Month: May 2014

by Matthew Sitman

In the wake of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s rather dismissive comments about philosophy’s usefulness, Rebecca Goldstein defends its enduring value – especially for the non-religious:

Philosophy is important because it’s unavoidable if you want to live a coherent life. To live such a life is to use standards to justify your beliefs and actions; it’s to try to bring as much internal consistency into your various beliefs as possible; it’s to consider which of our seemingly intuitive views about the nature of the world and our place within it are compatible with what science has to tell us, which are incompatible, and which are absolutely necessary.

Now whether one likes it or not, such coherence-making thinking involves one in issues of philosophy. Secularists, in particular, who want to counter the false claim that without God to ground morality there can only be nihilism, should be particularly interested in moral philosophy, since that’s where they’ll find the counter-arguments.

Goldstein goes on to clarify how she views philosophy’s relationship to science:

I think there’s often a misunderstanding about the nature of philosophy. Some seem to think philosophy to be in competition with science in the project of describing reality—in other words, ontology. But that’s not really the proper job of philosophy at all. It can’t, and shouldn’t, compete with science in this domain.

And how does one know this? From good philosophical arguments, that’s how. Science, even in making out its case for ontological superiority, has to rely on philosophy in order to make it coherently. It has to step outside of itself and offer a clear criterion for what makes some description scientific and others not, and offer a defense that its methodology actually gets us closer to knowing reality. It relies on philosophy to render its own claims coherent.

More generally, if you want to know what the role of philosophy is you should think of it more in terms of maximizing our overall coherence—including our internal moral coherence—than in terms of describing reality, as science does.

Also responding to deGrasse Tyson, M. Anthony Mills elaborates on how philosophy and science differ:

[T]he division of labor is not that philosophy is speculative while physics is not; rather, each discipline looks for different kinds of answers. Modern physics can ask speculative questions such as, “When did the universe begin?” or more practical questions such as, “How can we infer the existence of a planet by observing gravitational effects?” In either case, the answers depend on empirical and experimental evidence.

Modern philosophy, by contrast, asks questions such as, “What does it mean to accept the truth of a scientific theory?” Crucially, philosophical answers rely on different forms of evidence: not observations, but sound reasoning. A philosophy of science isn’t a theory alongside scientific theories, but a framework for evaluating such theories.

DeGrasse Tyson is right that such questions are not usually germane to the working scientist. But that doesn’t render them superfluous or counterproductive. Scientific progress not only requires the day-to-day work of “practitioners,” but also those who see the proverbial forest. Revolutionary thinkers break out of accepted paradigms and question received wisdom; they engage in precisely the kind “question-asking” for which deGrasse Tyson would banish philosophy.

by Matthew Sitman

In an NPR interview last week, Louis C.K. unpacked the comments he made, critical of some atheists’ certainty that God doesn’t exist, during his opening monologue when he hosted SNL in March (seen above):

[S]omething I’ve learned over the years is that when you talk about religion, you want to talk to religious people. Even if you’re talking about something that’s contrary religiously or provocative, a religious audience is a better audience for that. If you talk to a bunch of cool atheists in leather and suede, you know, sucking on their vape sticks or whatever they’re doing, they’re not going to get it because they don’t even think about God. It’s not even on their radar, you know? So they’re – but if you tell religious people, I don’t know if there’s a God, I don’t think there’s a heaven, where’s God’s ex-wife, these things, they have a connection to it that means something. …

I feel like the math in my head tells me that we’re just – that everything is just science and randomness and patterns but the main thing I feel is that it’s a great mystery. I feel like I need to be humbled before the mysteries of life. I have no idea what’s caused all of this.

In response, Chris Stedman questions C.K.’s understanding of what atheism entails:

This isn’t the first time C.K. has offered confusing statements about atheism; in a 2011 Reddit Q&A he said both “I’m not an atheist” and “I don’t ‘Believe in god,’” and suggested that he does not consider himself an atheist because he doesn’t know for sure that there is no God.

It seems that a lot of this confusion boils down to differing definitions of atheism. If atheism means knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are no gods, then C.K. is right. But that definition of atheism doesn’t fit most of the atheists I know. In fact, it runs up against something many atheists value: Doubt.

As an atheist, I never want to be too certain about what I believe. I strive to continually test and retest my assumptions, comparing them against new information and data as I encounter it. My atheism is curious, reflecting both a willingness to be wrong and a constant desire to learn.

So let’s clear the air: Being an atheist does not require absolute certainty. It doesn’t mean you rule out the possibility of divine or supernatural entities existing. Instead, it is the position that such a possibility is unlikely, and that the case for God hasn’t been adequately made yet.

by Jessie Roberts

In an interview about his new novel, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, Joshua Ferris suggests they do. He reflects on how an indistinct religious upbringing shaped his writing:

[G]rowing up I looked in on Catholicism as a non-Catholic, and I looked in on Judaism as a non-Jew. I was an outsider, this mutt-y white kid who had no tradition or belief. I wanted a religious community for myself, probably because I didn’t have one. If I’d had one, I probably would have spurned it.

To Rise Again At a Decent Hour starts from the question of whether there’s a kind of private language and intimacy to religion that the mutt-y white guys like me are missing out on. And to some extent, I’m also thinking about the question of whether as a writer there’s something I’ve missed out on. When you’re an American novelist in 2014, at a point when Philip Roth has had a kind of apotheosis—has ascended to heaven even though he’s still on earth—you realize the extraordinary richness he found in Judaism. I didn’t grow up within that richness. I simply didn’t have it. It cuts both ways, of course. There are writers who happen to be Jewish who get labeled as “Jewish writers” and would much rather be just writers. And here I am, lamenting the fact that I’m not a Jew! But religion offers a writer a tradition both to be nurtured in and to fight against, and that nurturing and that conflict can produce great literature. Roth was given a lifetime of material from the fights he picked with Judaism—with the generation of Jews that he raised him, with the generation that excoriated him, and finally with the generation that celebrated him. Whereas I got a few potluck dinners and some basement training in Noah.

In another interview, Ferris expands on his attitudes toward religion:

Is there a God-shaped hole in your own life?

Yes. The general impression of Americans is that we’re all believers. But there are quite a few of us, obviously, across the vast swath of this crazy country who don’t have a God. I think of myself, like my character in the book, as a “non-practising atheist”. At the witching hour there is a hell of lot to say for divine comfort. I feel excluded from that. There are some aspects of religion – its community, its certainty – that I long for.

Part of your plot takes the character back, through a faked online identity, to the Old Testament. What was the experience of immersing yourself in those verses?

Well, I gained a lot of respect for the Bible. I never knew it first-hand before. The best stories there remove all inessentials, and what you’re left with is something extremely efficient. It’s almost like a divinely inspired Hemingway writing in those parts.

Listen to another recent interview with Ferris here.

by Matthew Sitman

Timothy Tutt makes the case for doing so, arguing that Satan is “clearly a theological construct found in many cultures and dolled up differently over time”:

In the earliest traditions of Hebrew scripture, both good and evil were God’s domain. Satan appeared in the books of Job and Zechariah. At first, he worked for God. In the Book of Job, the devil functions as something of a chief-of-staff, checking up on God’s lower level employee. (Some readers may be confused by this and think of the devil as tricky tempter right from the get-go, as in the Garden of Eden. Remember, even though the Book of Genesis is printed first in the Bible, it was not written first.)

As centuries went by, Satan became testier and more independent. He began to oppose God with accusations that tempt humans. The devil moved from God’s employee to less-than-loyal opposition. This move was, in part, because Persian thinking seeped into Judaism. For three years (from about 700-300 BCE), Persia ruled a huge chunk of land from the Indus River to Greece, including what is now Palestine and Israel. Even after the Persian Empire declined, their thinking remained. The Persian philosophy saw the world as a struggle of good and bad.

By the time that Christianity grew out of Judaism, the devil was a full-fledged bad boy, the enemy of God and humans alike.

In a follow-up article, Tutt finds belief in a literal, personal Satan doesn’t fit with his understanding of Christianity:

Satan works well if you’re into fear and punishment. But that’s not what Christianity is about.

Christianity is about grace and love. And grace and love are like poker. They require taking risks and gambling.

If someone hits you on one cheek, let him or her hit you on the other, Jesus said. In a religion of rules, the cheek-slapper would be punished. In a faith of grace, the cheek-slapper just might be so overwhelmed by your gentleness that he or she gives up cheek-slapping. (Of course, that might not happen. That’s the risky grace of the gospel. It’s a lot like holding a straight in your hands and hoping your opponent only has three of a kind.) …

Let me be clear: Evil exists in the world. We must wrestle with that. But old constructs need to be tossed. The Christian church clung to a flat-earth cosmology far too long. Preachers used the Bible to defend slavery. Luther and then other Reformers changed theological views of communion from transubstantiation to consubstantiation to symbolism. Each move required risk.

Recent Dish on the devil here.