Thinking Christian Comments
Original Post: Agreeing With Richard Dawkins
Could you elaborate more on what you think is wrong with belief in belief?
Tom, this may be a bit off-topic, but I've been thinking quite a bit about the different ways of knowing that you frequently debate here. If I understand you correctly, you say that there are ways of knowing that do not rely on but are as veritable as those that are proven with empirical evidence. I tend to agree with that, but strongly disagree with how you want to use those non-empirical ways of knowing.
A number of years ago, I was in a car accident. During the accident, my eyeglasses flew off my face and the lenses were shattered. Since I can't see without my glasses, and I had two small children to care for at the time, I immediately put in a call for someone to come and help me. That is how real the event was to me. Later, however, when I had a chance to examine my car, I saw my glasses, fully intact, on the floor of the vehicle.
I completely, fully believed that my glasses had been broken during the accident. I saw them come off my face and I saw the lenses shatter, as clearly as I heard my child scream. That my glasses were broken was a real event to me. Finding them unbroken was shocking, and forced me to understand how it is that people can experience, believe, and defend vastly different realities.
The conclusion I finally came to, vis a vis my glasses (and other things), was that BOTH events were real and true: My experience of my glasses being shattered during the accident was true, AND the event of my glasses remaining intact during the accident was also true. One event was true to my experience, and the other was proven true with empirical evidence. The difference, I think, is that one is a personal reality, a personal truth, and the other is a universal truth. Perhaps someday there will be some way of understanding how the two are connected, but until then, it is the universal truths, and not the personal ones, that must take precendence in the world.
I know too many Christians who simply have "belief in belief." In my opinion, it often crosses over the line into pure superstition. You can believe, you can be sincere, but you can also be sincerely wrong in what you believe. If there is such a thing as absolute truth, then truth matters.
Note that Jesus made a case for belief in him - "either believe what I say, or believe because of what I do."
Granted, some of the criticism of Christianity by Dawkins and others indeed has some validity.
Alden,
I'm thinking more that belief in something gives meaning to life, regardless of whether what one believes is "true." Thus, I believe in the value of belief. But, I guess belief for belief's sake (and not because the belief provided meaning) would be meaningless.
Seeker, I think I see what you mean, and it's an interesting point. From a strictly psychological point of view, belief in anything probably has positive effects. People create alternate realities all of the time to help deal with (or avoid) various issues. However, there is no real difference in these realities than a belief in the Easter Bunny.
And, even this is still belief in "something," even if it's not real. I'm not sure that the "belief in belief" syndrome (I haven't read Dennett) is actually belief in anything.
I'm interested in hearing more of our host's thoughts on this issue...
I, too, would like to hear others' thoughts on this issue. I am truly astounded that Tom would think that morality only has value if it is based in something that is empirically true. I think that wherever people find meaning that enables them to lead positive lives is both true and valuable. If my truth is that my glasses are broken, and that leads me to find another caregiver for my children, and that is a good and moral act (I'm using this as an analogy, of course), how is that of less value than if my truth is that my glasses are not broken, and I pick them up, put them back on, and provide care for my children, and that is a good and moral act? Is the morality of our actions based on the truth of our beliefs? I think not.
Good questions, Alden and os. I'm going to address them in a main blog post this morning.
ordinary seeker, this sounds very postmodern of you. I see your experience as you having the erroneous idea that your glasses broke and based upon that you acted appropriately, even wisely. I wouldn't label your experience as "truth" nor would I label the finding of another caregiver for the children "moral".
It's the widening of the ideas of truth, reality, and morality by postmodernists to the personal realm that I have problems with.
os,
It sometimes seems as if you think that there are varieties of truth - empirical and non-empirical perhaps. No doubt there are truths (emphasis on the "s") of these two sorts, but insofar as each is a truth, they are one in kind. Qua truth, they are the same. Truth is truth, no matter where it's found; and "empirical" and "non-empirical" refer merely to ways in which truth can be discovered.
Put another way: "empirical" and "non-empirical" belong to the field of epistemology; "truth" belongs to the field of semantics. Thus diversity of manner in which truths are discovered (epistemological diversity) does not imply diversity in truth itself (semantic diversity).
Second point. Why not simply describe the glasses-event in this way: it seemed to you that they were shattered - seemed quite strongly that they were - but this turned out to be false. There is no truth to the claim that they shattered. There was belief - strong belief, but there was no truth. I don't think you can defend what you say if you simply append "personal" to truth. As before, there is no diversity in truth (though there is diversity in truths); and quite likely all that can be meant by "p was a personal truth" was that "p was believed".
Not only does that make a lot of sense, it's a whole lot simpler than having multiple "truths" out there about the same event.
Franklin,
Several points: First, I believe it was Tom who initially introduced the idea that there are non-empirical ways of knowing what is true--ways that can't be proven by science. I understand that he would agree that there is only one truth, regardless of the method of discovery, but I am suggesting broadening this idea. I am suggesting that truth (or reality, or whatever word you feel most comfortable with) CAN be thought of as personal truth, based primarily in individual experience, and universal truth, truth that applies to and is subscribed to by virtually everyone. I think this is a useful distinction.
Second, in my analogy, the truth of the broken glasses is equivalent to the truth of belief in God, and the truth of the unbroken glasses is equivalent to the truth of science. One can be proven empirically (the glasses are not broken), the other cannot (the glasses are broken). I am very comfortable saying that "There was belief--strong belief, but there was no truth" about both the broken glasses and belief in God, if you want to define "truth" as what is empirically proven. I am not invested in there being one meaning of the word "truth" and am willing to use different words to describe my experience if it's more comfortable for you. But IMO, allowing truth to be determined in ways other than empirically makes more room for belief in God.
Third, just because you say that there is only one truth does not make it so. Isn't this what the whole argument is about? You (and others) say that there is one truth, and I (and others) say that there are many truths (an infinite number, if what is real is each person's individual construction.) I think it's very interesting that when talking about the perception that the glasses were broken you want to say, "it was believed" rather than it was "true," but if we were talking about your belief in God, you would want to say, "it was true," not "it was believed."
os, this analogy isn't working very well. You said,
In my analogy, the truth of the broken glasses is equivalent to the truth of belief in God, and the truth of the unbroken glasses is equivalent to the truth of science. One can be proven empirically (the glasses are not broken), the other cannot (the glasses are broken).
This analogy only works if the "truth" of the broken glasses can in any way be considered actual truth; but that's the point in question. It's far simpler and more accurate to say, as Franklin did, that there was a misperception or a false belief that the glasses were broken. It was a belief, but it was never a truth.
It does have this in common with belief in God: that it cannot be empirically proven. But there are lots of things that cannot be empirically proven. I cannot empirically prove that Boston is in Saskatchewan. I cannot empirically prove that God exists. I cannot empirically prove that my wife will love me next Monday. I cannot empirically prove that the law of noncontradiction is necessary to logic. I cannot empirically prove that there is no four-sided triangle. And I cannot empirically prove that empirical proofs are the key to all knowledge.
Some of these are not provable because they are false, some of them because they are a matter of faith (my wife loving me next Monday), and some of them because empirical truth is the wrong category of pursuit. And the matter of God's existence is one for which empirical information is relevant but does not constitute proof.
I agree that my saying there is only one truth doesn't make it so. But I find any other view to be incoherent and contradictory, as I've discussed often with Jacob.
think it's very interesting that when talking about the perception that the glasses were broken you want to say, "it was believed" rather than it was "true," but if we were talking about your belief in God, you would want to say, "it was true," not "it was believed."
Why is this interesting? Is it because, like the belief of the broken glasses, belief in God has been demonstrated finally to be false? No. It's still a very strong option. But there are two categories of discussion here: does some person (whoever is under consideration) believe in God? and is that belief true or false? For in the end it must be either true or false that there is a God.
Imagine that you had only the experience of the broken glasses, and not the experience of seeing the unbroken glasses lying on the floor of the car. You did not know that the "truth" was that the glasses were not broken; that information was not available to you. All you had was your experience of the glasses being broken. This is what is equivalent to belief in God: experiencing the broken glasses (it is, in fact, the equivalent to the experience of all reality, but I won't get into that here.)
Those who believe in God are like those who believe fully and completely in their experience of the glasses breaking. They don't need to see the glasses in order to validate their belief that they are broken. But there are others who have not had the experience of the glasses breaking or who do not fully and completely believe in the experience, who think that there is a great possibility that the glasses are there on the floor of the car, still intact. They are waiting to see what shape the glasses are in before they decide what to believe.
Does that make the analogy stand up any better for you?
Then I think your statement is exactly right, if you leave out the scare quotes like this:
You did not know that the truth was that the glasses were not broken; that information was not available to you
One's experience can lead one to wrong beliefs. If my belief in God is really like one who had that experience of the glasses breaking, and if I believe in God because I have misperceived or misinterpreted experience, then I do not have another "truth." I am wrong. Just as you were, for a time, wrong about the glasses.
If others are waiting to see which reality holds up under further inspection, then they are waiting not to see which "truth" to choose, they are waiting to decide which belief is closer to the truth.
So if your analogy is intended to move us toward accepting multiple simultaneous contradictory truths, it isn't getting us there yet.
os says: "I (and others) say that there are many truths (an infinite number, if what is real is each person's individual construction."
So you seem to endorse the view that truth is relative. On this view, there is no such thing as truth simpliciter; rather all truths are truths for someone (or perhaps some group) or other.
The trouble with this view is that it admits of decisive refutation.
The argument is well-known. Here it is. Call the proposition that all truth is relative to person or to group "R". Now let us ask whether R is true simpliciter or is true relative to some person or group. (These are the only two options.) If the former - if, that is, R is true simpliciter, it follows that there is an exception to R and thus that R is false. If the latter - if, that is, R is only relatively true - then since what is true for you need not be true for me, I have no reason to think R true. Indeed since it is only offered up as a proposition true-for-you, I have not the least reason to take it with any seriousness.
So then, R is either false, or, if not false, it makes not the least demand of me that I believe it. Put succintly, it's either false or irrelevant to me (and indeed to everyone else).
But Franklin, personal truths ARE important to others. Think about cultural truths. Right now, I am working with a family whose culture counts age differently than we do in the larger society. They say a child is two when the child has completed his first year and is beginning his second. The family has a child who is in his sixteenth year and would like to quit school, a decision which the parents support. The law says a child can quit school at sixteen. But by the way we (larger society) count, the child is only fifteen. Is there a "truth" to the way age is counted? I don't think so. I think both ways are true, and there is only difference, which we should accept and work with.
So you think it's both true that he's 15 and true that he's 16?
Isn't it better here not to embrace a contradiction but to dig a bit deeper and ask what's meant by the two groups? Don't those who say he's 15 mean that 15 years has passed since his birth? Don't those who say he's 16 mean something else - perhaps that 16 years have passed since his conception? Once we get clear about just what's meant, the appearance of contradiction melts away.
About relative truth: I stand by my point. If you mean that the doctrine of relative truth is merely true-for-you (and I don't know how you could mean anything else), I have absolutely no obligation to give it any mind. Indeed your claim that it's true-for-you implies that when you assert it, you merely report what you believe. It's no more than a bit of intellectual biography. It isn't a claim help up us rational simpliciter and thus as something that should command the belief of others.
Yes, it's true that he is both 15 and 16. Explaining the reasons why he's both doesn't resolve the issue, doesn't make him less 16 in one culture and 15 in another.
I guess we will have to agree to disagree that relative truth is important to others. I'm sure you could think of as many arguments against as I could think of for relative truth's importance. They are just different worldviews. But, my worldview allows me to accept the truth of your worldview, whereas yours does not allow you to accept the truth of mine. That is the biggest problem, IMO.
os says: "Yes, it's true that he is both 15 and 16."
If you assent to contradictions, there's no point in further debate. To debate is in part to defend a certain view as true. But if contradictions are true, any view might be both true and false; and if a view is both true and false, it is thus senseless to defend it as true.
Oh, and I think it obvious that, in our culture, when we say "Tom is 42" we mean that 42 years have elapsed since his birth. "Tom is 42" is in this way elliptical; it goes short for "42 years have passed since Tom's birth".
Of course I assent to contradictions. I gave up trying to live without contradictions a long time ago--probably about the time I read Whitman. In my experience, just about everything contradicts itself. I can't imagine that you haven't had the same experience.
OS:
In my experience, just about everything contradicts itself. I can't imagine that you haven't had the same experience.
I haven't had this experience ever. Franklin's example of the 15 and 16 year old person is not a contradiction because they are referring to the same reality, only from a different point of reference (birth vs. conception).
Your philosophy of contradiction allows two (or more) different realities to co-exist at the same moment in time. That means the following statements about reality are true.
a) there is no more than one reality.
b) there is no less than 2 realities.
SteveK,
You haven't noticed that the things in life that are good are also always, in some way, bad, and vice versa?
The people counting the boy's age were NOT counting from conception. They were counting from the child's birth.
I don't follow your logic (how is it that my philosophy means that there is no more than one reality?) but since I accept contradiction as a fact of life in our world, your two contradictory statements can co-exist for me without any problem.
os,
You are in dire need of clarity.
Of course some things are good in some ways and bad in others; there's no contradiction in that. What would be a contradiction is this: a thing is both good and bad in precisely the same regard at precisely the same time.
A contradiction is a proposition of the form: p and not-p. A contradiction is one at the same proposition both denied and affirmed at one at the same instant. I suspect that you sometimes use "contradiction" in an imprecise way.
Note this about contradictions: they must be false. For either p is true, or it is false. If it is false, "p and not-p" must be false, for it's first part is false. If p is true, then again "p and not-p" must be false, for not-p is false when p is true and so when p is true the second part of "p and not-p" is false.
Second point: if both count from the time of birth, and both mean the same by "year" (i.e. the time needed for the Earth to travel once around the sun), then one or both must be wrong. It cannot be that both are true; and if you contend otherwise, I fear that you're neck deep in confusion.
If you think it right to embrace contradictions, you may seek but you will never find. One term in every contradiction must be false; and thus to embrace contradicitons is to embrace falsehoods.
Franklin,
You are in dire need of complexity.
Let's call good "good" and bad "not good," so that good can be "p" and "not good" can be "not p." So then when I say that things can be both good and bad at the same time, you can understand that to mean that things can be both p and not-p simultaneously. Would you disagree that a thing can be both good and not good at the same time? Do you know the That's Good, No That's Bad story? (I'd link to it but I don't know how to do that in a comment.) Things are good or bad depending on context, among other things--they are interpreted as good or bad, and so can be both simultaneously, depending on the context and/or interpretation.
The family who says that the boy is sixteen counts a year as we do, but they interpret the passage of time differently; they say the boy is sixteen because he is in his sixteenth year, whereas we say the boy is fifteen because he has not yet completed his sixteenth year. Both ways of thinking about and expressing the passage of time are true.
os,
About how to count years. You just explained why it is that in fact there's no contradiction here. The one family means one thing by "15 years old" and the second mean something different. So then the one doesn't really assert something the other denies. The one asserts that boy is in his sixteenth year; the other asserts that only 15 full years have passed since his birth. Both claims are perfectly true and hence do not contradict one another. The apparent contradiction of "he's 16" and "he's 15" disappear when we make clear just what's meant; and this is what I predicted when we started. The families use words differently.
About good and bad: I did not deny that something can be good in one regard and bad in another. That's no contradiction. But it would be a contradiction if something were both good and not good at the same time and in the same regard.
Franklin,
The family will reply to the question, "How old is John?" with the answer, "Sixteen." You and I would reply to the question, "How old is John?" with the answer, "Sixteen." Same question, different answers. Both answers are true. The difference lies in the CONTEXT and INTERPRETATION, which I already stated. The same applies to good and bad: a thing is good or bad ONLY according to how it is interpreted, and this is how it can be both good and bad at the same time. Yes, you can "eliminate" the contradiction by deconstructing the context and interpretation, but only strengthens my point, which is that truth is relative.
So you don't mean to really assert that some contradictions are true? You mean only that truth is relative?
If truth is relative (ie, the result of context and interpretation), then contradictions can be true, as in the case of the boy's age. I am more interested in how this applies to bigger issues, though, like medical ethics and social justice.
I think that you're confused about this. If truths are relative in the way you suppose, then truths that might appear to contradict one another (as does your example of the boys age) don't really. Why not? One is true-relative-to-x (whatever x is) and the other is true-relative-to-y. This is no more a contradiction than is the pair of claims:
Nashville is south relative to Louisville.
Nashville is north relative to Atlanta.
Only if one and the same claim were both true-relative-to-x and not-true-relative-to-x would we have a genuine contradiction. As I said, relativizing truth removes the contradiction.
I didn't say that everything can be both x and not-x; I'm sure that there are some facts that we can all agree to (these are things that can be proven empirically). Nashville can't be both north and south relative to Atlanta. But, Nashville can be both hot and cold; both friendly and unfriendly; both busy and quiet. A boy can be both sixteen and fifteen. I think that you leave out that claims can be true-relative-to-x and not-true-relative-to-y (x and y of course being different) while at the same time being both true-relative-to-z (z being the same point of rreference for both claims. I tried to demonstrate this when responding to your statement that the boy is sixteen relative to how many years he has begun, and fifteen relative to how many years he has completed, but both fifteen and sixteen relative to how he would answer the question of how old he is. THIS is what I mean by all things being relative: the "truth" depends on the question.
But really whether Nashville is south or north or whether the boy is fifteen or sixteen is insignificant. What is more interesting is, how can removing life support be both right and wrong? How can civil unions be both right and wrong? How can providing universal health care be both right and wrong? It is in these moral questions that the relative quality of truth becomes important.
os, I'm intrigued by your opinion that Franklin is in need of complexity.
It has been said, and I think you quoted this recently on another thread, that one sign of intelligence is the ability to hold two contradictory thoughts in one's mind at the same time. We could think also of Thoreau's "hobgoblin of little minds." There is a large measure of truth in this, but it's not absolute. It's true that it is a sign of intelligence to be able to suspend judgment--to be content, for example, with our inability to comprehend how a photon could be both wave and particle at the same time, or how God could be One and Three at the same time. Some people want to make these things black and white, to rush to judgment. The wise person waits to learn more.
It's also a sign of wisdom to be able to handle paradox--that there could be both good and bad in the same situation, for example, or that I could title this blog thread, "Agreeing with Richard Dawkins." I disagree massively with him on very many things that are central to his message, but here I saw a point of agreement and I don't shrink from seeing it as such.
But there's a limit. It is not a sign of intellect to be able to maintain two contradictory thoughts as true at the same time and in the same relationship. This is the crucial condition of what Franklin has been trying to get across. The "that's good, no that's bad" story is about something is good and bad at the same time, but what is good and bad are different details, different aspects, or the same thing in different relationship or at different times. That's essentially what you yourself said:
Things are good or bad depending on context, among other things--they are interpreted as good or bad, and so can be both simultaneously, depending on the context and/or interpretation.
Thus I could be both 15 and 16 under the same counting system, but not at the same time--the two would have to be separated at least by a birthday. Or I could be 15 and 16 at the same time, but in a different relationship--15 in relationship to a counting system used in one culture, and 16 in the other culture's system, which are related in different ways to one's first birthday. These are not contradictions, for they are taken at different times or in different relationships.
Apparent contradictions always resolve either to real contradictions in which at least one side is false, or into mere paradoxes in which both sides are true, the "contradiction" being a matter of things considered at different times or in different relationships.
So is it contradictory or is it paradoxical to say that your glasses were broken and not broken? If we're talking about the real condition of the glasses it would be contradictory to maintain both; for they could not be broken and not broken at the same time. The only way out of that would be to suppose that they were broken at the time of the accident, and were spontaneously healed afterward, or were replaced somehow by another good pair of glasses identical to your original. In that case the contradiction is resolved by them being broken and not-broken at different times, which is allowed under the law of non-contradiction, or by them being different sets of glasses, which is obviously noncontradictory. But those two options are too wild to consider.
If instead of talking about the actual condition of the glasses, we are talking about your belief regarding their condition, there's no contradiction involved in your believing they were broken and not-broken, for those beliefs were at different times.
There is a level of complexity operating here, os, that is at least as deep and valid as the one that you want Franklin (and the rest of us) to move toward. There is no intellectual merit to believing contradictions. There is merit in studying them, suspending judgment for a time as need be, working them through, resolving them the hard way when possible, rather than blithely saying, "Oh, that's fine, both can be true at once." There's intellectual merit in discerning the difference between paradox and contradiction.
Thoreau's "foolish consistency" was about habit and paradox, not about logical contradictions.
Tom,
You and Franklin continue to try and "correct" me, by repeating what I've already said, that the truth of something is often--although not always--a function of context and interpretation. You are missing (or I'm not explaining well enough) some of the points I am trying to make. I disagree that holding two contradictory points of view as true is only an exercise on the way to discovering the "real" truth. But I have already acknowledged that I accept your worldview as valid for you, and want to move on to discussing the implications of relative truth. Are you interested in doing so?
I'm not sure what you have in mind for discussing the implications of relative truth, but you're welcome to take the next step in that direction so we can see.
I may have miscommunicated something myself. I did not mean to say
that holding two contradictory points of view as true is only an exercise on the way to discovering the "real" truth.
What I meant to say was that holding two contradictory points of view as possible truths could be a step on the way to discovering the real truth. At no point would I be able to hold two contradictory views as both actually true at the same time.
Just a clarification.
Commenting by HaloScan
