Lately, the hectic duties of life have rather overwhelmed me. Although I have thought about State of Formation often and tried to keep up with my reading of the other wonderful contributors to this site, I have struggled to formulate my thoughts into a blog entry. Over the past couple of weeks, I have been reading through a half dozen of Plato’s dialogues and sections of Plotinus’ Enneads. I have wanted to blog about them and I hope to do so soon. However, each time I devote some contemplation to the issue, I find the task nearly overpowering. Neither Plato nor Plotinus lend themselves to quick reflection or facile citation.
Yesterday, my wife, Elizabeth, a physicist, vented to me about an article that she read that would, I think, best be characterized as pseudo-science. The article was rhetorically crafted to be compelling to those who know little about science but utterly ridiculous to those who know the difference between scalars and vectors. She said something to me that I would paraphrase thusly: “It is so frustrating to read things that get physics wrong. Physics is tangible, mathematical, and provable. It must be so very frustrating to you to read things that get philosophy or theology wrong, since those are intangible and unprovable.” Indeed, it is! (Though I am not sure I’d describe either philosophy or theology as intangible, unmathematical, or unprovable… but I certainly get her point).
Today, I was drawn to a blog post from last month by Paul Wallace on religiondispatches.org entitled Way Beyond Atheism: God Does Not (Not) Exist. While it is not possible to prove what god is or even that god is, it is possible to “prove” (inasmuch as philosophy/theology can claim this term) what god is not. What is frustrating to me is reading, on the one hand, something that asserts that god is something that god cannot reasonably be. It is equally (or, I daresay, more) frustrating to read something that asserts that ‘god is not’ on the basis that god is not what god cannot reasonably be. It is tantamount to arguing that (a) a table is not a chair (b) because a table is “x” and a chair is “y”, (c) therefore a table does not exist. No one who asserts such an argument would be said to be reasonable since (c) does not logically follow from (b). And yet, such arguments seem to predominate in atheist discourse – per my reading, anyway.
Wallace’s essay argues, as I would and have, that “Most atheists reject far too little.” They tend to attack particular fundamentalist conceptions of god that, in Wallace’s terms, are “an embarrassingly easy target.” Unfortunately, Wallace also states that “[Richard] Dawkins refuses to examine the ground on which he stands: science itself.” I don’t know if that is true or not, but I think it is quite beside the point and strays from the issue and is likely to cloud the debate rather than clarify the focus. The defense of theology should and can stand on its own without any corresponding attack on the presuppositions held by other disciplines. We need not and should not attack science in order to defend theology or philosophy.
Wallace’s essay is helpful, though, and I do recommend it as a fair portrayal of the cataphatic/apophatic theological process. Inasmuch as atheists demonstrate the absurdity of particular positive assertions of god, we do well to heed those arguments, even as we also do well to recognize the difference between a refutation and a conclusion. As Dawkins and others have shown, many theists reject too little (although, I might quickly add that countless theologians have been rejecting ontotheology for millennia). As Wallace and Denys Turner argue, though, atheists also reject too little, accepting too faithfully substance ontology and Cartesian correspondence theory of truth.
One last point, perhaps thinking forward to a future blog post… Plato’s dialogue Parmenides is instructive not only for the philosophical reflections it contains, but also for the method it models. Parmenides does not simply lay out a systematic philosophy of The One. Rather, he offers a series of hypotheses. Each of these simple hypotheses is then examined, following each to its logical conclusion and evaluating the worth of the hypothesis on the basis of the implications that follow therefrom. If a hypothesis is proferred and subsequently found to be wanting on the basis of its logical implications, it does not follow that the topic under consideration is erroneous, but simply that the hypothesis pertaining to that topic is erroneous. The refutation of a hypothesis does not conclude the debate. It certainly may lead one to abandon the pursuit to explore the topic – which may be quite reasonable in many circumstances. We should not, however, confuse the abandonment of an investigation with its conclusion. Nor should we (non-physicists) confuse scalars and vectors.
(disclaimer note… I’m a theologian, not a physicist like my brilliant wife – the image posted with this blog is what I found when I searched for “scalar and vector” in google images!)
Brad,
I read that same article on apophasis and came away with very similar thoughts, though not so well and clearly crafted as yours.
I do agree that the reference to Dawkins in that article had the danger of being much too broad brush on science, but I would add that it was stated in such a way that it could not avoid the ad hominem that those who favor Dawkins would inevitably have read into it — and so, as you say, that portion of the argument would have been best left out. A kind of agon rides herd upon these issues today — and that agon is most brutal to open discourse.
I have to admit I had hoped for Parmenides the man, not Parmenides the Platonic essay when I read the key words of your blog. I have been studying him lately and feel that those short poetic fragments of his elaborating “that which is” and “that which is not” (the archai of our modern ontology) are interesting in relationship to the current debates on God. Plato is almost too refined in dealing with them, where Parmemides is raw and even mythical in his language of reason. That this very distinction between “what is” and “what is not” has its roots in the language of mythology (upon the path of Truth, in a chariot whose axle sings a cosmic song, met by the daughters of night, in a place that is neither night nor day, and through the voice of and authority of a divine creature, a goddess) is such a delicious irony.
On a personal note, I made three visits to India in the 90s. The company I worked for, Texas Instruments, had a site in Bangalore (where I see you studied), and I came to love that city. Once, while visiting, a friend took me to Puttaparthi (just north of Bangalore) to see Sai Baba, the living god. I remember thinking as we drove back (like Bill Murray in Caddy Shack after telling how he caddied for the dalai lama and received his blessing), “well, I guess I’ve got that going for me.” But then I looked over at my friend who was sound asleep because he had not slept the night before, so anxious was he at thought of seeing the man whom he so strongly believed was god, and I felt a little ashamed at that thought. This was one of those real, human lessons in “what is” and “what is not” that, if we have the good sense to listen to it, will, hopefully, yank us out of our smug hubris.
All the best and thanks again for the lovely article,
Mark David Dietz
Mark,
Thank you for your wonderful response. I disagree with you on one point… I think your response is far more eloquently crafted than my own!
Unfortunately, I must confess my ignorance when it comes to Parmenides the man. I will certainly have to read his fragments. When I was studying philosophy in Banglaore, I was consumed night and day with ontology – particularly with comparisons of Heidegger and advaita Vedanta. These days, though, my research is entirely devoted to epistemology, which is why I am drawn to Plato’s Parmenides. Your reflections on Parmenides’ fragments, particularly with respect to mythology, the goddess, etc., are very compelling and, perhaps, signal that ambiguous connection between “that which is” and “that which is known” or the manner in which what is known is known.
Your anecdote about Sai Baba – and the humilty it reveals – is beautiful… thank you for reading and sharing!
A thought-provoking post, Brad, as always, and here are the thoughts it provoked:
I think there’s an interesting example of what I am beginning to think of as the “trendy theologian fallacy” here. Essentailly it is a response to atheism which suggests the following:
1. Atheist critiques of religious arguments reject only unsophisticated forms of religious belief and argument.
2. Therefore atheism is unsophisticated (in the same way the inaccurate scientific article you mention is unsophisticated). Wallace, in the essay you cite, quotes Denys Turner: ““Atheists reject too little,” Turner writes, “This is why their atheisms lack theological interest. The routine principled atheist has but tinkered with religion.””
3. Because atheism doesn’t tackle more “sophisticated” forms of religion, it therefore is essentially irrelevant (see again Turner’s jab at “atheisms [which] lack theological interest”).
There are a number of problems I have with this.
First, I find this a surprisingly ahistorical view. The theological arguments to which many atheist arguments respond were not initially seen as “unsophisticated”. Initially, they were seen as extremely powerful arguments for theism and were advanced by many of the most respected theologians. That they have now been so successfully defeated that trendy theologians consider those arguments irrelevent and unsophisticated is precisely because the atheist counterarguments are effective (indeed, conclusive) and theologians have been pushed to more complex and slippery arguments.
Second, I would assert the point, which Wallace tries to sweep aside, that the vast majority of believers in theism believe on the basis of the non-trendy arguments, non on the basis of “apophatic” and other inscrutible doctrines. It therefore makes strategic sense to spend most time refuting THESE arguments. If it is an “embarrassingly easy target” to aim for, then it is equally true that a vast number of people embarrassingly cling to that very target. The portion of the world’s population who take your position, as far as I understand it (which I must admit is not far) is likely, i judge, to be extremely small.
Now, this does not mean that you may not be right – the trendy theologians may well have discovered a way of thinking about God which is entirely superior to previous ways of tackling the topic. But there is a hint of disingenuity in the way with which you take those promoting naturalism to task for “rejecting too little” and accuse them of aiming at “embarrassingly easy targets”. The brute fact is that many, many people are still swayed by the sorts of arguments which Dawkins et al defeat. Most well known apologists use those very arguments (Timothy Keller, in “The Reason for God”, relies precisely on those sorts of arguments, for example). People’s belief on the basis of these arguments influences their thinking, their actions, adn their politics (often, I would argue, for ill). And so the argument must still be made.
Just as your wife is frustrated by physics papers which misrepresent her subject, I am frustrated by trendy theologians who misrepresent the state and nature of religious belief in what seems like an increasingly convoluted attempt to hang onto God language.
James, thanks, as always, for your considered and well-structured response. Thanks also for characterizing me as both “trendy” and as representing an “extremely small” minority. While I do locate myself in the latter, I’m rarely classed as the former!
Your syllogism seems to skip a step between (1) and (2). It is not the rejection of “unsophisticated” (your word, not mine) theological claims that renders atheism “unsophisticated”… rather, it is the confusion of ‘refutation’ and ‘conclusion’, hence the language of ‘too little’ and ‘not far enough’ in Wallace, Turner, and my own writing. As for point (3), I don’t think that any of us consider atheism to be irrelevant (either essentially or pragmatically). “Lacking theological interest” is considerably different, I think, from irrelevancy. Quite to the contrary, atheism seems to enjoy increased traction in popular culture today, which is why theologians (trendy or not) are beginning to engage its thought once again.
You write: “the vast majority of believers in theism believe on the basis of the non-trendy arguments, non on the basis of “apophatic” and other inscrutible doctrines.” My first thought here is that we may have different understandings of what the word “trendy” means, since I would have thought that what the “vast majority of believers in theism” would be considered a trend… but whatever else I may be, I am certainly not a sociologist, so I leave such judgments to others! Apophatic theology is not a doctrine. It is, as its Greek etymology attests, a process. It does not seem all that inscrutable to me – but then, I am an apophatic theologian, so I suppose I’d be in trouble were I to find it inscrutable! 🙂
Digging beyond the rhetoric to the point that I think you are trying to make here – can we say that “the vast majority of believers in theism” do not believe in apophatic theology? It seems to me (and again, I’m not a sociologist), that we would need to speak with each of those believers and ask them if they believe that god is a finite being or not. I suspect that most would not – but it seems as if it would be difficult to know without asking them.
Thanks again for your response – and for reading my post. I’ll now return to reading those ever-so-trendy theologians, Plotinus and Proclus 😉
Thanks for this Brad – it’s always very interesting to discuss these issues with you!
I think you’re right about the syllogism skipping between 1 and 2. This is actually one of the points I’m trying to make – the critique skips a point when it dismisses mainstream atheist thought on the basis that it does not confront things like apophatic theology.
And to me the posts you link to, and yours, read mostly like a dismissal. They admit little value in contemporary atheist scholarship and only engage in the arguments presented by individuals like Dawkins in a cursory way. Further, the analogy with which you open seems to suggest a parallel between current atheist thought and wildly incorrect and unhelpful physics papers. That paper might well be considered irrelevant by trained physicists, so the analogy led me to that reading of your post. Wallace’s post is certainly dismissive in tone, with references (wholly inaccurate and unsubstantiated) to Dawkins’ “fundamentalism”. But I’m glad for the clarification you offer!
As for a confusion between “refutation” and “conclusion”, I simply don’t think this is an error which most atheists make. The position of writers like Dawkins, Hitchens etc. is not that God has been conclusively shown not to exist. It is rather that on the basis of the current evidence that is the most reasonable stance to take. Each of the “four horsemen” make this abundantly clear in their writings. So in this sense no ultimate conclusion has been drawn. But perhaps you meant conclusion in another sense.
Trendy, in the UK, is used in a number of senses, such as “currently fashionable but unlikely to endure”, and “voguish, slightly rarefied”. The latter is the sense in which I mean it here ;). You say:
“It seems to me (and again, I’m not a sociologist), that we would need to speak with each of those believers and ask them if they believe that god is a finite being or not.”
Pollsters do similar things very regularly, and repeatedly demonstrate that, at least in the USA, most people believe in a personal God who takes interest in human affairs. This is precisely the sort of God mainstream atheism seeks to critique.
Ah, yes – thanks for the clarification. This is precisely what I thought and why I composed the post! I am pleased to know that we at least agree that mainstream atheists seek to critique the findings of pollsters.
As for the definitions you offer of “trendy”… I think these are also the basic connotations in the US, as well. So it seems that we agree on more than I first thought. It is just that darned “logic” that we seem to struggle with… or, as you might say in the UK… it is just that darned “logic” with which we struggle.