista Tippett, Speaking of Faith reprinted with permission form the Yale Divinity School Library. URL: http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/einsteinsgod/tillich-einsteinresponse.shtml (visited 8/31/2010) No indication is given of a translator or original publication.

I document this in a footnote to an article I wrote on my blog, “Paul Tillich and the Personal God: was Paul Tillich’s Ground of Being an Impersonal Force? Part 1.” Metacrock’s Blog, March 14, 2011 on line

http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2011/03/paul-tillich-and-personal-god-was.html  accessed 9/27/13.

In that article I put a caption under the picture (same Photograph published by Tippett the converence in 1828 In Switzerland) it says  Einstein’s paper was presented at a New York Conference science, philosophy and Religion, 1940.

[20] Pigliucci, Op Cit.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Massimo Pugliucci, “On the Difference Between Science and Philosophy.” Rationally speaking, on line publication, http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2009/11/on-difference-between-science-and.html  accessed 9/27/13.

[23] Steven Weinberg, “Against Philosophy” (chapter VII)  Dreams of a Final Theory: Scientists Search for The Ultimate Laws of Nature. New York, NY: Vintage, reprint edition, 1994. 166.

[24] George Musser, “Deep in Thought, What is a Law of Physics Anyway?” Scientific American Blogs (June 4, 2010) Onilne  http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2010/06/04/deep-in-thought-what-is-a-law-of-physics-anyway/  accessed 9/27/13.

George Musser is a contributing editor at Scientific American. He focuses on space science and fundamental physics, ranging from particles to planets to parallel universes. He is the author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to String Theory. Musser has won numerous awards in his career, including the 2011 American Institute of Physics's Science Writing Award.

[25] Daniel Stoljar, “Physicalism:Terminology,” Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy fed 13, 2001, sept 9, 2009. Online resource: URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/#1  visited 3/11/11

[26] Keith Augustine,  “Materliaism,” The Secular Web  Internet resource online URL: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/nontheism/naturalism/materialism.html  visited 3/11/11.

[27] Robert T. Carroll, “Philosophical Materialism (Physicalism),” The Skeptics Dictionary.  1994/2012 the article updated last 2010. on line resource, http://www.skepdic.com/materialism.html  accessed 9/22/13

[28] Geoffery Hellman and Frank Wilson Thompson, “Physicalist Materialism,” Nous, 11, Blackwell Publishing, 1977 available online through JSTOR URL: http://www.jstor.org/pss/2214560  visited 3/11/11.

[29] Stoljar, Op Cit.

[30] Ibid, citing David Lewis, On The Plurality of Worlds,1986, 14. no page numbers for Stoljar.

[31] Ibid.

[32] Ibid

[33] Andrew Brown, Andrew Brown’s Blog, “New Atheism, A Definition and Quiz.” online version published by The Guardian. URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2008/dec/29/religion-new-atheism-defined   visited, 11/1/11.

[34] Popper, find