It’s a valid question. I’m assuming, since you complain about asking, that you have no answer to it.
You’re missing the point. The skeptic frequently makes use of the “infinite regress of questions,” failing to see that if there is an infinite regress, then no position can be justified. If someone gave you an answer why you should obey your creator, that answer would inevitably make use of some premise or other; and you could then question THAT premise, as you questioned the view the one should obey one’s creator. And I have no doubt that you would.
Read Lewis’s Abolition of Man. He states the epistemological problem of radical skepticism quite lucidly.
By the way, if I may ask, what was the traditional or ancestral religious culture of your family, if you had one? And was there a point at which you affirmed that tradition, and a later point at which you abandoned it? If so, I would be interested in hearing your account of your religious journey.
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Haven’t you just shown that no position can be justified, then? If not, you must have some way of ending that infinite regress other than just shouting “stop”.
I find reading Lewis painful, largely because of his smug certainties, tediously beaten into the ground. Perhaps you could summarize this epistemological problem and its solution, if you have one.
Congregational.
Yes.
Around the age of 12 I began to notice inconsistencies in the story and gradually also noticed that there was no sign of God acting in the world. There was no point of de-revelation, but by around 15 I had lost any trace of religion. I’m afraid I am so constructed that I look for and require evidence in order to believe.
I was asked to explain how I derive an ought from an is. I stated upfront it can’t be done. Then I put it back to the person who posed it to me because he seemed to imply that if you put God into the picture then somehow we can get oughts from that. But it turned out he couldn’t do it either. And now I’m being scolded for putting it back to the person who asked it of me, as if the rules of metaphysical and discoursive justification are different for us.
Sorry, it’s just not going to fly.
I otherwise agree with you. That because it is possible to hit some sort of philosophical bedrock where we can no longer justify our answers, this does not mean we don’t have any answers, or that some of the answers we can give along the way aren’t good answers.
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No, I’m only pointing out that under “radical skepticism” there is an infinite regress. There are reasonable, sane ways of justifying taking a position, but they would not meet the demand of “Cartesian certainty” that the radical skeptic insists on.
Thank you.
You mean, inconsistencies in the Biblical narratives, if they are taken as a rigorously literal factual history of what happened in the past? I, too, noticed those inconsistencies, at about the same age.
I have not seen any sign of “God acting in the world” either, if by that you mean parting the Red Sea and so on. But the absence of splashy miracles (which seems to be what Jerry Coyne demands, a new set of splashy miracles) doesn’t render religious belief impossible for me. But then, I may be looking for something less than a number of Bible-believers look for, in the way of miracles.
But your ultra-skepticism is such that your standard for evidence is so high that it is unlikely you will ever find any such evidence, which relates to my previous point. For example, for me the evidence for design in nature is quite strong – I don’t say there is a “proof” of design – but you not only don’t think it’s strong; you think there’s no evidence at all. But given your apparent criteria for evidence, it’s inevitable that you would draw that conclusion, and I see no way of getting you to change your criteria. I could say the same about free will, etc. There are many scientists in the world who respect evidence every bit as much as you do, but don’t agree with your conclusions about design or free will. They see evidence for these things where you see none. So it’s not lack of evidence by itself that’s the problem. The problem is the set of filters you use for deciding what counts as evidence and what doesn’t. I know this, because from about age 12 to about age 20-22, I employed the same set of filters, and came to almost the same conclusions as you (though probably more agnostic than atheist). Over time I came to think I was using filters that distorted reality, rather than accurately captured it. Once my filters were changed, religion became possible again – though certainly not fundamentalist literalism, which I still reject as much as I did when I was 12, though now for some different reasons.
Then what are you looking for? The wind blowing in a way you approve of?
Insight and wisdom about the deepest questions of life. Which I seem to find very often in Christian authors (and sometimes in Jewish, Hindu, Greek, etc. authors), but very rarely in atheist/materialist authors.
So how, in this case, do you stop that infinite regress? You seem to be doing it by invoking the strawman of “radical skepticism” and asking people to shut up about it already. I see it as merely trying to distract attention from a legitimate question. Nobody, by the way, is demanding “Cartesian certainty”; that’s another strawman.
Yes, if we ignore the second half of your sentence, which serves only to belittle and trivialize the inconsistencies. But not just the bible stories; the theology in general.
Once again, the second half of your sentence belittles and trivializes the first half. It might be an effective tactic, but it’s not particularly honest. No, that’s not what I mean. I hesitate to elaborate for fear that you will find a way to belittle and trivialize that too.
Argument by exaggerated characterization. Yes, it’s unlikely that I will ever find such evidence, but that’s because the evidence isn’t there, not because my standard is unreasonable.
We agree that you think so.
Of course you could. But do you have a real case, or will you just appeal to unnamed smart people who agree with you?
And I see that you finish with the smug certainty that I distort reality in a way that you claim to have done as a young man. All this is the resort of a person who has no real argument to make.
John, as an outside observer, I think that you have mischaracterized Eddie’s tone. I think that he was trying to be conversational.
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You may not realize this, but your softened tone is highly confrontational. And you have refused to engage in real discussion, just in characterization.
It’s not his tone I was complaining about there (I complain about it elsewhere, though) but his underlying assumption that he knows just where I’m coming from because he’s been there. He doesn’t actually know where I’ve been or where I am.
Agreed. No one really knows where anyone is coming from or where they have been. I think that he was trying though. It seems that it is just a natural part of any conversation that involves personal experience. What does chocolate taste like? Or what does yellow look like?
Eddie was reaching for common ground. Maybe you believe that he does not know enough about your experiences to comment, but is it wrong to respond to information shared? To perceive a similarity in your stories and respond accordingly?
It’s the implication of this perceived similarity that I object to: he was once wrong like I am now, but now he’s right. I think he’s trying to make the argument that he’s right because he’s gone past where I am, as if sequence equals progress. I also object to the idea that he ever was where I am, but those are two separate objections.
I don’t perceive a similarity other than a very rough and not useful one.
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I see. That makes any sort of personal conversation very difficult, if not impossible then. Is that why you seem to prefer to focus upon the concrete data instead?
No. I prefer to focus on actual argument and evidence because that’s my interest here. And I don’t agree that “that” (not sure what “that” is) makes any sort of personal conversation very difficult.
The “that” would be your reaction to Eddie finding similarity between his situation and yours. Your response is only one of many possible responses. One that would have fostered (rather than slammed shut) the conversation would be to clarify the differences and to make a dialog of it. If you were willing to share, I, for one, would have found it interesting to know how your similar-sounding experiences differed and how they took you down different paths.
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Ah, you meant that conversation down that particular line was closed; I thought you were making a more general point.
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@John_Harshman Yes, sorry.
No, that is not my argument. My argument is that your epistemology and metaphysics bias you to the point where you will inevitably “explain away” any argument for design. The biographical statements I made were not made to suggest that I used to be dumb but now am smart; they were made to show that it is possible to move from philosophical assumptions like yours to different ones. But I get the strong sense that at the moment you are very content with your philosophical position and see no need to revise it. And since we cannot make any headway on the questions about science until we come to some minimal agreement on the questions about philosophy, I judge that there is no point in debating the questions about science with you.
My intentions were friendly; I thought that if we could move beyond the icy exterior of competitive debate to the realm of common human experience, i.e., our upbringings, we might find some common ground. But rather than helping the situation, my attempt only irritated you. I won’t repeat the gesture.
Not an argument, exactly. More of an assertion.
But the assertion is borne out by the way you have argued here since the very first post of yours that I laid eyes on. Your metaphysics and epistemology surface again and again. No design inference will ever be possible if your metaphysics and epistemology are correct. But you don’t seem interested in seriously reviewing that metaphysics and epistemology.