"Philosophers Against God" – On Jeremy Fogel’s Book (Column 726)
A few days ago I received from my friend Jeremy Fogel a new booklet he published, whose Hebrew title is Philosophers Against God. He wrote that he would be happy to receive critiques for and against his arguments, so I decided to devote a column to it. Almost all of these matters have been discussed by me in the past, and therefore at least in some cases I will allow myself to be brief and refer to earlier sources in my writings instead of detailing everything here.
Deconversion
Jeremy states at the very beginning of the book that his goal is to lead the reader to deconversion. He then clarifies that he does not intend to claim that there is no God or to undermine anyone’s faith. His intention is only to raise questions and to shake religious dogmatism. Later he explains that dogmatism is the mother of all sin and all evil in the world, and therefore this philosophical discussion is important for our practical lives as well. According to him, all the evil in the world is done in the name of God by those who are sure they know what He wants of them and of all of us; if we undermine that dogmatism and leave God and belief in Him as a kind of question, renouncing answers to it, the world will be much better.
Already here I will note that I too see religious fundamentalism and dogmatism as folly that also leads to problematic results. In that sense I too would like to lead us all to questioning, and I even devoted a book to it, Truth and Unstable, as well as quite a bit of my writing in general. But this is more or less the only point on which I agree with Jeremy in this booklet.
Is religious dogmatism really the mother of all sin?
Jeremy assumes, like many others, that belief in God is the mother of all sin. But unfortunately he misses a very essential point here. In the sixth chapter of my book God Plays Dice I addressed a similar claim by Dawkins (in a talkback to the previous column, David noted that the source of this saying is Steven Weinberg), who wrote that in every group there are good people who behave well and bad people who behave badly, but only in religious groups are there good people who behave badly. I must say that although this is very annoying, there is something to it. But as I showed in my book there, there are quite a few logical and factual errors woven into Dawkins’ words.
Some of the greatest mass murderers of the twentieth century were secular and even atheists: from Stalin and his fellow communists (Lenin and Engels), to Pol Pot—no small butcher himself—and more. One can debate Hitler’s religiosity (Dawkins tries to conduct such a discussion, and his tendentiousness there reaches truly absurd heights), but it is irrelevant. It is completely clear that even if he was religious in some sense, he did not murder in the name of religion. His dogmatism was ideological, not religious. The principles of Nazism are not anchored in the New Testament or in Christian thought. In general, the Nazis were much closer to paganism, and in any case we are dealing with a thoroughly secular ideology, not a religion, even if some of its adherents were religious Christians. In addition, many terror organizations around the world are not connected to religion (the Red Brigades, the Japanese Red Army, Baader–Meinhof, Carlos the Jackal, and more and more—most of them lean communist).
Therefore the more accurate claim is that most evils in the world are caused by fundamentalism or dogmatism, but not necessarily religious dogmatism. In that same chapter I showed that Dawkins himself is a zealous fundamentalist, like many of his atheist colleagues. One indication is that he advances patently absurd arguments from within, and an intelligent person like him should not have done so had he thought about things in a balanced way. This is the place to clarify more precisely what fundamentalism means for our purposes.
The problem with fundamentalism: two kinds of doubt
The philosophical definition of fundamentalism for our purposes (this is my definition, not necessarily something accepted in the field) is the placing of some claim(s) beyond critical thought. A person or group that holds position X with absolute certainty and is not prepared to subject it to critical testing or to relinquish it under any circumstances, regardless of arguments raised against it, is fundamentalist.
In this sense, even Mother Teresa (I am speaking of her image as I perceive it; I do not know her herself) was a fundamentalist, since her clinging to the good was absolute and beyond any critique. Likewise, ISIS adherents are fundamentalists, and so are many Haredim and, to a lesser extent, religious people in general. So too with the Church of “Just Not Bibi” and the Church of “Only Bibi.” Note that this definition does not depend on the content of the position the fundamentalist holds, but only on his absolute adherence to it. Mother Teresa’s fundamentalism threatens no one and harms no one (though I tend to think that fundamentalism, regardless of its content, usually brings bad results), and still it is fundamentalism.
In my book Truth and Unstable I attacked fundamentalism, not because of its moral and social consequences but mainly because I believe it is wrong. Nothing can stand beyond critical thinking (including this very principle). Beyond that, I argued there that religious faith need not be fundamentalist. The antithesis to fundamentalism is not skepticism and the absence of beliefs and/or ideologies, but holding them in a non-dogmatic fashion. I, for example, definitely hold beliefs and ideologies, and I am also willing to fight for them and pay prices, yet at the same time I am willing to hear and consider counterarguments and, if necessary, I very much hope I will be willing to relinquish or change my position.
I explained there that this is the postmodern error. For them, the necessary antithesis to fundamentalism and dogmatism is absolute doubt. But this is a mistake. The antithesis to fundamentalism is the absence of certainty. But the absence of certainty is not doubt. I, for instance, believe in God—but certainly not with certainty. Does that sound to you equivalent to someone who is wholly uncertain about God’s existence?! Even our acquaintance Dawkins divides the faith–atheism scale into seven levels. I’ll list them from memory: absolute believer (with certainty), believer very likely, fairly believing, skeptical regarding belief, fairly atheist, atheist very likely, and absolute atheist. He presents himself as a six out of seven, though his forceful writing indicates he is quite close to level seven (as I wrote above, he is a fundamentalist).
The problem I see in fundamentalism is not its social harms and the cruel extremism that usually represents it in our consciousness. I see a philosophical problem in fundamentalism, and this exists even in Mother Teresa’s fundamentalism. Absolute faith in something is simply an error, before the question of whether it is harmful or not. The reason is that we have no possibility of reaching any conclusion with certainty. True, this error magnifies problems that exist within problematic contents. Cruel or immoral conceptions are problematic, but when someone holds them fundamentally the problem is greatly magnified. There are people with communist views who do not murder and do not support murder, and there are fundamentalist communists who did advocate murder. There are Muslims who do not murder and do not support murder, and there are fundamentalist Muslims who do. The primary problem is usually not the problematic content but the dogmatic grip on it.
As noted above, fundamentalism does not necessarily come from a religious source. I brought examples of horrific and extremely cruel dogmatism on the part of overtly secular groups. The conclusion is that evil and problematic outcomes stem from a problematic ideology, religious or not, and they are only magnified when those ideologies are held fundamentally, whether for religious reasons or otherwise. Therefore, instead of writing a book against God, Jeremy should have written a book against certainty and against fundamentalism in general, irrespective of God. Such a book should examine the relation between truth and certainty and point out that holding to the truth does not mean holding it with certainty. There one could also show that while God is not a necessary basis for fundamentalism, He is a necessary basis for truth (at least on the axiological plane). It would also be worth pointing out there that an assault on God is an assault on the very notion of truth, and although a fundamentalist world is an evil and mistaken world, I would not want to live in a bland, boring, meaningless world in which there is no truth and nothing to live for or even to fight for. Oops—I just remembered that there already is such a book: Truth and Unstable. 😊
In passing I will note that although philosophically God is the basis for truth and from that also for fundamentalism, practically, as we have seen, there are quite a few extreme and dangerous fundamentalists unconnected to Him. They are indeed philosophically mistaken (just as one who thinks there is binding morality without God is mistaken, as I showed in column 456—I’ll note that the debate referenced there was moderated by Jeremy Fogel), but that does not make them any less dangerous.
On questions and answers
Jeremy repeatedly writes in his book that questions are far more important, beautiful, and sacred than answers. Here too, in my view, he goes too far. I am very much in favor of questions, and I am unwilling to leave anything outside the realm of inquiry. But why exalt the question—and even more so the absence of answers—so fanatically and dogmatically? What is wrong with answers? Jeremy writes that questions are always better and wiser than answers. I do not know whence he draws this claim (incidentally, this very claim is not a question; it is quite categorical for someone who dislikes categorical answers), and I see little substance to it.
There are wonderful answers and weak answers, just as there are wonderful questions and weak questions. In my eyes, the willingness to ask is indeed very important—but not because questions are a lofty ideal and answers are submission to small-mindedness. Questions are important because they are the best means of arriving at more and more answers and not settling for the answers we have. Questions are a means to fight fundamentalism, but fighting it does not mean adopting a skeptical stance. Questions about dogmatic claims arise in order to seek alternative answers. For every question we should propose an answer, yet recognize that it is neither absolute nor certain. It is indeed important to reach answers to the best of our ability; it is just not right or desirable to hold them dogmatically and absolutely. As I wrote above: when fighting absolutes, the alternative is not necessarily skepticism and the absence of answers.
Synthetic maturity as an alternative to fundamentalism
In my books Two Carts and Truth and Unstable, I described a three-stage maturation process of a person and paralleled it to the three-stage maturation of our civilization as a whole:
- In the first stage, childhood, the child accepts what he is told as absolute truth. This is a dogmatic stage. If father or mother or the teacher says X, he accepts it as self-evident. In the development of our civilization this is the pagan stage, where dogmatic beliefs were taken for granted from the sages, magicians, or elders of the tribe.
- At some point comes adolescent rebellion, where the youth challenges the adults who explain things and says: Who says? Prove it! His presumption is that he is a rational being unwilling to accept things without proof. He views the adults as dogmatic creatures who make claims without proofs. In the development of our civilization one can see the beginning of adolescence in Greece. There philosophy and logic began to develop and take shape, expressing the fact that the Greeks ceased to accept dogmas as self-evident. Not for nothing does Jeremy sing praises to Socrates, who wandered and asked questions and thereby undermined the prevailing conventions (though he was executed for it).
Adolescence ends when the youth realizes that he has no way to reach certainty. Nothing has a proof, for every proof is based on premises, and premises, by virtue of being premises, have no proof. Here a fracture is formed: the youth who decided to be rational and to accept only proven and certain claims now sees that there are no such claims (save for logical tautologies—but that is not very interesting). He stands before a broken trough: his hope to formulate positions in a rational and certain way has been dashed. This is the point where adolescence ends and we reach the threshold of the third period: adulthood. So what do we do? How do we exit this state and become adults?
- To better understand, I will sharpen the problem the youth faces at the threshold of adulthood. He now holds two insights: (A) Only a certain claim is acceptable. (B) There are no certain claims. What can be the next step? There are three possibilities:
- Remain with both insights and become a skeptic. If only certain claims are acceptable and there are no certain claims, then no claims are acceptable. This is skeptical maturity.
- Adopt insight A and reject B. That is, remain with the conception that only certain claims are acceptable, but deny that we cannot reach certainty. True, by logical argument one cannot reach certainty (for every argument rests on premises)[1], but there are transcendent sources beyond thought that can grant us certainty. This is certainty based on dogmas above critical thinking. And this is of course fundamentalist maturity.
- Adopt insight B and reject A. That is, claim that not only certain claims are acceptable. One may adopt claims even if we have no certainty about them, as long as they are within the bounds of the reasonable. Common sense or intuition are the basic tools in this mode of maturity. This is what I called synthetic maturity (the term follows Kant, but I won’t go into it here).
In the development of our civilization, the stage at which we moved from adolescence to adulthood was roughly the mid-twentieth century. Logical positivism was the essence of the adolescent conception that championed certainty and was prepared to accept only proven claims (or the result of direct empirical observations) and well-defined concepts. That conception broke in the mid-twentieth century, and some attribute this to the world wars. For our purposes, this is the stage at which the world matured. Three streams of adults now arose: postmodernism is skeptical maturity; fundamentalism is the second type; and synthetic maturity is the third. These have been wrestling since the mid-twentieth century, with postmodernism unable to cope with fundamentalism because both conceptions agree that only certain claims are acceptable (the difference between them is only whether such claims exist). Therefore the postmodernist has nothing to say to the fundamentalist who presents “higher” sources of truth. No wonder postmodernism digests fundamentalism into itself (via various New Age phenomena). Thus again and again fundamentalist “truth” demands equal status as one of the narratives in the circle of differences in the postmodern world—and it indeed receives it (post-colonialism and attitudes toward Muslim immigration to Europe express this phenomenon). In recent years postmodernism and fundamentalism have practically fused symbiotically (see the postmodern circles worldwide that support Muslim fundamentalism against the West and, of course, against us in Israel).
From here you can understand that the only way to truly confront fundamentalism is the synthetic way, for it is willing to dispute the fundamentalist “truth” and not grant it equal status, even without certainty on its own path. If you want to confront ISIS, it is not right to tell them that they are as right as we are and at most defend ourselves with force in order to be spared. A real alternative must offer an alternative truth, not a postmodern vacuum. In the aforementioned books I also showed that the only basis for synthetics—that is, for uncertain truth—is… God, and therefore a war against Him is a war against life and against the world.
Note that we again encounter the same fallacy described above. The conception that the only way to present an alternative to fundamentalism is skepticism—the conception of skeptical maturity—leads to a colossal failure of the West. Therefore, as I wrote above, the more appropriate fight is not against God but against fundamentalism on the one hand and skepticism on the other. Note that, surprisingly, Jeremy Fogel and his fundamentalist counterparts stand on the same side of the barricade, and their conceptions are harmful in rather similar ways (for one builds the other). To attack fundamentalism, Jeremy chooses to present in opposition a skeptical stance that believes in questions without answers—that is, in doubt as a value. But as I noted, this only plays into its hands, and there is here a very basic philosophical fallacy. In the last sections we saw that same fallacy in the social sphere and in our real world, and it can be properly understood only by descending to its philosophical depth.
Up to here I dealt with the framework of the discussion, and this is actually my main point. I will now nevertheless enter into a critique of the book’s content itself, doing so according to the chapters of the book.
A. Saint David
The first chapter deals with David Hume, and Jeremy claims that with Hume’s winning arguments one can easily dismantle the accepted images of God and His desires. At the end of p. 20 Jeremy Fogel explains that Hume’s attack on faith has two heads, each directed against a different pillar of faith: (1) the possibility of inferring (the existence of) God from nature; (2) the possibility of knowing something about God from miracle stories in the scriptures.
I have dealt at length with both of these challenges in several places in the past, so I will not enter into great detail here. The first challenge attacks the physico-theological proof, what is called “the argument from design” or Paley’s “watchmaker” argument. The watchmaker argument says that if we see a watch somewhere we will not assume it arose by chance. Something so complex was certainly made by a maker (a watchmaker). If so, the universe—which is much more complex—was certainly made by some maker.
Jeremy claims that evolution refuted these arguments, which is of course a misunderstanding. In my book God Plays Dice, and later in the third dialogue of my book The First Being, I explained this argument at great length and why evolution does not touch it at all. In short: evolution offers an explanation for the emergence of life within the laws—that is, given the system of laws in our universe. But the argument from the laws wonders whence those laws themselves came. This has no scientific explanation and cannot have one. On p. 23 Jeremy himself raises a similar (though not identical) distinction when he writes that nowadays theological claims rely on physics rather than biology (because there, in his opinion, Darwin solved the problem). The question is how we got to the stage of biology at all—that is, who is responsible for the fine-tuning of the laws of physics. Against this he raises several hackneyed rejoinders (the anthropic principle, multiverses, what is so special about our world that it needs explanation?!). I will not go into them here since I explained in the aforementioned books why none of them hold water.
But all this is not about Hume, for these are modern debates (Darwin published his book in 1870, and Hume died almost a century earlier). From p. 28 Jeremy presents Hume’s rejoinders against the physico-theological argument. Essentially there are two main claims:
- The analogy between the universe and a watch is unfounded. A tiger is also a complex creature and no one asks who made it. A watch is an object that serves a purpose, and therefore it is clear someone made it.
This is a very strange claim. First, if I were to show a watch to a person from Africa who had never seen such a thing and does not know what it is for, would he not ask himself who assembled this odd and complex object? Second, why indeed not ask who made the tiger? I certainly wonder about that, and my answer is: God. Jeremy’s mistake is that he thinks these questions are based on experience, and they are not. They are based on logic and philosophy (indeed, to some extent even on mathematics). The probability that something complex will arise spontaneously is very small (this is essentially the second law of thermodynamics). This is not a result of experience but of calculation. Therefore this principle is true for tigers just as for watches. Hume was an empiricist and therefore fell into this error, but from a contemporary philosopher I would expect more. To be clear, I am not claiming this is a scientific thesis or that the second law of thermodynamics proves God’s existence. I am using it only to define complexity objectively and to clarify the argument that denies the possibility that complex things arise spontaneously.
- If every complex thing requires a maker, as the physico-theological argument assumes, and therefore there must be a God who created our universe—then who created God Himself?
Here there is a misunderstanding. There are only two possibilities: either there is an infinite regress of causes, or there is a beginning to the chain of causes. The first possibility is a fallacy (an infinite regress), which leads us to the second. The first link in the chain is called “God.” The question “who created God” has no answer and requires none. No one created Him. He exists without needing a prior cause (ancient philosophy described this, not very successfully, as “self-cause.” Likewise “God who created Himself,” in Jeremy’s phrasing, is absurd. God was never created). If God too needed a cause for His existence, we would be trapped in an infinite regress.
One may of course wonder whether the existence of such a link does not refute the premise that a complex thing needs a maker, and my answer is no. A complex thing of the kinds known to us in the world (which by nature do not exist eternally) requires a maker. Therefore the first link in the chain should be of a different kind—one that does not require an external cause for its existence. That is God.
On p. 31 Jeremy raises a third claim: even if there is such a God who created the universe, who says this is our religious God? And who says He is one? The answer is of course: no one. Philosophy can take us only to domains accessible to it. It can prove that the universe had a Creator, but the claim that He wants us to don tefillin or to eat the Eucharist is a claim not accessible to philosophy. Believers do not arrive at it by philosophical means either, but by revelation. Which brings us to the second pillar Hume challenges: the possibility of receiving a tradition about a miracle or a revelation.
Here I will not enter into this argument, since I dealt with it in great detail in columns 671–673 (written following a debate I had with Jeremy). To my (objective) judgment, I completely dismantled there Hume’s argument against miracles and tradition and showed it to be a collection of question-beggings that does not hold a drop of water. I sent those columns to Jeremy, but now I see that this somehow did not prevent him from enthusing over Hume’s argument as is customary among our atheist cousins (in those columns I described the superlatives this argument receives from them, unjustly). Hume’s arguments against the uniqueness of biblical traditions (p. 35 ff.) are likewise far from convincing, and I hope you will forgive me for not entering here. Even Jeremy’s own claim (I think Hume did not raise it) that tradition is based on a single book rather than on thousands of transmitters across generations is incorrect, and I explained that to him back then (I believe this was already discussed in our podcast). Tradition is transmitted orally by many thousands of people and is accompanied by the Torah scroll. The tradition is not based on the book; rather, the book’s reliability is based on it.
In general, in my book The First Being I present a complete picture of the chain of arguments that lead me to faith, and there I address all these claims in detail. Here I only noted the main points in his remarks.
B. Against God?
In this chapter Jeremy tries to clarify Hume’s motives and aims. His claim is that Hume did not come to undermine God’s existence but only the certainty we can have about His existence, and even if He exists we can have no certainty regarding what He wants of us. He also explains that Hume’s motivation was the danger inherent in religious fanaticism and certainty.
Note: Jeremy claims that Hume’s arguments show that we have no way to know with certainty that God exists (an epistemic claim), but that does not mean there is no God (an ontic claim). I fully agree. But from here Jeremy slips without noticing to the conclusion that one can know of God’s existence—just not with certainty. To my understanding this was not Hume’s view, nor does it follow from Jeremy’s arguments. I will explain now, and I hope Jeremy will forgive me if I disagree with him and with his admired lecturer, Edward Craig.
Hume was an empiricist, and as such he believed that we have no way to know anything about the world except through empirical observation; that is, the only source of information we can have about reality is observation. What is not observable we have no way to know (not even without certainty). Regarding it we must be in complete doubt. I remind you of what I explained above: lack of certainty is not doubt. To know something with high probability is knowledge without certainty, but I would not call it doubt. By contrast, the inability to know something means I doubt it—not merely that I lack certainty about it. Thus, for example, if Hume shows that the principle of causality and causal relations are not the result of observation, the conclusion for him is not that we have no certainty that there is causality, but that we have no way to know that there is causality, meaning we have no way to know it even without certainty. That is, for him the principle of causality is a mere subjective invention (which I strongly dispute). Admit there is a difference between that and saying the principle of causality is uncertain (a statement I accept).
From here you can also understand that even if Jeremy and Craig are right—that Hume’s motivation in undermining dogmatism was to erode religious dogmatism—he took a path too extreme. He showed that we have no way to know that there is a God, not merely that we cannot be certain about Him. Moreover, if his intention was only to erode dogmatism, there is no need for Hume’s extreme empiricism. There is no thesis in the universe that can be held with certainty, except for logical tautologies. For that one needs no argument—only minimal grasp of cognition and thought. Even the evidence of the senses, the most “absolute” fact for the empiricist, rests on the uncertain assumption that our senses reliably reflect reality (and do not merely generate hallucinations). That too is not a certain assumption. To oppose certainty, no complex arguments like Hume’s are required, which proves he did not intend only to erode believers’ dogmatism but to undermine God’s existence—or at least our ability to know of His existence. True, he did not prove that God does not exist, but he argued that we ought to be in doubt regarding Him (and not merely that our knowledge is uncertain).
I will add something else. In my opinion, a thinker’s motivation is irrelevant to the philosophical discussion. One must discuss his arguments on their merits, examine whether they are valid, and to what extent his conclusions are reasonable. This mixing—repeated throughout the book—bothers me greatly. If you have a claim, present arguments for it and against alternatives. Do not explain to me how harmful and ugly my position is; rather, show me that it is incorrect and explain why. Dubious conjectures about Hume’s motives do not contribute to the philosophical discussion, even if they add a pinch of topical salt and pepper. When the arguments do not hold water, we are left with the motives, and in effect this becomes preaching against dogmatism and fundamentalism instead of arguing against them.
I do indeed agree that dogmatism and fundamentalism—not necessarily religious—lead to ills. The way to fight them is to erode (by argument, not by preaching) certainty and dogmatism, but not to erode belief in God per se. What Jeremy and Hume try to do is to attack belief, not certainty about it. All the arguments there concern the very ability to know, not the degree of certainty of that knowledge.
C. The holy hum of doubt
In this chapter Jeremy turns to Socrates. The chapter’s main theme is the sanctity of doubt and questioning and disdain for answers. I already touched on this point above. Socrates is a model of one who challenges every assumption and seeks definitions for every concept. He made people think and define, and showed them that they do not truly understand concepts and claims that seem clear to them. Here too one may interpret doubt and questioning as the great ideal, but to me these are means. The goal is to define better and to find answers. True, for that one must adopt a stance that challenges every concept and insight—but those are means, not ends. What is the point of inquiry if it is not meant to make us wiser? To turn inquiry itself into a value is very odd. Perhaps we will not reach an answer—but that does not mean answers have no value. It only means we need not panic when we lack an answer; but that is not an ideal state.
Indeed, in such an approach we are very aware that all our understandings and conclusions are uncertain. Such an approach does lead to lack of certainty—but not necessarily to doubt in the sense described in the previous chapter. Therefore I very much connect to, and identify with, Socratic sophism. But this hymn to inquiry and challenge, which I fully share, does not dovetail with the trend of undermining our very ability to know anything and of deifying the question at the expense of answers. It does dovetail with the trend of showing that we cannot know anything with certainty. The blurring and lack of distinction between these two states—uncertainty and doubt—and in particular the overly smooth, unwitting transitions between them, are what troubled me throughout the book.
I will only note that the portrayal of Abraham our forefather as a dogmatic antithesis to the inquisitive, challenging Socrates is highly tendentious. True, Abraham heeded without challenge the command to bind his son, but as Jeremy himself notes, he also bargained with the Holy One, blessed be He, like a horse trader over the city of Sodom. Commentators have long explained the differences between these cases. It seems that despite his reservations, Jeremy again tacitly assumes that anyone who has a position—and in particular if he is willing to pay prices for it—is not a skeptic and is therefore dogmatic. But no: he indeed is not a skeptic, but not necessarily dogmatic either. He holds positions and values, only not with certainty. Lack of certainty does not mean lack of position and values, nor an unwillingness to pay prices for them. Again we see a confusion between lack of certainty and doubt and an ignoring of the middle state between dogmatism and skepticism.
Finally, I must recall that Socrates ended his life by giving his life for the sanctity of Athenian law. Is that not fundamentalist dogmatism, like that of Abraham our forefather? Why does this not bother Jeremy in his admiration for Socrates? Where was Socrates’ vaunted skepticism when he could have cut corners regarding the law, saved his life, and no less—continued to impart his great and edifying wisdom to the public? It seems he too was willing to pay prices for his ethical stance, though as Socrates we may assume he probably was not convinced it was true—just like Abraham our forefather.
D. Pyrrho’s enlightened skepticism
The fourth chapter is a paean to Pyrrhonian skepticism. In it Jeremy surprisingly gives credence to various mythical stories—say, about Kalanos’s prophecies regarding Alexander’s death that came true—and somewhat forgets his sacred skepticism toward similar stories on the Jewish–Christian side. Likewise with the (Talmudic) myth about a meeting between Alexander and the Jewish priests, which probably never happened (for Shimon the Righteous did not live in Alexander’s time). But the bottom line for our purposes is that the Pyrrhonians were skeptics. They did not hold that we cannot know anything with certainty (a trivial claim, as noted), but that we cannot know anything. Period. Does Jeremy’s booklet come to support this or to oppose dogmatism? This chapter brings to a peak the dissonance between what Jeremy declares (that he opposes dogmatism) and what he actually does (he opposes holding any claims at all). True, on p. 85 Jeremy adopts an interpretation according to which Pyrrho too obeyed common sense and merely relinquished certainty—but this is highly implausible. Even if he was a thoroughgoing skeptic, that does not mean he would not step aside for a speeding wagon; only the rationale he would give would be “that’s what I feel like doing,” not “that is the right thing to do.” Likewise, contemporary skeptics do not claim they will jump off a roof because they have no way of knowing whether it is less safe than walking to the sidewalk. Everyone acts by their feelings; skeptics just attribute it to feeling, while others attribute it to truth and falsehood (even if uncertain).
From p. 87 to the end of the chapter he discusses the problem of evil. It is a bit odd to devote two and a half pages of a small booklet to this issue, but he presents Sextus Empiricus’s argument as follows:
If the gods cared for all things, nothing bad or evil would exist in the universe. But people say that everything is full of evil. Therefore we should not say that the gods care for all. But if they care even for some things, why precisely these and not others… Either the gods both want to and can care for all, or they want to but cannot, or they can but do not want to, or they neither want to nor can.
Jeremy notes the expression “people say” and learns from it that the skeptical Empiricus suspends judgment even about whether evil exists at all. The decisiveness with which Jeremy speaks about Anne Frank’s fate and God’s share in it does not reflect similar skepticism.
As for Empiricus’s argument, Jeremy explains that if they cannot, then they are weak, and if they do not want to, then they are evil, and thus we are left in doubt whether gods exist at all (for if they have no effect, one cannot discern their existence and infer it from anything).
This is a sharp and elegant formulation of the problem of evil. But it contains quite a few holes. For example, who says it is problematic if they cannot? Perhaps the gods are not omnipotent? And even if they are omnipotent, who says it is even possible to create a world without evil? I, for one, have argued several times that I think it is impossible, and the burden of proof lies on the one who raises the challenge. Before challenging the gods for not solving the problem of evil, one must show that there is a solution that does not involve a logical contradiction (see, for example, column 547 and others). And if you are not even sure there is evil, I do not understand how you infer from this that there is no God or gods. If you are a skeptic, then in any case you doubt everything and need no arguments to do so. I do not see why it is preferable to doubt the existence of evil and from there deduce that there is doubt about God. Doubt the claim that God exists directly. It seems to me much less plausible than the claim that evil exists.
In short, after two and a half such profound pages, Jeremy brings Sextus Empiricus’s conclusion:
From here we can also infer that those who unequivocally claim that the gods exist are likely guilty of impiety; for if they claim that the gods are responsible for all things, they will claim that the gods cause evil; and if they say the gods are responsible only for some things or for none, they will be forced to say that the gods are weak or evil—statements that are clearly the speech of heretics.
At most, you have refuted the claim that the gods are omnipotent or absolutely good. That is indeed heresy according to conventional religious conceptions, but what has that to do with skepticism?! It is a conclusion like any other. In this case, as noted, it is a mistaken conclusion—but that is the most one can get from Sextus Empiricus’s arguments.
Jeremy’s conclusion again pulls the matter to his direction, unjustly:
Whoever claims to know with certainty the solution to the problem of evil limits his concept of God to a mistaken image of divinity. To approach God coarsely, to believe in Him coarsely, is to make God evil and weak—and that is heresy! Pyrrhonian teaching asks us to cast off belief in a God we can know with certainty. It does not tell us not to believe; it tells us not to believe with certain belief. For if we believe with certain belief, we are obliged to call God evil or weak and thus to sin in heresy. Therefore the believer who believes is the heretic. Whoever believes does not believe.
Here the tendentiousness leads Jeremy to a crude logical error. There is no connection between Empiricus’s argument and the question of certainty. He (wrongly) shows that if you believe in a God, that God is evil or weak—but this is true whether your belief is certain or not. If there is a God, then He is evil and weak. The doubt concerns at most whether there is a God. But on the assumption that He exists, He is necessarily evil or weak. Therefore Empiricus’s argument is not an argument against certainty but, at best, against the ability to know at all—that is, a skeptical argument.
But even that is not correct. If you pay attention, the conclusion of this argument is not skeptical at all, but perfectly certain: there cannot be a God, because if there is, He is necessarily evil or weak. Everything here speaks the language of necessity and certainty, for this is a conceptual–analytic analysis, not a typical philosophical argument. But Jeremy, as is his wont, insists on pulling even the thoroughgoing skeptic toward anti-dogmatism—and you can see again that this fallacy accompanies his entire booklet.
E. He who believes does not believe
The end of the previous chapter leads us to the final chapter. Here Jeremy writes the following:
I am not claiming here that every doubt is necessarily blessed. I suppose there are doubts with destructive potential, such as doubting a person’s character without reason, or doubting science in a way not meant to promote it. And perhaps excessive doubt in action can hinder the focus, speed, and determination that firefighters or surgeons, for example, need in heroic moments of saving lives. Perhaps too sweeping self-doubt does not allow for creativity, and perhaps it is impossible to love if one constantly doubts the sincerity of one’s beloved.
But even if not every doubt is blessed, doubt about theological certainty is not like any doubt. It is not just doubt. It is the holiest of holy doubts!…
Here a fallacy that was in the subtext throughout the book now comes to light. What does “blessed doubt” or “unblessed doubt” mean? Do we choose our doubts by whether they help or harm us? In what doubt benefits us we will doubt, and in what it does not—we will not? This is shabby pragmatism, and the last person I would expect to rely on it is a philosopher. It subordinates the “is” to the “ought” in the most unphilosophical way I can imagine. Either everything is in doubt, or it is not. If indeed all things are doubtful, then all are doubtful—whether helpful or harmful. And if it is in our hands, that means we are not truly skeptics but choose to doubt for agenda-driven reasons.
I will say more. The very determination of whether a given doubt is blessed or improper itself shows that we are not dealing with skepticism. For how will you determine the blessedness or otherwise of doubt? What certain criterion will you use to decide that doubt X is blessed and doubt Y is not? This implies that you have criteria by which you assess doubt, and those criteria themselves are apparently not in doubt.
This reminds me of a Dawkins argument about morality (around p. 316 of his The God Delusion), which I criticized in the last part of the first chapter of my book God Plays Dice. I will describe it briefly. He explains that all morality is nothing but an evolutionary construction, and adds that this construction is indeed blessed (that is, correct). Again, I do not understand what criterion you use to judge constructions and decide whether they are blessed or not. You determine that the moral construction is blessed because its outcome is moral—but morality itself is a construction. So whence your criterion?
Oddly, on p. 330 of his book Dawkins himself notes a similar fallacy, but for some reason he directs his arrows precisely at believers:
Even if it were true that we need God in order to be moral, that would surely not make God’s existence any more likely, only more desirable (many people do not notice the difference between the two).
He is absolutely right. What is strange is that this does not stop him from falling into the other side of the same fallacy when he speaks about evolutionary morality, where he explains that although evolution created morality, this creation is blessed (by what criterion?). The fact that evolution created morality gives it no validity, and certainly one cannot judge it by its own criteria.
I have nothing left but to end with Jeremy’s own words (pp. 92–93):
This kind of illusory confidence, by the way, is also dangerous when it settles in other layers of the human experience, not only the religious layer. In politics too it is dangerous to be certain that your position is always just, and in that field as well a bit of doubt promotes moderation and heals zealotry. In general, it is worth interrogating ourselves now and then about all our positions—being, if you like, auto-Socratic. Even avowed atheists would do well sometimes to doubt their stance… [here comes a very typical story about Ayer the atheist who dared to blaspheme holy atheism and got battered for it by members of the atheist church; such examples abound in our environs, of course]
I can only agree with every word of this passage.
In conclusion
I will conclude with a few words directed mainly to Jeremy, as an open letter. I already addressed at the beginning of the column the mistaken link you draw between fundamentalism and religious faith. Here, in conclusion, I will address your remarks on faith in God itself.
One can, of course, dispute this or that argument—yours or mine—and hold this or that position regarding God or atheism; but my feeling on reading the book was that these weighty subjects are handled rather dismissively. You do take care to say now and then that you are not blaspheming the concepts of truth but only certainty; yet as I showed here, throughout the book you in fact do the opposite (and repeatedly blur the distinction between these two levels). The book is replete with very categorical pronouncements about burying faith and the arguments that support it, while in practice no truly strong, fundamental arguments are presented to justify this. To ground so categorical (and dogmatic) a stance, I would expect a more serious treatment of the objections to your arguments—not to dismiss them with straw. It would have sufficed had you seriously and systematically addressed the arguments I raised in my books and various posts (over which we debated, and some of which I sent you).
I must say I have similar feelings when reading many atheist (deconversion) websites, as well as many shallow sites of religious outreach. Shallow treatment of arguments accompanied by categorical pronouncements. Incidentally, this is exactly the feeling that made—and makes—me write my long, meticulous, wearying books and posts, in which I try to deal to the best of my ability (I hope successfully) with all counter-arguments and rejoinders that arise, leaving no claims or arguments untreated. My goal is to give these subjects and arguments the respectful attention they deserve, for the subject is important and fundamental. You yourself try to persuade the reader that the subject is not mere detached philosophy but very significant for the conduct of our lives (as noted above, I am not sure I was convinced by your arguments: regarding fundamentalism yes, but regarding faith not necessarily). But at least on your own terms I would expect a more thorough and in-depth treatment of the arguments. It is not reasonable that a thin booklet like this—which, in addition to its limited scope, mostly does not deal with arguments at all but with hymns of praise to David Hume, Pyrrho, Sextus Empiricus, and Socrates—should suffice to ground a stance in deep disputes over which multitudes have labored for over a thousand years of systematic theology; thinkers and preachers, believers and atheists, have advanced arguments, refuted, contended, debated, and remained lying by the wayside without a clear knockout (each community, of course, convinced absolute justice is on its side). A booklet like this, like the sites I mentioned on both sides, may (or might) speak to the captive audience or to a very shallow audience on the other side. From a philosophical discussion I would expect more.
You thank many people for their assistance. I do not know almost any of them, but I suspect you did not receive serious feedback from them; otherwise the product should have been different—more balanced. I give my feedback here only after the book was published and therefore it comes out somewhat negative, and I ask your forgiveness. In such a situation the feedback can no longer fix the book that has already come out, so at least I try to balance the picture it presents. I am sure your intention is good and I know your philosophical abilities are excellent. But precisely because of this, and because you asked me for honest feedback (which I very much appreciate), and especially because I agree with the book’s fundamental aim and with the dangers of dogmatism—religious or otherwise—precisely for that reason I permit myself to write and publish this critique.
[1] In the history of philosophy there were several heroic attempts to overcome this obstacle and present valid arguments that prove some conclusion without premises (in Kant’s language, “ontological arguments”). Thus, for example, Anselm’s ontological proof of God’s existence (see a detailed analysis in the first dialogue of my book The First Being, and Gödel’s version in column 160), Descartes’s cogito (see it in column 363), logical determinism (see column 459), and more. Needless to say, all these arguments fail. As Kant already argued against Anselm, one cannot prove a factual claim on the basis of conceptual analysis without premises (though in my book The First Being I criticized this critique of Kant).
Discussion
Michael Jackson eating popcorn loudly in the movie theater .jpg
And on another matter, I’d be glad if you could elaborate on where the confidence comes from in giving priority to tradition over the book, in light of the fact that there is evidence about communities that were almost completely lost, and a single break in the chain is enough to turn the book into the source of the tradition. So why is it not plausible that in an earlier period the Jews lost contact with the tradition in such a way that the book was needed to reconnect them to it?
What a beautiful column!!! Wow!!!
Throughout this whole column you attack Jeremy for logical fallacies, contradictions, and lack of skill, and at the end you compliment him on “excellent philosophical abilities.” I’ve listened to Jeremy several times, and my impression is that he has many things I appreciate—love of wisdom, openness to criticism, and sincerity without pretension (for example, his sincere apology after the huge embarrassment with Tzvi Sukkot)—but philosophically he’s full of hot air: speaks nicely, charismatic, witty, and you can’t beat the pronounced French accent! But he is deeply rooted in the cult of dogmatic atheists.
And why not simply argue that the difference between a religious person and a fundamentalist does not lie in the certainty of the belief itself, but in the attitude toward coercion? The religious person who is not a fundamentalist holds that religious faith has no value at all if it is imposed on a person; he believes that religion is meant for the free human being, and therefore it must be accessible to choice, not enforcement. Beyond that, he also understands that religion was given to human beings—and therefore it is practical, flexible, and can adapt to modernity and even be woven together with general moral values. Precisely for that reason, he sees in this the depth of religion’s intention: not to compel, but to guide in a human way.
There are not three kinds of maturation. The only maturity is what you call synthetic. The other two are simply getting stuck in adolescence while thinking you’ve left it…
Fundamentalist maturity is simply a kind of return to childhood (only with the intensity of adolescence), and postmodern maturity is still adolescence, just its final part—that which understands that there is no such thing as certain truth but doesn’t notice that it itself thinks (unconsciously) that this very truth—that there is no certain truth—is itself certain… This is of course Russell’s paradox in yet another appearance and in different dress. And therefore postmodernism is a kind of fundamentalism.
This is really beautiful.
As someone who has read all your books, and still thinks that being formerly religious is the more plausible option (and I’ve written to you about this several times), your writing is amazing, especially in contrast with the dogmatic feeling on the other side. Precisely because I recognize the value of your arguments, it felt as though there wasn’t really any dialogue.
I’m waiting for someone to write a book titled “Mathematicians Who Are God”; for me, God is a mathematician.
An extremely important column, although I don’t have the slightest hope that Jeremy and his friends will change their outlook or their activity in any way.
Your conversations with Jeremy, and your books and columns that he surely read, somehow did not prevent the result in the form of the failed booklet, so why should this column do the job?
It is important for us, not for him and his friends.
***
Correction of a typo:
In the line “Do we choose our doubts *before* the question of whether they are useful or harmful?”
the word “before” is certainly a mistake and was typed in place of the word (the correct and fitting one) “according to,”
unlike other possible typos here, this mistake changes the meaning from one extreme to the other (since the meaning of the word “before” is completely opposite to the meaning of the word “according to” in the sense of “in light of”),
for the attention of the site administrator.
I think there is a certain connection between certainty and coercion. This is because coercion in general is intended for social purposes—protecting society from harm. Secular coercion protects against views and actions harmful to material existence, and religious coercion protects against those harmful to religious existence. So the greater the certainty regarding the harmfulness of a certain view or practice to existence (material or religious), the greater the justification for protecting against it through coercion.
With God’s help
I read it. I enjoyed it.
I would ask his honor to explain the words “I believe with perfect faith.” As I understand it, that means faith without a shadow of doubt. No?
Thank you for the articles that revive souls. Strength to Torah.
In the paragraph about the atheist mass murderers, you forgot the greatest atheist mass murderer of them all—Mao Zedong
Mario Livio fulfilled your wish:
No wonder.
On the podcast he hosts, “The Radical” (already a red flag), he interviews Yoav Ronel, and there you can sense between the lines—perhaps from his praise for anarchism, radicalism, and revolutionism—that the man is a moderate Marxist.
The link to the episode:
I didn’t understand the claim about the communities that were lost. In any case, our tradition says that this is transmitted through tradition, and the book only accompanies it. There are many “maybes” that can be raised.
I didn’t understand these comments. Of course there is a connection (though not a necessary one) between certainty and coercion. Who said otherwise?
The question of how to define fundamentalism is semantic. Why is that important?
Many thanks. Corrected.
What is there to explain here? If that is the intention, then I do not believe with perfect faith. But that is not necessarily the intention. “Perfect faith” can also mean without ulterior motives and with full commitment, and so on.
It seems that you likened my response to that of “Moshe.”
My question is: from where do you derive that the difference between fundamentalist faith and non-fundamentalist faith is rooted in the level of certainty?
Could there not be certain faith that does not believe in coercing the other? And if so, then that is the most essential difference
Hello Michi,
The possibility that the Jewish tradition reflects a truth that exists beyond human experience seems to me to have virtually zero plausibility. By contrast, the possibility that the tradition itself was shaped through internal forces in order to serve group needs such as cohesion, mutual aid, and a sense of purpose seems to me close to certainty. I recognize that this position is a matter of personal judgment—but to me it is as clear as the noonday sun. Even so, as a loyal reader I want to thank you for the excellent writing, for the meticulous columns, and for presenting the other side of the coin in such an eloquent, profound, and thorough way.
Again, this is a semantic discussion. I wrote that certain faith that does not believe in coercion is possible. But in my view, as someone inclined toward a philosophical temperament, coercion is a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself (cf. Mother Teresa). But of course that can be debated.
I am not arguing about semantics.
You claim that Mother Teresa is a fundamentalist, but in doing so you reveal that you have been misled by a postmodern conception that rejects absolute values. By defining belief in an absolute value as fundamentalism, and even comparing Hitler and Stalin to the same category, you reflect an approach that denies absolute values. I claim that the truth is not your conception that “there is no absolute belief, only a reasonable one,” but the liberal approach, which preceded postmodernism, and believes in absolute values while opposing their coercive imposition. You are right that postmodernism and fundamentalism share a similar error—the conception that one cannot both hold an absolute value and refrain from imposing it. But according to your words, you too are not essentially different from the fundamentalist, except that you have not yet been convinced with certainty of your belief.
Thank you for the beautiful column
Now then, to this point:
I have never managed to understand how Hume could be an empiricist in one hand, and undermine causality with the other?
Wasn’t he basically saying בכך that he knows nothing?
I don’t recall paying for Michael Abraham Plus
Thank you very much, Rabbi 🙂
I will never understand how the question of who caused more severe bloodshed in the history of wars or tyrannies—atheists or believers—got dragged into the discussion about the existence or non-existence of God.
I wondered that too. And my answer is that the undermining of causality also stems from empiricism.
“That chapter bringeth”
Correct to: “this chapter bringeth.”
Regarding Alexander’s meeting with Shimon, there is fairly good chronological correspondence with respect to the sabbatical years.
And now I shall explain the proof: it is not plausible that those Canaanites visited Alexander on exactly the same day he passed
in the Land of Israel between the conquest of Tyre and the conquest of Gaza (the day on which he met the High Priest), and certainly not during the war against Tyre or against
Gaza. Rather, this certainly occurred during the days of his stay in Egypt, where he founded Alexandria and remained some months in calm and repose.
Today it is known to us clearly from the Greek historical sources (“Alexander of Macedon,” Hadar publ., Tel Aviv 5738 [1978], p.
37) that Alexander went up from Egypt toward the Syrian Euphrates at the end of the month of May in the year 773 BCE. If we calculate according to the last sabbatical year 5768, 7003-8, and add the 773 years that were before the Common Era, we get 7778—a total of exactly 773
sabbatical cycles—so indeed the year 773 BCE was a sabbatical year. The Canaanites, “the sons of Africa,” who were so called
in Israel after their place of origin, went down to Alexander while he was resting in Alexandria, when they saw him accepting the laws and customs of every land, and honoring the heritage and religion of every place, as was especially emphasized in the events of Egypt. And there they failed in their mission. And thus the context of the next story proves that the Egyptians also litigated with Geviha before Alexander, and of course this was on the same occasion, which proves that the discussion took place
in Egypt. And now, how could the Sages know that in the month of May (beginning approximately with Nisan) of the year 773, when Alexander stayed
in Egypt—the only year that fits this description in the aggadah here, the sabbatical year—on the 25th of Nisan this event
occurred? For had they said it happened in Heshvan, or that it was the end of the sabbatical year, or the eve of the sabbatical year, or any other
incorrect detail, we could not today, in light of our knowledge, validate this incident—were it not that the spirit of God spoke through our Sages,
and they transmitted this aggadah orally with its details for almost five hundred years, from the days of Alexander until the time these words were written
in the Talmud.
You think he didn’t know the book? That’s where he took the expression from. The book appears on the shelves in every Steimatzky or Tzomet Sfarim store.
Netanel,
I have difficulty understanding your claim. After all, liberalism also advocates coercion, except that it limits it to protection against harms to society. If we recognize the severity of spiritual harm as harm in every respect, it follows that the liberal too should support religious coercion (insofar as it concerns harm to others and not only to the doer himself).
Seemingly, the reason liberals today oppose religious coercion stems from their secular outlook (which does not recognize spiritual harms), and not from liberalism itself.
There is no connection. Liberalism permits coercion only where there is harm to others, not where there is deviation from an absolute value. The coercion of liberal law is intended to enable a mechanism that protects individual rights, not to protect any values whatsoever.
Not accurate. Liberal states do not permit incest between consenting adults, for example. Until not long ago they also prohibited homosexual relations. Matters of animal suffering as well are open to discussion: is this harm to others, or an absolute value? But it is true that the trend is as you described.
What bad result do you see in the fundamentalism that Mother Teresa had?
Do you mean a certain naïveté that she had?
Thank you.
Moral fundamentalism is the great affliction of the left in Israel and in the world. Moral emotion leads, and they are unwilling to hear any opposing argument. This is how identification with Hamas and the Muslim extremists is created, and it is destroying the West. All of this is a result of a fundamentalism of emotional morality.
To the most essential question you answer like this:
The first link in the chain is called. Who created God has no answer, “and no answer is required.”
That is exactly the question, because I cannot understand how the one thing, “God,” doesn’t need parents, while all the other things do.
Why can’t one say that everything always existed—you call it infinite regression—why not a universe without beginning and end? That is no less hard to grasp than a God who appeared to Moses at Sinai and, even according to you, told him a story appropriate to his time—and why didn’t he appear when Galileo said “and yet it moves,” reveal himself again and say: you caught me, you’re right, I’m correcting the old version. Elsewhere you mention the laws of thermodynamics, that energy is not lost. I don’t want to hang this on science because that leads nowhere as far as God is concerned, but still, if nothing is lost there, then why infinite regression? I’ll remain in the realm of scholasticism. You also mention the watch that must have a watchmaker, whom I assume has parents and studied in watchmaker school. Again: who were God’s parents, and where did he learn all his tricks and shticks?
I explained. It doesn’t seem that you are reading what I write. If you did read and didn’t understand or didn’t agree and you want to discuss it, please explain why you didn’t agree or what you don’t understand.
Just one note. I didn’t mention anywhere some law of thermodynamics that energy is not lost. This is a law of physics in general, with no specific connection to thermodynamics, and it is also irrelevant to our matter. Perhaps you mean the second law of thermodynamics, which I used to explain the objectivity of the concepts of complexity and uniqueness.
So before you decide whether or not to hang things on science, it is advisable to understand what you are talking about.
Hello Rabbi Michi, there is a very nice article on “religious violence of various kinds,” and I think it dismantles at least half of the claims of the aforementioned Jeremy.
https://hashiloach.org.il/the-religious-violence/
I hope you’ll like it
First, it does not deal with this question at all. It only tries to save Judaism from this accusation. Second, it is an astonishingly tendentious text. Apologetics wrapped in cellophane. For example, with the Muslims he explains that what matters is the source, and deviations from it do not matter. But with us, what matters is the deviations, and it doesn’t matter that the source contains aspects that are astonishingly violent (in Christianity too, the violence is also a deviation from the source, yet it is still a very violent religion in practice). In Islam, violence is an influence of Arab culture, but never mind. In practice, that’s what came out. By contrast, with Christians and Jews, what matters is not the practical reality but the source. He of course ignores the conceptions of two Torahs in Islam (generally speaking, the Shiites believe in an Oral Torah, unlike the Sunnis) and in Christianity (generally speaking, Catholics believe in an Oral Torah and Protestants do not).
Similarly, with the Jews he explains that their number is tiny, while excluding the non-religious from them. In Islam and Christianity he does not do this.
The structure of the article is reminiscent of sweeping generalizations that lead to an aesthetic structure that is very seductive to people: Judaism is divided into two parts: the violent Written Torah and the moderating Oral Torah. Christianity takes the Oral Torah and Islam the Written Torah. Wonderful, everything falls perfectly into place. Except that many aspects are being forced in order to make sure this intellectual aesthetic is preserved. Sweeping and overly aesthetic theses always arouse my suspicion, and rightly so.
I apologize; perhaps I didn’t understand, so let’s go step by step for the sake of my understanding.
You say the complexity of the universe is the work of a divine watchmaker.
My problem, as I wrote, is that in this comparison a watchmaker is someone who has parents; that is, he was created.
The divine watchmaker always was and always will be.
That contradiction is what I’m trying to understand.
Oops, are we having a similar discussion somewhere else? For some reason I can’t find here the answer I gave you regarding the two possibilities: infinite regression and an initial link. Something got mixed up for me here.
Okay, so I’m not completely confused. I see no reason to conduct the same discussion twice: https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%90%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%94%D7%99%D7%9D-11/
Oops, I went back to your answer to Jeremy and I’m pasting it here.
To the question of who created God there is no answer, nor is an answer required. No one created him. He exists without need for a prior cause.
With such an answer I understand that you begin with belief in God and build everything else around it.
Actually my previous question is not relevant.
Sorry.
Absolutely not. I end with belief in God, since that is the conclusion of the argument detailed there.
I’m pasting this whole paragraph.
Here there is a misunderstanding. There are only two possibilities: either there is an infinite chain of causes, or there is a beginning to the chain of causes. The first possibility is a failure (infinite regression), which brings us to the second. ****The first in the chain is called ‘God.’ To the question who created God there is no answer, and no answer is required. No one created him. He exists without need for a prior cause**** (in ancient philosophy this was described unsuccessfully as “the cause of itself.” In the same way, “a God who created himself,” in Jeremy’s description, is absurd. God was never created). If God too needed a cause for his existence, then we would be trapped in infinite regression.
Again, perhaps I don’t understand the phrase “the first in the chain… without need for a prior cause.”
If this is a conclusion, what leads to it?
And also, this is the conclusion of the watchmaker and the watch as well.
Maybe I didn’t understand
I do not understand what is unclear. When one possibility out of two is ruled out, the second remains. That is all.
Okay, I’m focusing now on: infinite regression. This is what stands at the basis of your claim for God’s existence. That is, from a human point of view you are saying there must be a beginning.
That may have been true—before I thought about it—before James Webb, but it turns out from the observations that it is not at all clear there was a Big Bang about which one could say “this is the beginning.” By the way, Webb was sent into space precisely for this purpose, namely to test a scientific theory, and that is the difference between science, philosophy, and religion.
In the first two, they ask questions, raise possibilities, test them, and try to give answers and perhaps for a time prove them. In religion it is exactly the opposite: there are only answers.
Well, I see that I am wasting my words and my time for nothing. You do not understand what you yourself are saying.
All the best.
So if you didn’t manage to convince me, you are wasting your time for nothing…
Right..
So you ran away from the argument..
I accept that a person wants to believe. More than that, I greatly appreciate your new approach to present-day interpretation. Very courageous.
I am a Jew and happy and proud of it. It is an enormous culture, and what makes it so is learning and research and curiosity, to the point that it has become genetic.
The Land of Israel is the only place… in fact any land… where we can develop our Judaism, and therefore I welcome your way of integrating religious and non-religious people through it.
Shabbat shalom.
I’m listening now to the conversation between the three of you, Eilam Gross, Jeremy Fogel, and your honor.
You use more “scientific,” “philosophical” terms, but the conversation is exactly like the conversation with me..
Indeed, but is moral fundamentalism the domain only of emotion? Can’t fundamentalism also be intellectual? After all, there is rationality in morality, however extreme it may be. Thank you.
I did not write that fundamentalism is created only from emotion.
I do not usually run away from any argument, but an argument is supposed to deal with arguments and be conducted with each side relating to what the other says. That is not what is happening here.
I wanted to be sure about what I was saying or thinking, so I went to check how the argument of infinite regression is explained and described. So here it is:
In philosophical contexts, infinite regression is usually perceived as a problem or paradox, especially when trying to explain the existence of something or the foundations of knowledge. For example:
* Cosmology: in the question of the “first cause” of the existence of the universe, a theory of infinite regression of causes (everything is caused by something else) is usually considered unsatisfactory, because it does not provide an explanation for the first cause itself. Many philosophers and theologians argue that there must be an uncaused first cause.
Since this stands at the basis of your rational argument for the existence of the Creator, then from the search result I take the sentence: “usually considered unsatisfactory because it does not provide an explanation for the first cause itself.”
That is also my argument, and also, if I’m not mistaken, that of Eilam Gross and Jeremy Fogel.
I began this journey to examine my beliefs; sometimes I regret that I don’t find.
Perhaps then I would ask further questions as you do, but that is already another story.
I’m using your example about the skeptics (who of course do not jump off a building because they are doubtful about the danger, as opposed to walking on a sidewalk) in order to try to understand your position, Rabbi Michi: do you only in a certain sense think there is danger in this example, and if a person comes along who gives a good enough answer, could it be that you would no longer be sure how dangerous it is to jump from a building roof as opposed to walking on a sidewalk?
“There cannot be anything that stands beyond critical thinking (including this principle itself).”
Subjecting this principle to criticism will necessarily be based on assuming this very principle to be correct; so it is not really possible to implement. If the parentheses were not written merely for rhetorical flourish—I’d be glad if you would explain them.
As for the remark at the end—Jeremy, as he is known to his admirers, is mainly engaged in imparting popular philosophy to the masses. This booklet was not meant to play on the philosophical field, only to equip yet more people for whom philosophy is a hobby with arguments that Jeremy, for clear political motives, wishes to promote. The outrage over his ignoring the developments each of the arguments underwent is a bit exaggerated.
Nor is the fact that Jeremy sees blessing specifically in doubts directed at theological certainty something that should anger, because it consciously expresses only his personal taste. Your vehement criticism on this matter teaches that Jeremy’s freewheeling style is foreign to you, and that is rather surprising.
Not true. I can criticize this principle even if it is not necessary that everything be subject to criticism. It is enough for me that there are things that are subject to criticism.
His style is not foreign to me, and I do not understand what that has to do with my criticism.
??
I did not understand the question, nor its context.
Cheap apologetics. You can criticize this principle only if the state of affairs is that some things are open to criticism, though not necessarily all—but such a state of affairs is very similar to your definition here of “fundamentalism.” So in order to criticize the principle you have to be (almost) a fundamentalist—and good luck reconciling that with the rest of what you said.
If his style had not been foreign to you, you would likely have offered the following translation of his words: “I’m not coming here to claim that I love all doubts…
But even if not every doubt is beloved to me, doubt in theological certainty is not like any other doubt. It is not just any doubt. It is a beloved of beloveds!”
Such a text, even if it aroused your wrath, would not justify criticism claiming that there is a “fallacy” in his words.
Similarly, had your initial treatment of the book been one that takes it as a philosophy-for-the-masses book, and not as a book undertaking a renewed philosophical discussion of the subject—you likely would not have been angry about the “rather dismissive treatment” of that discussion.
Well, my policy here is not to censor babblers, until it reaches trolling. You’re almost there.
Honorable Rabbi,
The rabbi’s important words regarding the need to subject faith and opinion to criticism are true in some respect. But there is a substantial challenge: while the rabbi, profound and well-grounded as he is, can stand firm against challengers, what are the weak-minded to do?
The simple person, who is not strong in the ways of analysis, is exposed to real danger from every passing wind. The force of a small doubter may shake his world, for his whole edifice is built on foundations of innocence and simple faith, not on the stable power of analysis.
Should we not distinguish between the guidance appropriate for the wise and the guidance required for the common people? Is there not a certain faith that it is better not to expose to criticism, for the sake of its stability?
No. A person needs to formulate a position for himself. What you are suggesting is that you decide for him.
Someone born into a pagan home will also be told that he is forbidden to examine and challenge the holy tradition. The fact that you were born somewhere does not mean that it is the correct conception.
You are proposing that you make decisions for him, just like the pagan’s parents.
First, thank you for the fascinating column. I learn a great deal from your writing.
I am aware that this may not be the appropriate column for such a discussion, but the topic was mentioned, so I will try:
The article claims that the existence of a “first link” that does not need explanation makes it possible to settle the question of how something complex came into being. That is, every complex thing we know requires a cause, and therefore there must be a primary being that does not need explanation—God.
But I wonder: does the very assumption that such a solution is “logical” not stem from a deep psychological and cultural bias that is rooted in us? If we imagine for a moment a different world—one in which there had been no religious tradition and no history of belief in God, but only a developed scientific-critical approach—would it even occur to us to propose such a being as a solution to the philosophical problem? If the world were born anew today with no religious memory, but only ordinary scientific understanding, would we conceive of the existence of God?
Might it be that what seems to us a “plausible answer” stems mainly from the fact that this concept is already planted in our cultural consciousness, and not from any genuine logical necessity??
Even if you are right, there are two possible interpretations of this: 1. tradition creates a bias. 2. tradition opens us to ideas that we would not have thought of on our own.
Something along these lines I have written more than once about the significance of religious education and the correlation between those who underwent it and religious life. See columns 294, 630.
It’s very hard to respond to an article of this kind, which contains a gish gallop of claims and arguments; the response can end up longer than the article. But still, a few points I pulled out:
1. One can agree that ideological fundamentalism is a grave ill, but it’s funny to try to present it as disconnected from the religious idea. Such fundamentalism exists in every religion, including Judaism, and it also appears in “state religions” like fascism or state communism. Everywhere people try to say there are things more important than basic individual human rights, we have a problem. And religion has that too; this is whataboutism of the cheapest sort.
2. Important answers indeed. But there seems to be a deliberate naïveté here. The point is that it is so important to us to have an answer that we prefer a bad and weak answer over no answer at all. The point is that if I have to choose between remaining in the position of “I still don’t have an answer” and “I have a weak and bad answer,” it is better to remain in the first position until I have a good answer.
3. To say that Mother Teresa’s fundamentalism harmed no one is based on sheer ignorance. This was a woman who saw suffering as a gift from God; it was not important to her to lift people out of suffering and poverty, she only made sure they would remain suffering as long as possible in order to atone for sins. Not only is she problematic; she is a classic example of how religious fundamentalism causes human suffering.
4. There is a desire here to create a straw man: that if I reject belief in God, then I am a postmodernist. Or if I am a skeptic, then I am a postmodernist. That is simply not the case. Postmodernism, with all its maladies and the errors it creates, is not what causes us to reject God. Lack of evidence does.
5. This idea of “I believe in God but not with certainty” is a nice idea, but it doesn’t really say anything. Basic skepticism says we can know nothing with certainty except the cogito, and even that is doubtful. So that “gun” is already on the table from the outset. The question is whether there is sufficient evidence to believe in the first place. And in this case, here we run into a wall of “we have no good evidence, only logical fallacies.” Sorry, that’s not enough.
6. To ask “where did the laws of reality come from” is a classic begging the question, just as the question “where is Elvis’s car” presupposes the existence of Elvis. We have no reason to think that the laws of reality need to come from somewhere. We know exactly one reality. We do not know a state of “no reality” (and before someone writes it, the Big Bang model does not speak of the creation of reality from nothing), we do not know other realities, we know no other option. You imagine for yourself a state in which “the laws of reality could have been otherwise” or “someone had to write them,” and then answer the question you assumed. It is important to mention that one cannot speak here even of probability; again, we have only one reality. We have no evidence whatsoever that there is any other option. Our imagination that “we can imagine another reality” does not constitute a basis for an argument.
7. Regarding the watchmaker argument, again, it is based on intuition and prior experience. Why did you choose specifically “a person from Africa”? How is he different from a person from “North America”? Does his logic work differently? No. The truth is that the hidden assumption here is that the person from Africa knows only things that occur naturally, or basic manipulation of things that occur naturally. By contrast, a person from North America knows a lot of manipulations of natural things into artificial ones. Therefore the watch does not seem strange to him; he has prior experience with a watch. He knows why it exists, he knows there are watch factories. And even if I show him an artificial product, he will know how to identify manipulations that can be done artificially with natural materials, which the man from Africa does not know. So yes, you are explicitly assuming prior experience. On the other hand, both the man from Africa and the man from America have prior experience with tigers. And they know that tigers come from more tigers. Therefore he will not ask himself “who assembled the tiger”; he has prior knowledge. By way of comparison, if I show you a sheep, you will not ask who assembled it, even though we have experience of sheep being created artificially. In this case, our experience is the opposite.
Also, let us note the shifting of the goalposts in saying that God created the tiger. Once it was shown that the argument does not work if you change the watch to a tiger, you replaced it with “yes, God also created the tiger, but through evolution.” That is, in this case the whole argument collapses: everything we encounter, God created. You assumed the conclusion again; the conclusion is already in the argument itself. You continue to claim that it is “not based on experience,” but you do not demonstrate this in any way. You simply assert it. The only time I encountered any defense of this issue was that Hume argued causality is not a product of experience, which not only is an extremely weak and inaccurate argument, it certainly is not enough to counter the mountains of evidence we have that it is based on experience.
I also have to note the subtlety in the use of the word “spontaneous”; this word is very strange. Who thinks things are created spontaneously? What does that mean? Things are created because things were created before them. There is no spontaneity or randomness here. The second law of thermodynamics is being invoked here as deliberate misdirection; after all, as someone who studied physics, you know that all that is needed for complexity to increase is a constant flow of energy into the system—which fortunately we have: we have a nuclear fusion reactor bombarding us with energy at every moment.
8. We already discussed who created God; let us just note that I do not think there is any reason to think the world was created. As far as I know, it always was and always will be (again, the Big Bang is not creation); it does not need a creator because it is everything. Reality is everything. And if you have a problem with that definition, check whether these are not exactly the properties you attribute to the God you believe in. That is, he can have those properties but reality cannot?
9. David Hume is due his honor. But he too died more than 200 years ago; we have had other philosophical ideas since then. It troubles me that pragmatism is simply forgotten by most of those engaged in the field (is this European superiority? or the fact that pragmatism simply renders most of these questions superfluous, which would cause philosophy departments to stop receiving budgets?). Hume’s understanding was limited; he lived in a world before Einstein and Darwin. Continuing to fight over his positions nowadays seems unnecessary to me, just as I would not defend Darwin’s positions, since he was wrong as much as he was right.
Again, I could sit and write a text three times longer about everything written here, but that would not be convenient.
You expect a column to do what Jeremy Fogel did not do in the book. That is, he does something slapdash and superficial, whereas I in a response column am supposed to address every objection that might arise. Wonderful are the ways of tendentiousness. All these points have been dealt with extensively elsewhere by me, and some of them here in the column as well, so I will respond briefly. I will only note that your numbered sections are arranged in a way that makes it unclear to me exactly what you are referring to.
1. To each his own sense of humor. Of course, if you present every fundamentalist as religious, then fundamentalism is a religious matter. This is exactly Dawkins’s fallacy: without blinking he explained that religions are very dangerous, and then went on to explain that every extremism, even that of an absolute atheist, is religious. Fine, so that is also what I am saying, just in other words.
On whataboutism I have written here more than once. It is a magic word whose purpose is to silence the other. If he raises a substantive claim against you, there is no problem. You simply explain to him that even if you are not okay, he must be silent and excuse only himself. You are immune to criticism. Lovely. So usually a whataboutist criticism is perfectly substantive. In many cases it simply shows that what you describe as not okay is perfectly okay, and the proof is that others also act this way.
2. I did not understand what this passage refers to. Who are the “very important answers”? It is advisable to note if you are referring to something.
3. I wrote that in my opinion Mother Teresa’s fundamentalism certainly harms, and in a comment I even specified more in what way. I only noted that it is more pleasant to live beside her than beside ISIS people. But if you prefer them, who am I to stand in your way. But your accusations against her are truly fundamentalist. For some reason you decided that she perpetuated suffering only so she would have something to deal with. Not that I am Mother Teresa’s defender, and I even wrote that I refer to her only as an example. But just casually, do you have any basis for that extravagant accusation?
4. I do not recall saying that if you reject belief in God then you are necessarily a postmodernist. But it is true that if you define fundamentalism as you defined it above, then anyone who believes in something is a fundamentalist, and consequently an atheist is a postmodernist. But that is your definition, not mine.
5. The idea of “I believe in God but not with certainty” is indeed a nice idea. If you have something to say about it, I’d be glad to hear. Here I did not see any relevant comment. Unless you expected me to bring orderly evidence for God’s existence here in the column. Well, no. I will not teach quantum theory and social psychology here either.
6. The question “where did the laws of reality come from” is not at all begging the question, certainly no more than any valid logical argument whatsoever (for as I have explained more than once, every valid logical argument begs the question. Its conclusion is contained in its premises). The assumption that laws require a lawgiver stems from reason, not from experience. At least that is the rational default, and whoever claims otherwise bears the burden of proof. Therefore it is irrelevant that we have only one reality. The laws of logic too are supposed to apply to every reality of any kind.
It is evident that you are unfamiliar with modal logic, so it would be worthwhile for you to read about it. Its whole purpose is to explain the necessity of propositions by means of conceivable worlds.
7. The watchmaker argument is definitely not based on prior experience. I have explained this at length in several places. I answered all these claims extensively. If you expected a comprehensive analysis of them here in the column, I am sorry to disappoint you. The same applies to the concept of spontaneity. When something acts without an actor, that is what is called spontaneous. And if there are laws that describe its action, that changes nothing. It is still a spontaneous matter, unless the laws have a lawgiver.
You declared with confidence that Hume’s arguments are “extremely weak,” although they are plainly correct. But for some reason you do not feel the need to explain your strange declarations. Only from me do you expect this.
8. In the past I answered this too more than once, and this is not the place.
9. Again, declarations without argument. It is hard to discuss them that way. I will only note that it is clear you have no idea about Hume’s philosophy. And declarations that there are other philosophies and that 200 years have passed are not arguments. If you want to argue something against a Humean claim, please argue it and do not dismiss it with ad hominem.
I read the two above-mentioned columns.
I certainly agree that one cannot rule out the plausibility of God’s existence merely because without tradition we would not assume it, precisely for the reason you noted—that tradition can open us to ideas we would not have thought of on our own.
However, it seems that this argument itself deserves to be tested by a similar standard. Were it not for our being culturally and psychologically influenced and conditioned by thousands of years of religion, would we still understand that the argument for the existence of God is a logical argument under the influence of a suitable tradition, or would we see the influence of tradition as non-objective and as something that creates bias?
Indeed, this is really a bit tricky, because were we not opened by tradition, perhaps we would not even recognize the possibility of being opened by it. But this question cannot be resolved without a proper logical test.
I am not merely repeating myself—the issue truly troubles me greatly. For many years I held a similar view, that God is the logical way out of the question of the world’s existence, but one day I discovered that no longer—not anymore, I no longer think so. And at the same time I saw both possible answers as equally logical, whereas in my current heart, which came shortly afterward, I no longer saw the assumption of God’s existence as an answer. Because it is an invention, not an answer. Especially since there is a very plausible chance that this invention was born in sin. Not that I see atheism as a wonderful answer to any question, but atheism is better than any faith whatsoever in that it does not trouble itself, and does not need, to give answers—and its existence sits very well with the existence of the question.
With thanks, Israel
First of all, let’s agree that Jeremy’s approach in the book is indeed somewhat “slapdash,” if you want to call it that. Personally I don’t connect very much with that approach; I think the goal was to take philosophical subjects that are familiar but “highbrow” and try to simplify them. Is that my cup of tea? No. And I assume it isn’t yours either. But we are probably not the target audience.
My numbering, by the way, is purely for future reference (point 5 and so on).
1. In case this isn’t clear, I agree with you that the most essential problem is fundamentalism. The difference between us is that I do not think one can separate fundamentalism from religion. In other words, not every fundamentalism is the result of religion, but every religion produces fundamentalism.
And we will probably continue to disagree about whataboutism. To say “hey, look, he does it too” is not an excuse you would accept from your children, and I see no reason to accept it in a discussion of this kind. The fact that someone else does it does not make it okay.
2. What I meant was that even in the book it was possible to understand that he thinks if you have a question and need to choose between “I don’t have an answer” and accepting a bad answer, it is better to remain with “I don’t know” than to accept a bad answer. Human beings find it hard to say “I don’t know,” and therefore they often prefer to accept an answer, even if it is bad, just to calm the urge to “solve the question.”
3. Regarding Mother Teresa, again there is whataboutism here. Yes, fundamentalism is bad. But of course, like everything else, some are worse than others. It’s like how I think religions are dangerous for human progress, but there is no doubt, for example, that extreme Islam is significantly more dangerous to global welfare than extreme Judaism. As for my “accusation” regarding Mother Teresa, I invite you to read Christopher Hitchens’s book The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. It is not very long, about like Jeremy’s book, and the facts there are clear.
4. As I wrote, I do not agree in any way that if I am an atheist then I am a postmodernist; that is even illogical, since the word “atheist” predates postmodernism by thousands of years. Are you telling me that the ancient Greeks, who bequeathed this word to us, were postmodernists? I have a great deal of criticism of postmodernism; I’m not sure less than you.
5. What I mean, in case I wasn’t clear, is that the fact that you claim you “do not have certainty” is irrelevant, because there is certainty about nothing. So it’s like adding a variable to both sides of an equation; the result remains the same result. You did nothing, changed nothing in the conception. You are not convinced with certainty? Great. That gives me no new information I did not know before, because even before that, basic skepticism teaches us that you cannot know anything with certainty.
I did not expect evidence in this column, of course. The point is that there is no evidence in this column either. There are arguments, but evidence? No.
6. I do not think we need again to discuss the fallacy of begging the question (though I will mention that in our first discussion, you argued there is no such thing, and in the second discussion you opened with that fallacy), when we are talking about logic. I can point to countless references in the official literature that this is a recognized, formal fallacy, and some would say the most common one.
And here you do it again! “A law needs a lawgiver.” Because you assumed that it is a “law,” which by its nature requires a lawgiver. But “laws of nature” are not human laws; it’s not like the law “don’t drive above 90 on the Ayalon.” What we call “laws of nature” are no more than our description of the way reality is conducted. The moment I say “rules of reality,” suddenly I no longer need a lawgiver here. So here again is begging the question, live.
And again, this assumption that “the laws of logic need to apply in every reality” is not only, again, unsupported by anything beyond your assertion, it assumes the very possibility of an alternative—a possibility that has not been demonstrated. If we speak about modal logic, at no stage has it been shown that another reality is within the domain of the possible.
And for the outside reader, it is important to emphasize that modal logic does not speak of “possible physical worlds,” but of a thought experiment in which I imagine my reality but with something different. But that is all it is: imagination. A thought experiment. It is pure logic, not synthetic; there is no statement here about physical reality. That is, if you were trying to formulate a formal argument, the first claim would have to be “it is possible that the laws of our reality could have been different.” And then the necessary question would be: “Okay, on what basis did you determine that?” To say “I am able to imagine it” provides no basis at all in a synthetic argument, an argument that touches reality.
7. We discussed this subject face to face. The only thing that was presented was Hume’s idea that causality is not the product of observation—an idea that is not connected to modern science and is not justified on its own merits either; it certainly is not enough to nullify all the evidence on the other side.
This definition of “spontaneous” also, in my opinion, is meant to play on both sides of the field. If an acorn falls in the forest and a tree grows from it, is that a “spontaneous” act? After all, it obeyed the rules of reality at every stage of the process. That is not the definition most people would use for “spontaneous.”
And yes, I did explain, as you like to say, in previous places: Hume bases his entire argument on Newtonian lawfulness and on a world before Einstein. Einstein showed us that spacetime is something with properties of its own, and therefore causality is just part of that set of properties. For whoever reads the correspondence on which you base your argument, it is completely clear that Hume’s description is simply incomplete, just as Newton’s description was incomplete. And this does not harm in any way these two great minds; they are products of their time and of the knowledge available to them at that point. Just as, incidentally, Paley probably would not have formulated the watchmaker argument if he had been born after Darwin.
9. You accused me in the past of dismissing Hume ad hominem, which I am not doing and did not do. I have great respect for the man, but like many great figures in the past, there are things he grasped correctly and things he did not. I can give examples of things Einstein was wrong about, or Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Pasteur, Darwin, and the list is long. Saying that they were wrong in certain places in no way harms the places where they were right, or detracts anything from their contribution to science and philosophy.
As for my understanding of modern philosophy, allow me not to respond, out of respect for you.
Hello Aviv. Earlier I didn’t notice that you were the writer.
If the numbering is for future reference, there are points I did not understand what in my words they referred to. It would have been appropriate to indicate that. Therefore it seemed to me that you were referring to certain sections from the past. Now to your claims here.
1. You don’t think it can be separated, and then immediately separate it. So be it. It is also not true that every religion produces fundamentalism. Absolutely not. And even if every religion produced fundamentalism, it still would not be true that every religious person or group is fundamentalist. So that link is nonsense.
On whataboutism I have written and I will not repeat the things here.
2. Again, you do not explain what you are referring to here. If you are referring to the physico-theological argument, you are mistaken. There is no option of “no answer.” In a logical dilemma there are only two options: either there is a creator of the world or there is not. The claim is that the option that there is no creator leads to regression, and therefore there is a creator. That is all. “No answer” is empty evasion. There is no such option here. You may perhaps argue about the argument I raised against the second option, but on a yes-no question you cannot say there is no answer.
4. I did not understand why you repeat again a claim that I explained is irrelevant to the discussion.
5. I did not intend to innovate anything on the question of certainty. And still I say I have no certainty. So to accuse me of acting out of certainty is nonsense. And if you think this is trivial, then you too join my opinion that Jeremy’s motivation does not exist.
6. I claim that begging the question is not a fallacy. But when there is banal question-begging, the argument loses its meaning. You can refer me to whatever literature you want. At most you will discover that they too do not understand what they are talking about. I said that ad hominem does not impress me. I want arguments, not quotations or hanging on such-and-such trees.
I assumed nothing. My claim is that every law needs a lawgiver. Even a non-human law. I do not understand why repeat the same point again. The laws of nature describe the way nature conducts itself, and if it conducts itself according to fixed patterns, that cries out for explanation. A law requires a lawgiver. The distinction between laws of nature and the laws of a state is irrelevant.
The discussion of modal logic does not touch my claim. You said there is only one reality, and I asked you according to your method how you explain modal logic, which deals with other realities (imaginary ones). When someone claims that some proposition is necessary, the modal meaning is that it is true in every conceivable world. According to your method there is nothing to talk about regarding all the other worlds, because there is only one reality. When I say that the laws of nature could have been different, that is exactly what I mean. There is no one in the universe who can dispute that, unless one sees the laws of nature as a branch of mathematics. I do not think anyone sees them that way. For example, are you claiming that the speed of light or the gravitational constant are logically necessary? That is, that this is the case in every possible world one can conceive (modal meaning)? That is absurd.
7. Again we have returned to Hume. Causality is in no way connected to observations. It is an assumption of science, not a result of it. Hume showed this, and again I say that the claim that there are many philosophers in the world is not a relevant argument. Please show where Hume is wrong.
I defined the concept “spontaneous” for the purpose of our discussion. There is no point entering into dictionary questions.
9. I accused you of dismissing Hume ad hominem because that is exactly what you did. You did not raise the slightest argument against him and only declared that he is wrong, saying there are many other philosophers and scientists. What do they say? How does this contradict what Hume claimed? You did not add a word. That is the dictionary definition of ad hominem.
* Indeed, the numbering is only for convenience, nothing more
1. Let me clarify: dogmatic social thinking leads to fundamentalism. That does not require religion. But every religion is based on dogmatic thinking, therefore all religions eventually lead to fundamentalism. Does that mean all believers in those religions are fundamentalists? Of course not; I never claimed or wrote that. That is a complete straw man. And to drive the point home: there are about 1.7 billion Muslims in the world. Suppose only 10 percent of them are extreme fundamentalists. That is still 170 million people. That is no small number and definitely capable of undermining social order, even though it is a “minority.”
2. It seems we are talking past each other. If the question is “Is there a creator of the world?”, clearly the answer is dichotomous, yes or no. Those are the options, as in every “whether” question. The point is that regardless of the answer, I can definitely say “I do not know what the answer is.” The default position, by the way, in this question is no; a creator of the world is an additional new variable, therefore the default position is to reject the claim until sufficient evidence is provided. The point is that people do not like being in the “I don’t know” position, so they prefer to choose an answer on the basis of bad reasons rather than remain with “I don’t know.” That is the point Jeremy makes in the book.
I already answered you in the past that the fact your inference leads to regression shows a failure in the inference, not that you are permitted to stop the regression arbitrarily and call it God. This is a logical error of special pleading: you formulated a rule and then broke it in order to avoid the unavoidable error it creates. And here is a bad reason to leave the default position of “no,” and certainly not sufficient to say “I know.”
4. I agree it is not relevant; you simply claimed that every atheist is a postmodernist, and in my opinion that is completely wrong.
5. As I noted, I am not accusing you of acting out of certainty, because again it is not relevant. If we formulate it differently: the accusation is that religious fundamentalists (not necessarily you) act under deep conviction (whether you call it certainty or not) that is unjustified. That is, in order to carry out the actions they carry out, they need extremely strong justification to reach such a level of conviction, whereas such justification not only does not exist, it cannot exist.
6. I’m not sure we have anything to discuss here. Begging the question occurs when the conclusion of the argument is already hidden inside the argument itself. The existing consensus in the field is unequivocal. You claim there is no such thing? That is your right; nothing prevents it. It just doesn’t seem fair to me that when one shows you that you are committing a fallacy, the answer is “it’s not a fallacy because I said so and all the experts in the field are wrong.”
“A law needs a lawgiver” is begging the question because the word “law” by definition requires a lawgiver. But the assumption occurs because you call the way nature conducts itself “laws.” That is, here again I am showing where you assumed what you needed to demonstrate. That is, I only need to change the word from “law” to “rule” or “mode of operation,” and suddenly the requirement for a “lawgiver” disappears. This is semantics, not logic. Conduct according to a fixed pattern cries out for explanation? Why? How many realities do you know such that this one of ours, which has a fixed pattern, in your opinion requires an explanation?
As I explained in a previous comment, modal logic deals with imaginary realities. Therefore there is no problem using it in pure logical arguments. But the physico-theological argument is not a pure logical argument; it is synthetic—it speaks about our reality. Therefore our ability to “imagine” for the sake of a thought experiment is irrelevant in such a domain of arguments. You need to show that another reality is indeed “possible.”
When you tell me “the laws of nature could have been different” as part of a thought experiment, I can go along with you until nightfall. But as part of a synthetic argument? Certainly not. I will demand that you show on what basis you determined that. The fact that you are able to imagine something is not enough.
For me, the properties of the speed of light and gravity are simply what they are: properties of reality. Can I imagine a different reality in which those properties are different? Of course. Does that mean they really could have been different? Absolutely not; evidentiary infrastructure is required here.
7. You accuse me of our returning to Hume, and a sentence later you write that Hume showed this. Here we have a substantial disagreement. And I have explained more than once where Hume is wrong. Causality is a property of spacetime; it is not something that is not a product of causality. In the end, this is all the problem of induction. If the sun rose today, I cannot be sure it will rise tomorrow. But the fact that neither I nor anyone else has a solution to the problem of induction does not mean causality is not a product of experience. It simply does not follow.
9. I write explicitly where he is wrong; I explain it as simply as I can. Do you want me to bring you specific quotations from his argument to show where he erred? Again, anyone who reads what he writes understands that it is all based on Newtonian mechanics. And that mechanics is incomplete. Again, it is like complaining about what Darwin wrote on evolution because he did not know genes exist. Obviously if he had known, he would have written differently.
Therefore the claim that one cannot observe “causality” is equivalent to saying one cannot observe “gravity.” True. But we can observe its effect on spacetime. Exactly like causality.
1. We are repeating ourselves. You are logically mistaken, as I explained.
2. I did not understand what is new here. It is yes or no. There is no “I don’t know” here. What people like or do not like is irrelevant when the answer “I don’t know” is not on the table.
When there are two alternatives—one leads to infinite regression and the other does not—that itself is evidence for the second. Everything else is mere sophistry.
4. I will repeat in a hoarse voice that I absolutely did not claim that. And even if I had claimed it, it is a little strange to me that you raise the argument that atheism existed long before postmodernism, for at least two reasons: did it occur to you that I do not know this? Even if it existed before, there is no logical problem in claiming that at its root lies a postmodern conception.
6. No point repeating again. Here again, of course, you return to your favorite ad hominem (“all the experts say”) without raising a substantive argument.
Likewise. Nothing new has been added here that I have not already explained.
7. The words do not connect for me here. You write a thing and its opposite. It does not come from experience, yet it is empirical. What am I supposed to do with such oxymorons?
9. There is not the slightest connection between Hume’s argument and Newton’s mechanics. This is simply a complete misunderstanding.
By the way, the discussion is about “causality,” not about “circumstantiality.”
1. Not particularly. You asserted something. But you did not show where I am mistaken. Maybe a straw man—but not me.
2. There is the “answer,” and there is “whether I know the answer.” Our universe has an age. Today we know its approximation. But 1,000 years ago, we did not know it. So the fact that there is an answer does not mean we had a way to get to the answer. And Jeremy’s whole argument talks about what people like or do not like, so it is unclear how that is not on the table.
When you arrive at infinite recursion, that means there was an inferential problem. It is equivalent to setting a student a math problem and him arriving at the answer that 1=-1.
The fact that he arrived at an illogical answer does not mean he is permitted to change numbers arbitrarily in order to get an answer he does like. And that is exactly the move here.
4. I quote you: “and consequently an atheist is a postmodernist.” That is a claim that is fundamentally mistaken. I responded to it. It is written above in the thread.
6. Ad hominem is “you are wrong because you are (insert insult here).” At worst you can accuse me of ad populum, an appeal to the majority. Or an appeal to an authority that is not an authority. But I am not appealing to an authority that is not an authority, nor am I committing an ad hominem fallacy. I am appealing to the consensus in the field. You do not agree with the consensus. Your problem is with them, not with me.
7. Where is there a thing and its opposite here? Hume explicitly argues that causality is solely a product of experience; his criticism is that since it is solely a product of experience, it is a psychological inference and not a property of reality, and therefore a “weak” connection rather than a “necessary” one. The first part of that is correct. The second part is incorrect. And quite a few modern philosophers show exactly that flaw. Where exactly is there a thing and its opposite here?
9. Hume’s arguments are not influenced by Newton? Wow, that is indeed an astonishing claim. It has of course no basis in reality, since Hume’s famous book A Treatise of Human Nature is deeply based in a way that simply cannot be detached from Newtonian mechanics and philosophy. To claim that Hume’s arguments are not based on Newton, in my opinion, is simply to sin against reality.
That is truly an argument I did not expect to hear at this stage.
One point I will clarify again. Ad hominem in literal translation is addressing the person rather than the matter. True, usually people speak about addressing the person making the claim, but I am speaking about addressing a person rather than addressing the matter itself. That is, bringing names instead of arguments. There is no point arguing about what the correct or accepted definition is, since I explained exactly what I mean, so the terminology is not important.
Beyond that, it is very difficult for me to discuss this way. There are quotations of mine taken out of context (such as: “an atheist is a postmodernist.” Read my words again and then I assume you will not repeat that), very basic misunderstandings, pardon me (for example regarding Hume’s causality: he does not claim at all that the connection is “weak,” and the claim that it is psychological is entirely different from the claim that it is weak; and in particular a misunderstanding of its connection to Newton), and again and again repetitions of the same thing although I already explained. Therefore I suggest we end here.
It is important to note that if your argument says “Hume said,” then there is no problem at all in saying “Hume was wrong”; that is not an ad hominem claim, since you introduced him in the first place. After all, even in our conversations, you chose to say that “Hume showed us that causality is not a product of experience,” even though that is exactly the opposite of what he actually wrote. So of course I will refer to his words. Every ad hominem argument must rely on “this is wrong because the claimant is X,” which I never did. I explain why he is wrong and even explain why he erred.
I’m sorry, but I don’t know in what context the sentence “and consequently an atheist is a postmodernist” was presented such that it is not false. Let the reader read the words and see whether I took something out of context.
As for Hume, I read his words, I read interpretations of his words, I read criticism of his words. I have the book in question in front of me. I will even quote a short passage:
It is therefore by EXPERIENCE only, that we can infer the existence of one object from that of another. The nature of experience is this. We remember to have had frequent instances of the existence of one species of objects; and also remember, that the individuals of another species of objects have always attended them, and have existed in a regular order of contiguity and succession with regard to them. Thus we remember, to have seen that species of object we call flame, and to have felt that species of sensation we call heat. We likewise call to mind their constant conjunction in all past instances. Without any farther ceremony, we call the one cause and the other effect, and infer the existence of the one from that of the other. In all those instances, from which we learn the conjunction of particular causes and effects, both the causes and effects have been perceived by the senses, and are remembered. But in all cases, wherein we reason concerning them, there is only one perceived or remembered, and the other is supplyed in conformity to our past experience.
And I can quote further sentences if needed. Hume thought that only through experience are we able to understand causality; the problem he raised and challenged us with is in the end the problem of induction. Depending on the interpretation, that either has types of solutions accepted in the philosophical community, or has no solution at all in any way, and that is a natural state just as there is no solution to hard solipsism. But that does not in any way mean that Hume showed us that causality does not arise from experience, which is exactly the complete opposite of what he actually writes.
Although I thought I had exhausted the matter, I will comment on the quotation because it illustrates the heart of the problem.
You brought this quotation as an argument against me out of complete misunderstanding, because it says exactly what I said. I will explain this further.
In my series of columns 459–466 I expanded greatly on the matter. I showed there that the determination that there is a causal relation between event A and event B is composed of three components: the logical (if A then B), the temporal (A before B), and the physical (A brings about B). All three are required in order to speak of causality. Hume denied the last and argued that causality cannot contain production, but only a logical-temporal relation. Everything else is our psychological bias and not a claim about reality.
Hume was an empiricist; on that there is no dispute, and I even wrote that here. Precisely because of that he argues that we have no way to determine the existence of a causal relation between events (for there is no empirical way to discern production—only the logical and temporal relation). And consequently there is certainly no way to determine the existence of the principle of causality in general, that is, that everything must have a cause. This truly does not come from experience. What you see in experience are only specific regularities, that is, a logical and temporal relation between specific events. You have no way to determine the production between them, and certainly you cannot determine that it will recur, meaning that it is a general law. Not only the principle of causality but any inference regarding a general law of nature is, according to Hume, speculation (because what is not empirical is unacceptable to Hume). In particular one must remember Hume’s undermining of induction, which completely destroys the possibility of arriving at a general principle of causality and at general laws of nature at all. As stated, what can be seen empirically is only a logical-temporal relation without production. Production is an a priori matter that does not emerge from observation. So what is to be done with it?
Causality in the accepted conception (which also includes the component of production) is, according to Hume, a priori, and precisely because of this he does not accept it. His claim is not that it is a weak connection but that we have no way to determine that there is any such connection at all. As an empiricist he does not accept principles not grounded in experience. For him the causal relation between events and the principle of causality in general are a logical-temporal relation. Production is our psychological bias.
But I do accept the principle of causality (like every sensible person and every scientist I know). But at the same time I too must accept that it is an a priori principle, precisely because of Hume’s argument. Only unlike him, I am not an empiricist (and in my opinion nobody really is an empiricist. There is no sensible person in the world who truly thinks that the principle of causality is only a psychological inclination and does not really exist in reality itself, meaning that in reality itself there is no production between events), and therefore in my opinion there certainly is a principle of causality. Except that because of Hume’s argument, the conclusion is that it is indeed a priori and does not derive from observation.
Regarding this argument of his (that there is no way to derive a causal relation and the principle of causality in general from observations), I know of no refutation from any direction, simply because it is clear that he is right. This has not the slightest connection to Newton’s mechanics or anyone else’s. It is not connected to physics or its findings at all. Every sensible person understands that the principle of causality is not a product of observation. In that Hume is right, and it will not help to bring here a list of all the philosophers in the universe across the generations.
As stated, I expanded on this in my series of columns on causality 459–466.
I want to respond only to point 2.
In my opinion, what Michi is arguing is that since one of the two possibilities leads to regression, one must necessarily adopt the second possibility. There is no problem in the inference because we are dealing only with one of two possibilities, which can be true or false. A problem in inference is when one starts from something true and arrives at something false. Here one starts from something doubtful and arrives at a contradiction. I think it is like proof by contradiction.
My remark is only about what, in my opinion, is being missed in the discussion between you. As for the substance, I can’t say I understand the argument or the regression that one arrives at.
I truly do not understand this response. You go to the trouble of telling me that I am wrong and that I do not understand Hume, when what you write not only supports exactly what I wrote, but we have no disagreement about it at all. The differences between us are entirely semantic, but for some reason you insist as though I am wrong and you are right.
After all, I am the one who wrote that Hume argued causality is a result of observation and experience, but that we have no observation of the physical part, and that he saw in this a “weak” connection. That is, that the logical-physical relation is too weak to justify it for him as an empiricist without the physical part. I wrote that. And you wrote that I am wrong and immediately repeated my words simply in different phrasing.
The difference between us is that I accept Hume’s argument, but do not agree with him that we have no ways to ground the physical connection as well. Now perhaps I am a complete idiot, but strong counterarguments were already presented by many philosophers better than I—whether Kant, who argued that this is a position of radical empiricism that even Hume does not believe in (that should not surprise you, after all you are a rationalist, but not a radical one; there is no reason to create a straw man of radical empiricism), or the work of John Stuart Mill, who shows that causality is necessary and a product of empirical observation and logical necessity, or the work of Nancy Cartwright, who also presents a rather sturdy critique of Hume’s naïve conception.
Or, as I wrote to you, causality can be considered like gravity. If we use Hume’s same technique of inference regarding the principle of gravity, we will see that we do not really have sufficient empirical evidence for its existence either. But we measure its effect on spacetime—and that is exactly the point of why Hume needed Einstein.
And even if we ignore all that, even if we agree completely with Hume, it still shows exactly the opposite of your position: Hume thought causality is only a product of experience. The fact that David Hume specifically had no way to anchor causality in the physical world not only does not constitute an argument against “experience” (because experience does not necessarily have to be empirical), it leaves us in the position of “we have no solution.” It does not mean that the alternative solution of “causality is not a product of experience” is correct. It does not follow. Now if you want to be a radical empiricist, then yes, perhaps that is not enough for you. But by the same token you can be a radical solipsist and think all reality is your invention. These are irrelevant positions. You are attacking a straw man that does not exist just in order to knock it down and claim victory.
Hello. In one of the replies you wrote, “There is no sensible person in the world who truly thinks that the principle of causality is only a psychological tendency and does not really exist in reality itself, meaning that in reality itself there is no production between events.” If so, what בכלל is the definition of “causality” that one would claim a sensible person in the world holds to exist, beyond some feeling in the soul?
I did not understand the question
It seems you hold that there is essential causality within the laws of nature. If so, what is the definition בכלל of “causality” beyond the description of a recurring pattern in empirical observation?
As I wrote, production. For details, I referred to my series of columns on causality.
David Hume would argue that production is an empty concept, and that all we call production is merely an empirical pattern of two things following one another chronologically or simultaneously. Is there a way to define “production” beyond Hume’s definition as an empirical pattern?
Do you mean, can it be measured? No. That is exactly Hume’s claim. Defined? I defined it.
Defining causality as “production” is not a definition but a synonym.
The question is whether one can define causality beyond a synonym. A real definition that would extract “causality” from being an empty, meaningless concept. (Beyond some feeling in consciousness. Or beyond a Humean description of an empirical pattern.)
Every definition is a synonym. The question is whether it clarifies the defined concept or not. In my opinion, definitely yes.
By the way, Hume for example thought that causality does not include production. So it is not a synonym. Though he too admitted that the intuitive concept does include production, and against that he argued. And this again proves that the claim that causality includes production is saying something (otherwise, what was he arguing against?).
If a definition is a word directly experienced in consciousness like “you saw the color blue” or “you experienced joy,” then it does indeed clarify.
But to say that “causality” is “production” has clarified nothing. It is like claiming that “rrrr” is “pppp.” So far, defining causality as production has clarified nothing, and Hume would claim it is impossible to define it beyond an empirical pattern.
Did Hume deny causality—that is, did he claim “there is no causality”? Or did he simply claim it is an empty concept?
I have exhausted this. Either you are merely insisting for no reason, or you truly do not understand what production is (which I find very hard to believe). Either way, this is rather childish positivism, and therefore the discussion is pointless.
Did Hume deny causality—that is, did he claim “there is no causality”—or did he simply claim that “causality” is an empty, meaningless concept?
I know what the experienced feeling is when we say “production,” as an emotion we experience—a feeling of an essential connection between two appearances in reality. But this is only a feeling and nothing more. And this feeling we identify with the word “production.” But that is not a clarification of the concept, otherwise the claim would be that production in reality is a feeling experienced in consciousness, and there is no production “in itself.”
He denied it. Because he was an empiricist. He too understood the concept very well and denied it because of his empiricist position, not because of emptiness of content. He was not a positivist.
You are confusing feeling with understanding or perception. By your definition, red color too is a feeling. Production is a concept that I (and you too) understand very well. Understanding is always a subjective inner act, but it is not feeling. Alternatively, if that is what you call feeling, then there is still clarification.
Can empiricism not claim that a concept is empty? Is a claim about an empty concept positivism? Berkeley was an empiricist and claimed matter is an empty concept, and did not deny it by claiming “there is no matter,” otherwise he would have been a solipsist and not an idealist
The difference is that one can imagine a Humean empirical pattern without the accompanying feeling of “production” in the soul. Whereas one cannot imagine form without color. So color is an essential experience in reality, without which one cannot describe reality, whereas the feeling of “production” is not, and one can describe reality without it
By the way, if Hume only denied causality but admitted the very meaningfulness of the concept, and did not argue for its emptiness—what is the difference between him and the Kalam approach?
Cognitive necessity is irrelevant to the discussion. What is the connection between necessity and understanding? Well, I have exhausted this.
Is the feeling of production not simply the feeling of our habit all our lives that thing B happens after thing A, until we feel a sense of strangeness at the claim that thing B will not happen after A? If so, it is only a feeling of habit and nothing more
Let me sharpen my question, which may have been asked without my clarifying it well: regarding causality only *in the empirical reality of the senses*, did David Hume argue that causality in this case is empty (that is, that the concept “sensory appearance A is the cause of sensory appearance B” is an empty concept), or did he argue that although one can speak of the concept “causality between one sensory appearance and another sensory appearance,” in practice he denied it on the grounds that it is not found? My question deals only with the concept of causality between two sensory appearances, and not with other causality.
Joshua son of Nun was an even greater murderer🙂
A. I am glad that on at least one thing there is agreement—that fundamentalism is a problematic thing. I summarized a bit on Wikipedia about fundamentalism (religious, as it is defined in an agreed-upon way)—from the Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Fundamentalism is a type of conservative religious movement characterized by public advocacy of strict acceptance of sacred scriptures.
The term fundamentalism emerged at the beginning of the 20th century to describe a Christian religious movement that opposed science, the Enlightenment movement, historiography, and also modern religious currents that tried to reconcile sacred scriptures with modern knowledge (currents such as natural theology, liberal Christianity, deism).” I agree that there is also fundamentalism without religion—but such a thing needs to be defined.
B. One can argue whether communism, fascism, Nazism (and in my personal opinion also capitalism) are religions, ideologies, or modern religions. In the book Religion and Science from 1935, for example, Bertrand Russell treats communism and Nazism as modern religions. At the very least, one can treat various ideologies suspiciously—they have all kinds of basic assumptions, and these basic assumptions may clash with science.
C. One can see that all the common ideologies and also the religions clash with science. Many religious people reject evolution or the central place of natural selection in evolution. The Nazis distorted evolution (they did not understand why genetic diversity is important, why the fit survive and not the strong), the communists opposed important economic principles (what is the role of the market in mediating information between consumers and producers, or between two producers) as well as genetics. The many clashes between science and religious dogmas that claimed that all truth derives from the holy books can appear so strange to the modern eye that they have been forgotten. Very few believers today, for example, believe that dirt testifies to sin or that diseases are caused by demons—or at least most of them first go to a hospital—which, following the scientific revolution, is now based on microbiology and on research in evolution (and on the division of labor brought to us by Adam Smith)—and not on religious assumptions from any religious stream whatsoever (in no religion is there any mention of bacteria—and most religious people do not even understand what the problem with that is).
D. To understand how great the gap is between religion and science on many subjects, one can go to the book A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (in addition to Russell’s book)—for example, how in the past people explained disease or weather or the social order by means of religious explanations, and how that changed. Today this gap “disappears” by means of: 1. people forgot what clergy claimed in the past; 2. people do not know the history of science (with encouragement from religion on one side and capitalist consumer culture on the other); 3. people do not know science (very few people have heard, for example, of self-organization—how under certain conditions the second law of thermodynamics actually causes an increase in order and complexity). Many people versed in physics or law understand nothing about ecology (they have never heard, for example, of a biogeochemical cycle such as the phosphorus cycle or the carbon cycle). 4. religion itself underwent evolution, and religious people now say, for example, that “there is no contradiction between science and religion”—that is, after they lost the argument on so many issues, they suddenly move the goalposts.
E. In my view, the basis for truth is not God (which God? Hindu? Chinese? Thor? the God of Sunni Islam or of Jewish Hasidism?) but rather the scientific method. With it we approach the truth as best we can. Science, unlike various religions, is universal and convergent. Universal—it does not matter what your cultural background is—if you agreed on a few principles, you can begin to talk. Convergent—unlike religions, which begin from one initial point of view but constantly split because of the absence of the decision mechanism that exists in science (peer review, experiments, fit with additional theories, predictive power, and explanatory power).
F. Here is another kind of “maturation”—but different from your claim.
“From here you can understand that the only path that allows real coping against fundamentalism is the synthetic path, since it is prepared to dispute the fundamentalist truth and not give it equal standing, even if it has no certainty in its own path. If you want to cope against ISIS, it is not right to tell them they are right like us and at most defend ourselves against them by force in order to survive. A real alternative must offer an alternative truth and not a postmodern vacuum. In my above-mentioned books I also showed that the only basis for syntheticity, that is, for uncertain truth, is… God, and therefore war against him is war against life and against the world.”
This is a strange claim. Many scientists—including Dawkins—1. reject the fundamentalists; 2. also reject postmodernism (for Dawkins, see The Greatest Show on Earth, introduction). In my opinion, what you are doing here is a false dichotomy—if you do not want to be religious fundamentalists and not postmodernists—“there is only one path” (to be a religious person, and by chance the right religion is the religion our parents believed in—what luck we have, and how unfortunate all the other religious people in the world are, who were born into the wrong religion). Here is another path: a science-based culture.
In such a culture
1. One distinguishes between true and false—very different from postmodernism.
2. One rejects dogmas and religious or ideological assumptions about the nature of the world.
3. One looks for what things fit scientific theories—for example, if most biologists today accept evolution, and if evolution undergoes synthesis with more and more other biological theories (for example, the modern synthesis in the 1930s, and later syntheses such as evo-devo)—one assumes that it is true.
4. One understands that it is hard to arrive at truth—because of limitations such as information theory, quantum theory, the second law of thermodynamics, etc. Therefore there will be a gap between science and “higher” domains—morality, culture, etc. People may arrive at somewhat different conclusions from the same scientific findings—and therefore not “scientific culture.”
5. Instead of seeking proofs, one seeks confirmations and refutations. There are no proofs in science. But most people, and scientists too, look for “what works.” We accept quantum theory not because it is logical or fits common sense, but because it works. It has enormous predictive power that we have already harnessed in many practical fields.
6. Without science (and through it—history) there is no possibility of approaching truth—and therefore no moral behavior either. Without understanding what ecology is, for example, we may cause the extinction of most of humanity, or harm our children or people on the other side of the globe without even knowing it (endocrine disruptors, persistent organic pollutants, disruption of the phosphorus cycle, disruption of the carbon cycle, destruction of ecological systems—as examples that ought to be familiar to every person, or at least to anyone engaged in science).
7. An example of a conclusion of a science-based culture—we all live on one planet, and we are all biological creatures. We depend on other biological creatures and on other abiological conditions (such as climate, for example, or the phosphorus cycle). The more people there are on the planet, and the more each of those people on average has greater access to more technology and greater use of energy, the greater our mutual effects—on one another and all of us together on the ecological systems and on the biogeophysical systems—become. Thus we are now in a transition from a society conducted in a semi-autonomous way (Sparta, England 2,000 years ago, the Wild West), through interdependence (England 200 years ago), toward “Spaceship Earth,” where the interdependence and the effects of everyone on everyone become more and more noticeable (at least to those willing to acknowledge their existence—for example by measuring the average climate, checking the presence of persistent organic pollutants in the blood, etc.)—these conclusions may change in light of new scientific findings, but this is what is currently known (see “planetary boundaries” on Wikipedia).
Continued ignoring of science (including ecology, evolution, self-organization, and more) and ideological battles between different religions, conservatism, liberalism, capitalism, populism, etc.—the likely result of this massive distraction, similar to Easter Island or the water crisis in Iran or the theological crisis in the Byzantine Empire—is an ecological and/or social disaster on an enormous scale. Anyone who thinks we have endless time to polemicize and ignore what I wrote resembles someone living in a spaceship where more and more people are equipped with drills and are drilling into the walls.
The first link in the column leads to an empty wiki page