Stephen Law

FARADAY INSTITUTE appearance

2012-01-31T09:28:00.003Z

The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion
St Edmund’s College, Cambridge

Science, Religion and Atheism

Short Course No. 21

Murray Edwards College, Cambridge

Friday 30th March – Sunday 1st April 2012

Is the discussion between science and religion affected by its narrator, be they
theist, atheist or agnostic? This course is not to debate the existence of God
but to explore answers to this question presented by speakers themselves
coming from these different perspectives.

Speakers and Topics include:

A Plague on Both Your Houses: Prof. Michael Ruse
Does the Evolutionary Narrative Support Theism or Atheism?
Prof. Simon Conway Morris FRS and Dr Fern Elsdon-Baker
Is the Universe Designed?
Revd Dr Rodney Holder and Dr Stephen Law
Perspectives on the Philosophy of Science and Religion
Prof. Keith Ward and Dr Mark Vernon
Does the History of Science and Religion depend on the Narrator?
Dr Allan Chapman and Prof. Ronald Numbers

For more details including bursaries and discounts, see
www.faraday-institute.org
or call +44 (0)1223 741281

Graham Taylor, England manager, on my footballing performance...

2012-01-25T17:49:00.001Z

Just stumbled upon this and thought I'd post it again because it's cool....

Interview on The Philosophy Files

2012-01-25T08:34:00.005Z

The Complete Philosophy Files is The Philosophy Files and The Philosophy Files 2 combined into a single volume.

Here is an interview I did for The Guardian newspaper when the The Philosophy Files was originally published way back in 2000.

Asking all the right questions

Philosopher Stephen Law tells Mel Steel why children are natural thinkers

"I've always been struck by how philosophically minded children are," says Stephen Law. "They ask questions and they get an answer, and behind that answer they find another question to ask, and it doesn't take long before they're starting to question some of our most basic and fundamental beliefs. If you repeatedly ask 'Why?', it's not long before you're really hitting philosophical bedrock."

The thought of dealing with philosophical bedrock at bedtime might be many parents' idea of hell; but philosophy lecturer Law believes in getting them while they're young. His first book, The Philosophy Files, goes straight to the heart of some of the most vexed questions there are to ask: What's real? Where do right and wrong come from? How do I know the world isn't virtual? Should I eat meat? And not forgetting: Does God exist?

Accessible, entertaining, and plentifully illustrated by Daniel Postgate, the only question it doesn't tackle head on is why nobody's written a book like it before. Unlike Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World or Alain de Botton's The Consolations of Philosophy, this is no dinner-party roll call of the great and the dead. It's philosophy in action rather than philosophy in aspic.

What Law shares with Gaarder and de Botton, though, is the irresistable impulse to popularise. "Which is considered to be career suicide," he says. "At least that's what I've been told. But then I'm not particularly ambitious in the sense of working my way up the academic ladder. I mean, the average philosophical journal article is read by a total of eight people. And while I do write journal articles, I don't think that's going to change the world, really. Whereas a book can, in some subtle but important way, change people's lives. And I do passionately believe that it's important that people think about these big questions in the course of their everyday lives. Moral questions, especially. It's slightly depressing, I think, if you live in a society where people don't."

He's been interested in the big questions for as long as he can remember, he says; but it took him a while to figure out that repeatedly asking "Why?" might actually amount to a legitimate occupation. Academia wasn't alien to him - he grew up in Cambridge, and his father had a doctorate in sociology - but he messed up at school, thought he'd blown any chance of further study, and had no idea that philosophy existed as a subject in its own right.

The first time he embarked on A-levels, he says, he was asked to leave - "basically because I was lazy and good for nothing. I don't blame them at all". A year or so later he tried another subject combination at another college, but found himself too irritated by the exam-oriented mentality of the syllabus to see it through. "You weren't allowed to do anything other than regurgitate," he says, "when what I really wanted to do was ask the questions."

So, after a couple of brief spells as a sand-blaster and damp-proofer, he settled into four years as a postman in Girton, just outside Cambridge. He was the only one on the job who never got a Christmas tip. "I wasn't a very accurate postman," he concedes now. "In fact I was a very bad postman. Possibly the worst postman Girton ever had."

But those four years gave him a lot of time to think, and to read. Left to his own devices, he consumed books. "One book would lead me to another, and then another, until eventually I ended up reading nothing but philosophy books. And I suddenly realised that that's what I'd always wanted to do - but that I'd never known what it was called."

He was 23: just old enough to qualify as a mature student, which meant that he didn't need A-levels after all. So he ditched the post office, bummed around India for a few months, and - "like a miracle" - was accepted to read philosophy at London's City University. Some of the papers he'd written for himself in the course of his reading helped persuade them that he was serious about doing a degree. Very serious, in fact. He got a gratifying first, went on to secure the coveted BPhil at Trinity College, Oxford, and then netted himself a prestigious junior research fellowship at Queen's, before taking up a teaching post at London University's Heythrop College four years ago.

It's precisely the maverick combination of passion, rigour, patience and sedition that makes Law such an engaging writer and teacher. But it's only now, reaping handsome praise for The Philosophy Files, that he's finally given up worrying that he might not be clever enough, posh enough or cynical enough to be a proper academic. "I did go through a major crisis of confidence at Oxford," he says. "I felt that I didn't fit into that mould particularly, and for a while I just couldn't produce any papers at all. But the fact is, I'm doing what I'm doing now because I enjoy it. It's good fun. I don't care any more what people think about me."

Now 39, he's delighted that the book he has been conjuring in his head for so many years - a real philosophy book for kids, which students and adults could enjoy too - finally exists. A kind of career suicide note with knobs on, complete with cartoons and dayglo cover.

"I wanted it to be an adventure in thinking of the sort I wish someone had written for me when I was younger," he says. "I would never have appreciated someone giving me a textbook which explained what Descartes had to say about this or what Plato said about that. But if someone had actually engaged me in my own language and on my own terms, talking about questions in the way that I wanted to talk about them at that age, then I would have lapped it up."

Original is here.

Poster idea

2012-01-24T13:16:00.002Z

Any teachers out there....I need some advice.

I am thinking of producing a colourful A2 poster for schools promoting philosophy and my college. I was thinking on one side a "what is philosophy?" cartoon-type Philosophy Files thing, and on the other side a couple of discussion topics.

However, what we really need is to target the right age group and get the poster put up on walls. Have any teachers out there got any advice in terms if what would be popular with teachers and encourage them to it up?

In terms of raising awareness, we could actually aim at slightly younger kids. But is that advisable? Who would you target in the first instance?

anyway - interested in your thoughts...

BTW I did one like this a few years ago for Teacher magazine and it was quite popular, I think.

best
Stephen

Tickets for my events at the Oxford Literary Festival - buy here...

2012-01-23T14:38:00.005Z

You can buy tickets for my debate with Lord Richard Harries (Bishop of Oxford) at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival on 29th March at 4pm here: box office.

There are also tickets for my talk on Believing Bullshit, 10.00am the same day here: box office.

£500 A level philosophy essay prize - please spread word to your students...

2012-01-23T10:32:00.005Z

Heythrop Philosophy Essay Prize Competition 2012

Heythrop College University of London is launching a new Philosophy Essay Prize, worth £500 which will be judged by Dr Stephen Law, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Heythrop College and the editor of the Royal Institute of Philosophy's journal THINK: Philosophy for Everyone.

The competition is open to all those studying for any AS or A2-level examinations (or equivalent) in 2012.

Entries should be no longer than 1500 words including footnotes but excluding references and can take any form e.g. essay, dialogue, etc. All sources must be referenced.

The deadline for the 1500 word essay is 5pm on Friday 30 March 2012, and the winner will be announced on the Heythrop website on 29 June 2012.

To enter please choose one of the titles below and send your entry to essayprize@heythrop.ac.uk (please note you may only submit one entry to the competition).

Entries should be written in the Microsoft Word document which includes the entry form (please see below). Entries will normally be acknowledged within 5 days.

Heythrop College/Dr Stephen Law reserve the right to publish entries but entrants will retain copyright over their work.

Title 1: Is there good evidence for or against the existence of God?
Title 2: What is the mind-body problem? Can it be solved?
Title 3: Under what conditions can someone be said to know something?

Go here to download the entry form.

Why a Philosophy degree maybe a better bet than a degree in Business Administration

2012-01-21T11:24:00.001Z

If you are wondering what kind of degree programme is likely to boost your general smarts, consider these figures.

Go here. This is one of several graphs from the above article. Based on GRE test performance (Graduate Record Examination) of graduate programme applicants. Quantitative (math) skills on the vertical axis, verbal skills on the horizontal (other graphs include the third component - "analytical writing", at which philosophers also excel, dramatically outperforming all others).

Philosophy graduates are pretty damn smart, the various figures suggest, compared to graduates with other degrees, including most - perhaps even all - sciences (though were they smarter to begin with, or did their degree programme make them smarter, compared to other degrees?). Check the article. Here's the original table of GRE scores of US students completing a variety of degrees.

Notice religion also does very well.

This data suggests (but falls a long way short of establishing) that if we want to produce graduates with general, across-the-board smarts, physics and philosophy are disciplines to encourage [and possibly also that accountancy and business administration should be discouraged (this confirms all my prejudices, I am pleased to say!)].

Note some very weird stats on this graph, such as business administration's woeful performance, doing less well than even "art and performance" on quantitative skills and verbal skills (which is staggering). And accountancy grads less good on quantitative skills than philosophy grads (!) and the worst performers of all on verbal skills. Both business and accountancy are also weak on the analytic writing component.

Of course, as the new business-friendly, market-led Tory vision of degree provision kicks in, we'll probably see philosophy departments up and down the country closing and business administration degrees expanding. Brilliant.

P.S. Just added a second graph comparing analytical writing and verbal. Check out e.g business administration. And where's philosophy?

Why Philosophy is perhaps one of the MOST useful degrees

2012-01-21T11:22:00.002Z

Here is an excellent resource on why philosophy degrees make especially smart and successful businessmen and women, lawyers, journalists, etc. (you are actually dramatically better off doing a first degree in philosophy than business administration for a career in business).

Some very good answers to "Philosophy? What are you going to do with that?" question. Go here for "testimonials".

Includes GRE test performance (philosophers do staggeringly well - look right), comparative salary information, and various other useful bits of evidence that collectively puncture the peculiar modern myth that philosophy isn't "useful".

I previously commented on the GRE scores comparing philosophy students with all other students here.

A quote from Fordham:

"In addition, as the marketplace becomes more competitive, graduate degrees become more desirable, and that entails a strong performance on the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), the exam most business schools require their applicants to take. Philosophy majors consistently outperform other majors on the GMAT, including all business majors, all humanities majors, and all social sciences majors. Philosophy majors enjoy enormous advantages going into business."

The first and last testimonials are especially good. Opening quote from the final "testimonial" on linked page:

"Most of management theory is inane, writes our correspondent, the founder of consulting firm. If you want to succeed in business, don’t get an M.B.A. Study philosophy instead."

U.S. Christians boo the golden rule

2012-01-19T11:00:00.008Z

Republican candidates on foreign policy (obviously plenty of Christians will be rightly horrified by some Christians appearing to boo Ron Paul's invocation of Confucious'/Jesus' Golden Rule [though they probably don't even know what it is, to be fair]). Thanks to the atheist missionary.

BLASPHEMY EVENT 28TH JAN - buy your tickets now!

2012-01-18T16:14:00.000Z

BLASPHEMY - WHO SPEAKS FOR THE SACRED?

Come and hear KENAN MALIK, AUSTIN DACEY, ANDREW COPSON, JACOB MCHANGAMA, MARYAM NAMAZIE speaking informatively and provocatively on this controversial topic.

Presented by Stephen Law.

Saturday 28th January 2012
Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square Holborn

Tickets: £10 (£8 student).
http://www.humanism.org.uk/shop/tickets

10.30am REGISTRATION

11.00AM Kenan Malik
Beyond the sacred

Kenan Malik is a writer, lecturer and broadcaster. He is a presenter of Analysis, BBC Radio 4's flagship current affairs programme and a panelist on the Moral Maze. He used to present Nightwaves, BBC Radio 3's arts and ideas programme. He has written and presented a number of radio and TV documentaries including Disunited Kingdom, Are Muslims Hated?, Islam, Mullahs and the Media, Skullduggery and Man, Beast and Politics.

Kenan Malik’s latest book is From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and its Legacy. The book was shortlisted for the 2010 George Orwell Book Prize.

12.00 Andrew Copson
Blasphemy laws by the back door

Andrew Copson has been chief executive of the British humanist association since 2010 before which he spent five years coordinating the association's campaigns work including on blasphemy and free speech issues.

1.00-1.30 Lunch

1.30 Austin Dacey
The Future of Blasphemy

Austin Dacey, Ph.D., is a representative to the United Nations for the International Humanist and Ethical Union and the author of The Future of Blasphemy.

2.30 Jacob Mchangama
Between blasphemy and hate speech: How hate speech laws are being used to enforce blasphemy norms

Jacob Mchangama is director of legal affairs at Danish think tank CEPOS and an external lecturer in International Human Rights law at the University of Copenhagen. Jacob has a special focus on freedom of expression and has published articles in international newspapers such as Wall Street Journal Europe, Jerusalem Post, Spiked, Globe and Mail, The Australian and Jyllands Posten. His work on human rights and free speech has been mentioned in The Economist, CBS.com and Courrier International.

3.30 Maryam Namazie
Blasphemy, Offence, and Islamophobia limiting Citizen Rights

Maryam Namazie is Spokesperson of the One Law for All Campaign against Sharia Law in Britain, the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain and Equal Rights Now - Organisation against Women's Discrimination in Iran. She is also National Secular Society Honorary Associate and the NSS' 2005 Secularist of the Year award winner and was selected one of the top 45 women of the year 2007 by Elle magazine Quebec.

4.30 end

Jointly presented by Centre for Inquiry UK and SPES

New Scientist - interview with me on bullshit

2012-01-17T11:56:00.003Z

From New Scientist. The full interview is here.

How do people defend their beliefs in bizarre conspiracy theories or the power of crystals? Philosopher Stephen Law has tips for spotting their strategies

You describe your new book, Believing Bullshit, as a guide to avoid getting sucked into "intellectual black holes". What are they?
Intellectual black holes are belief systems that draw people in and hold them captive so they become willing slaves of claptrap. Belief in homeopathy, psychic powers, alien abductions - these are examples of intellectual black holes. As you approach them, you need to be on your guard because if you get sucked in, it can be extremely difficult to think your way clear again.

But isn't one person's claptrap another's truth?
There's a belief system about water to which we all sign up: it freezes at 0 °C and boils at 100 °C. We are powerfully wedded to this but that doesn't make it an intellectual black hole. That's because these beliefs are genuinely reasonable. Beliefs at the core of intellectual black holes, however, aren't reasonable. They merely appear so to those trapped inside.

You identify some strategies people use to defend black hole beliefs. Tell me about one of them - "playing the mystery card"?
This involves appealing to mystery to get out of intellectual hot water when someone is, say, propounding paranormal beliefs. They might say something like: "Ah, but this is beyond the ability of science and reason to decide. You, Mr Clever Dick Scientist, are guilty of scientism, of assuming science can answer every question." This is often followed by that quote from Shakespeare's Hamlet: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy". When you hear that, alarm bells should go off.

But even scientists admit that they can't explain everything.
There probably are questions that science cannot answer. But what some people do to protect their beliefs is to draw a veil across reality and say, "you scientists can go up to the veil and apply your empirical methods this far, but no further". Behind the veil they will put angels, aliens, psychic powers, God, ghosts and so on. Then they insist that there are special people who can see - if only dimly - through this veil. But the fact is that many of the claims made about things behind this veil have empirically observable consequences and that makes them scientifically testable.

Continues here. The best thing about this interview is the photo which makes me look like a moody Clint Eastwood.

Quaker Universalist Fellowship - review of Believing Bullshit

2012-01-17T10:02:00.003Z

There's a pretty fair-minded review of my book Believing Bullshit by a quaker here.

BEYOND THE VEIL event CFI UK

2012-01-16T10:33:00.005Z

BEYOND THE VEIL event on Saturday (Centre for Inquiry UK event). The group shot is (left to right) myself, Hayley Stevens, Richard Wiseman, Paul Zenon, Ian Rowland, Chris French.

Hayley Stevens' blog

2012-01-15T11:08:00.002Z

Hayley has posted up the audio recordings of "ghosts" on her blog. They weren't quite clear enough due to technical problems at the CFI UK Beyond The Veil event yesterday (not Hayley's fault, I should add). Great blog to visit in any case...

Go here.

Paul Zenon on Psychic Sally

2012-01-14T17:55:00.004Z

Paul Zenon appeared at today's CFI UK Beyond the Veil event (which I organized for Centre for Inquiry UK) and gave some funny and shocking insights into the work of various psychics. His piece in the Daily Mail on Psychic Sally is here.

A video which, it's suggested, may show psychic Sally removing an ear piece is here.

Both courtesy of the Daily Mail. Which is ironic.

Sally Morgan threatens libel

2012-01-14T11:39:00.005Z

I am currently at Beyond The Veil, at which claims of being able to communicate with dead are being subjected to critical scrutiny. I just noticed that Jack of Kent reports...

Sally Morgan, the stage "psychic", is bringing a libel claim.

This was announced on Friday by Atkins Thomson, a London law firm experienced in media law matters. Given this experience, one must presume that her decision to bring a claim has not been made lightly, and that she is fully aware the reputational damage that can result from a misconceived libel claim.

The lawyers' statement is not very informative:

"Sally Morgan instructs Atkins Thomson to commence libel action in relation [to] various articles in the press."

Indeed, so vague is this statement one would perhaps need their client's uncanny abilities to know what it actually means.

First of all, it does not say that any claim has actually been issued. It does not even say that any formal "letters before action" have been sent. We could even still be at preliminary stage, without there having been any correspondence yet at all.

Second, it does not say who the defendants will be. Will Morgan be suing just one media organization? Or many? Will she even adopt the illiberal tactic of threatening the individual journalists? (This was the approach followed by the now discredited British Chiropractic Association in their claim against Simon Singh.)

And, third, it does not state what the supposed libels are. Morgan makes considerable amounts of money out of her audiences believing that she talks with dead people. However, it cannot be defamatory to say that Morgan does no such thing.

"Sally Morgan, the stage "psychic", is bringing a libel claim. This was announced on Friday by Atkins Thomson, a London law firm experienced in media law matters. Given this experience, one must presume that her decision to bring a claim has not been made lightly, and that she is fully aware the reputational damage that can result from a misconceived libel claim. The lawyers' statement is not very informative: "Sally Morgan instructs Atkins Thomson to commence libel action in relation [to] various articles in the press." Indeed, so vague is this statement one would perhaps need their client's uncanny abilities to know what it actually means. First of all, it does not say that any claim has actually been issued. It does not even say that any formal "letters before action" have been sent. We could even still be at preliminary stage, without there having been any correspondence yet at all. Second, it does not say who the defendants will be. Will Morgan be suing just one media organization? Or many? Will she even adopt the illiberal tactic of threatening the individual journalists? (This was the approach followed by the now discredited British Chiropractic Association in their claim against Simon Singh.) And, third, it does not state what the supposed libels are. Morgan makes considerable amounts of money out of her audiences believing that she talks with dead people. However, it cannot be defamatory to say that Morgan does no such thing.

Continues at http://jackofkent.blogspot.com/2011/10/sally-morgan-is-bringing-libel-action.html I cannot make an active link for some reason...

“Blasphemy!” Who speaks for the sacred? 28th Jan 2012

2012-01-09T12:11:00.003Z

Come and hear KENAN MALIK, AUSTIN DACEY, ANDREW COPSON, JACOB MCHANGAMA, MARYAM NAMAZIE speaking informatively and provocatively on this controversial topic.

Presented by Stephen Law.

This event focuses on the criminalization of religious hatred, defamation, and insult under European human rights, and how this functions as a de facto blasphemy law.

Jointly presented by Centre for Inquiry UK and SPES

Saturday 28th January 2012
Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square Holborn

Tickets: £10 (£8 student).
http://www.humanism.org.uk/shop/tickets

10.30am REGISTRATION

11.00AM Kenan Malik
Beyond the sacred
Kenan writes: The idea of blasphemy is closely linked to the concept of the sacred. Detachment from the sacred, the former Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor claimed at the installation ceremony for his successor, has been responsible for war and terror, sin and evil. In this view the acceptance of the sacred is indispensable for the creation of a moral framework and for the injection of meaning and purpose into life.
I want to deconstruct the concept of the sacred and to challenge the idea that without a notion of the sacred there can be no boundaries to human behaviour, no anchor for our ethical beliefs, no meaning to our existence. The sacred, I want to argue, is less about the transcendent than it is about the taboo. ‘The sacred order’, as Leszek Kolokowski, the late Polish Marxist-turned-Christian philosopher, observes, ‘has never ceased, implicitly or explicitly, to proclaim “this is how things are, they cannot be otherwise”.’
The certainties of the sacred, I will argue, provides false hope and in so doing undermine our humanity by denying human choice.

Kenan Malik is a writer, lecturer and broadcaster. He is a presenter of Analysis, BBC Radio 4's flagship current affairs programme and a panelist on the Moral Maze. He used to present Nightwaves, BBC Radio 3's arts and ideas programme. He has written and presented a number of radio and TV documentaries including Disunited Kingdom, Are Muslims Hated?, Islam, Mullahs and the Media, Skullduggery and Man, Beast and Politics.

Kenan Malik’s latest book is From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and its Legacy. The book was shortlisted for the 2010 George Orwell Book Prize.

12.00 Andrew Copson
Blasphemy laws by the back door
Andrew Copson has been chief executive of the British humanist association since 2010 before which he spent five years coordinating the association's campaigns work including on blasphemy and free speech issues.

After decades of campaigning the criminal offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel have been abolished but censorship of blasphemous content and even threatened prosecution of blasphemes continues in the UK. Andrew explores how corporate interests, opaque advertising regulations and new criminal laws continue to stifle free expression and free criticism and mockery of gods and religions.

1.00-1.30 Lunch

1.30 Austin Dacey
The Future of Blasphemy

Austin Dacey, Ph.D., is a representative to the United Nations for the International Humanist and Ethical Union and the author of The Future of Blasphemy. He writes:

If blasphemy is an affront to values that are held sacred, then it is too important to be left to the traditionally religious. In the public contestation of the sacred, each of us—secular and religious alike—has equal right and authority to speak on its behalf and equal claim to redress for its violation. Laws against blasphemy and "religious hatred" are inherently discriminatory because they give traditional faith communities a legal remedy that is not available to religious minorities and secularists when their sense of the sacred is violated.

2.30 Jacob Mchangama (to be confirmed)
Between blasphemy and hate speech: How hate speech laws are being used to enforce blasphemy norms

Most European states have abolished or ceased enforcing blasphemy laws. Yet “controversial” criticism of religion still risk falling afoul of speech restrictions in the form of hate-speech laws prohibiting incitement to religious hatred. A term which is defined differently in many jurisdictions and may include anything from satirical religious cartoons to harsh criticism of religions. Rather than securing tolerance and social peace modern hate speech laws reinforce group identities and illiberal religious norms to the detriment of freedom of expression and conscience.

Jacob Mchangama is director of legal affairs at Danish think tank CEPOS and an external lecturer in International Human Rights law at the University of Copenhagen. Jacob has a special focus on freedom of expression and has published articles in international newspapers such as Wall Street Journal Europe, Jerusalem Post, Spiked, Globe and Mail, The Australian and Jyllands Posten. His work on human rights and free speech has been mentioned in The Economist, CBS.com and Courrier International.

3.30 Maryam Namazie
Blasphemy, Offence, and Islamophobia limiting Citizen Rights

Maryam will be speaking on how accusations of blasphemy, offensive speech and ‘Islamophobia’ censor and restrict free speech, limit citizen rights, and aid and abet Islamism.

Maryam Namazie is Spokesperson of the One Law for All Campaign against Sharia Law in Britain, the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain and Equal Rights Now - Organisation against Women's Discrimination in Iran. She is also National Secular Society Honorary Associate and the NSS' 2005 Secularist of the Year award winner and was selected one of the top 45 women of the year 2007 by Elle magazine Quebec.

4.30 end

CFI UK events at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival

2012-01-09T11:42:00.007Z

I have organized the following events. See some of you there I hope...

12.00 Saturday 24th March Prof Steve Jones on creationism

2pm wed 28th March Nigel Warburton on Little History of Philosophy

12.00 noon on Thursday 29th March, David Aaronovitch on conspiracy theories

10.00 Thursday 29th March, Stephen Law on believing bullshit

Tickets available from the box office (in some cases, shortly). Go here.

KEITH WARD, JOHN COTTINGHAM, STEPHEN LAW, RICHARD HARRIES 21st Jan London

2012-01-09T11:29:00.002Z

HEYTHROP RELIGIOUS STUDIES CONFERENCE

KEITH WARD, JOHN COTTINGHAM, STEPHEN LAW, RICHARD HARRIES

Sat 21st Jan 2012

A day conference aimed primarily at A Level students and teachers of RS and/or philosophy, though all are welcome. Free entry.

Heythrop College, University of London, Kensington Square W8 5HN

Bookshop by Newham books. Book signings.

11.00 KEITH WARD
Life, the Universe, and Everything

Keith Ward is a Fellow of British Academy, one-time Professor of the Philosophy of Religion, King's London, Regius Professor of Divinity, Oxford, and now Professorial Research Fellow at Heythrop.

12.00 JOHN COTTINGHAM
Ethics and Religion: How They Fit Together

John Cottingham is Professorial Research Fellow at Heythrop College, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Reading University, and an Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford. He is Editor of Ratio, the international journal of analytic philosophy.”

1.00-2.00 lunch

2.00 STEPHEN LAW
The Evil God Challenge

Stephen Law is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Heythrop College, university of London, editor of THINK (journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy) and author of The Philosophy Gym (Headline) and The Philosophy Files (Orion).

3pm RICHARD HARRIES
Justice for hedgehogs: Ronald Dworkins’ ‘value holism’ in theological perspective

Richard Harries is Gresham Professor of Divinity. His latest books include Faith in Politics? Rediscovering the Christian Roots of our Political Values (DLT) and The Re-enchantment of Morality (SPCK) which was short-listed for the 2011 Michael Ramsey Prize for Theological writing.

Heythrop reserves the right to change the programme at short notice. Book here.

Oxford debate 29th March - myself and Lord Richard Harries

2012-01-06T21:03:00.001Z

SUNDAY TIMES OXFORD LITERARY FESTIVAL

Sponsored by Heythrop College, University of London

4pm Thursday 29th March. Christ Church College, Oxford.
DOES GOD EXIST

Richard Harries and Stephen Law

How reasonable, or unreasonable is belief in God? Are there good arguments for the existence of God? Might belief in God be reasonable even in the absence of good arguments? Can a persuasive case be made against the existence of God, for example an argument based on the amount of pain and suffering the universe contains?

Richard Harries is Gresham Professor of Divinity. His latest books include Faith in Politics? Rediscovering the Christian Roots of our Political Values (DLT) and The Re-enchantment of Morality (SPCK) which was short-listed for the 2011 Michael Ramsey Prize for Theological writing.

Stephen Law is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Heythrop College, University of London and Provost of Centre for Inquiry UK. He has written several popular introductions to philosophy including The Philosophy Gym (Headline) and The Philosophy Files (Orion, for children). His latest book is Believing Bullshit (Prometheus).

Tickets available shortly from the Festival box office, online. http://oxfordliteraryfestival.org/

What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success

2012-01-06T09:00:00.002Z

From The Atlantic, Dec 29th 2011. As The comprehensive system in the UK is dismantled in favour of private and semi-privatized provision and competition, we might ask - what's the actual evidence on which such policies are based? Is it genuinely evidence based? Or is the policy driven by other factors? When it comes to any major Tory policy, the first question to ask: Cui Bono? Who benefits? The article is below...

The Scandinavian country is an education superpower because it values equality more than excellence.

Everyone agrees the United States needs to improve its education system dramatically, but how? One of the hottest trends in education reform lately is looking at the stunning success of the West's reigning education superpower, Finland. Trouble is, when it comes to the lessons that Finnish schools have to offer, most of the discussion seems to be missing the point.

The small Nordic country of Finland used to be known -- if it was known for anything at all -- as the home of Nokia, the mobile phone giant. But lately Finland has been attracting attention on global surveys of quality of life -- Newsweek ranked it number one last year -- and Finland's national education system has been receiving particular praise, because in recent years Finnish students have been turning in some of the highest test scores in the world.

Finland's schools owe their newfound fame primarily to one study: the PISA survey, conducted every three years by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The survey compares 15-year-olds in different countries in reading, math, and science. Finland has ranked at or near the top in all three competencies on every survey since 2000, neck and neck with superachievers such as South Korea and Singapore. In the most recent survey in 2009 Finland slipped slightly, with students in Shanghai, China, taking the best scores, but the Finns are still near the very top. Throughout the same period, the PISA performance of the United States has been middling, at best.

Compared with the stereotype of the East Asian model -- long hours of exhaustive cramming and rote memorization -- Finland's success is especially intriguing because Finnish schools assign less homework and engage children in more creative play. All this has led to a continuous stream of foreign delegations making the pilgrimage to Finland to visit schools and talk with the nation's education experts, and constant coverage in the worldwide media marveling at the Finnish miracle.

So there was considerable interest in a recent visit to the U.S. by one of the leading Finnish authorities on education reform, Pasi Sahlberg, director of the Finnish Ministry of Education's Center for International Mobility and author of the new book Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? Earlier this month, Sahlberg stopped by the Dwight School in New York City to speak with educators and students, and his visit received national media attention and generated much discussion.

And yet it wasn't clear that Sahlberg's message was actually getting through. As Sahlberg put it to me later, there are certain things nobody in America really wants to talk about...

Continues here...

BEYOND THE VEIL - COMING SOON - BOOK NOW

2011-12-23T17:06:00.001Z

CFI UK and The Ethical Society present:
BEYOND THE VEIL – A CLOSER LOOK AT SPIRITS, MEDIUMS AND GHOSTS
Arranged by Stephen Law (Provost CFI UK)

Saturday 14th January 2012
Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, London
Bookshop by Newham Bookshop

TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE.

General: £10 general public. Members and students: £8 BHA, AHS and SPES members and students with valid ID. Free to members of the Centre for Inquiry UK.

***Special offer*** Tickets to this event and the Blasphemy! event on the 28th January £16 general, £12 members and students):Members and student ticket offer and General public ticket offer.

10.30am REGISTRATION

11.00 CHRIS FRENCH

Spirits on the brain: Insights from psychology and neuroscience

Chris French is a Professor of Psychology and Head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association and former editor of the Skeptic.

Belief in spirits can be found in all human societies and a substantial proportion of the population claim to have had direct contact with a spiritual realm beyond ordinary experience. This talk presents an overview of scientific research into sleep paralysis, near-death/out-of-body experiences and reincarnation claims in support of the claim that such topics can be understood without recourse to paranormal explanations.

12.00 HAYLEY STEVENS

'Is there anybody there?'

A ghost hunter that doesn't hunt for ghosts, Hayley Stevens has been researching paranormal reports since 2005. She is the co-host of the Righteous Indignation Podcast, blogs at 'Hayley is a Ghost', occasionally writes for numerous publications, and has spoken internationally about ghosts and critical thinking.

As someone who used to actively hunt for proof that ghosts existed, Hayley has first hand experience with the weird and scary lengths that ghost hunters will go to, to contact the dead and prove they exist in spirit form. 'Is there anybody there?' will give insight into the modern world of ghost hunting where a scientific approach is more likely to be an updated version of seance parlour antics - from the evolution of table tipping, to the revolution of the Ghost busting Smart phone apps.

1.00-1.30 LUNCH BREAK

1.30 PAUL ZENON

Mediums at Large

Paul has been a professional trickster for almost thirty years during that period has appeared countless times as performer, presenter and pundit on numerous TV shows across many genres. As someone who spent a brief period (in his admittedly misguided youth) as a fortune-teller and 'psychic', and as a lifelong student of cons, scams and swindles, he is well qualified to talk about the current crop of mediums and the media bias towards their promotion. He would like to take the precaution of prefacing his entire talk with the word 'allegedly'.

A mild rant about TV mediums and the similarity to their predecessors of a century ago.

2.00 RICHARD WISEMAN

Parnormality

Richard Wiseman is the Professor for the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire. He has been active in the skeptical movement for many a year, does Twitter stuff, has recently written 'Paranormality: Why we see what isn't there', and likes dogs.

Do ghosts really exist? What actually happens at seances? How do you go about testing mediums? Why do these sorts of paragraphs often involve a long list of questions? All of this and more will be revealed in an exciting talk that will dig deep into the psychology of belief. Free packet of peanuts for the best question.

3.00 IAN ROWLAND

You Are The Magic

Ian Rowland is a writer and entertainer with an interest in various aspects of how the mind works or sometimes doesn't. He taught FBI agents how to be persuasive, and taught Derren Brown how to read fortunes. In America, in front of 10 million TV viewers, he proved that he could talk to dead people - or at least fake it well enough to convince complete strangers. He knows an awful lot about cold reading (look it up), but tries not to drone on about it at parties. He is good at drinking tea and waiting for interesting invitations to come his way. Ian will perform a few miracles, just because he can and it's fun, while explaining the truth about psychic powers, miraculous gifts and the afterlife. He will also demonstrate that you are just a little bit more magical and miraculous than you may realise.

4.00 END

Talking of blasphemy, Tim Minchin cut from tonight's J. Ross show

2011-12-23T15:54:00.010Z

Tim Minchin's blog has very cross post about ITV's decision to cut his recorded appearance on the J Ross show tonite. Tim writes...

"And then someone got nervous and sent the tape to ITV’s director of television, Peter Fincham.

And Peter Fincham demanded that I be cut from the show.

He did this because he’s scared of the ranty, shit-stirring, right-wing press, and of the small minority of Brits who believe they have a right to go through life protected from anything that challenges them in any way."

Here's what was cut...

PS Tim's "I am not saying I'm Jesus" reminded me of king of the blasphemers (Jerry Springer musical case) Stewart Lee - go to 1min30.

I have sent my thoughts to viewerservices@itv.com Their explanation is: "We often make changes to programmes before transmission and on this occasion we felt that the song didn’t quite work editorially."

BLASPHEMY EVENT 28th January! CFI UK event!

2011-12-23T15:29:00.003Z

I have organized this upcoming event for CFI UK. Really excellent, knowledgeable and entertaining speakers...

“Blasphemy!” - Blasphemy, religious hatred, and human rights: Who speaks for the sacred?

This event focuses on the criminalization of religious hatred, defamation, and insult under European human rights, and how this functions as a de facto blasphemy law.

Jointly presented by Centre for Inquiry UK and SPES.

Saturday 28th January 2012
Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square Holborn EC1R 4RL

Tickets: £10 (£8 student).
http://www.humanism.org.uk/shop/tickets

10.30am REGISTRATION

11.00AM Kenan Malik
Beyond the Sacred

Kenan writes: The idea of blasphemy is closely linked to the concept of the sacred. Detachment from the sacred, the former Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor claimed at the installation ceremony for his successor, has been responsible for war and terror, sin and evil. In this view the acceptance of the sacred is indispensable for the creation of a moral framework and for the injection of meaning and purpose into life.

I want to deconstruct the concept of the sacred and to challenge the idea that without a notion of the sacred there can be no boundaries to human behaviour, no anchor for our ethical beliefs, no meaning to our existence. The sacred, I want to argue, is less about the transcendent than it is about the taboo. ‘The sacred order’, as Leszek Kolokowski, the late Polish Marxist-turned-Christian philosopher, observes, ‘has never ceased, implicitly or explicitly, to proclaim “this is how things are, they cannot be otherwise”.’
The certainties of the sacred, I will argue, provides false hope and in so doing undermine our humanity by denying human choice.

Kenan Malik is a writer, lecturer and broadcaster. He is a presenter of Analysis, BBC Radio 4's flagship current affairs programme and a panelist on the Moral Maze. He used to present Nightwaves, BBC Radio 3's arts and ideas programme. He has written and presented a number of radio and TV documentaries including Disunited Kingdom, Are Muslims Hated?, Islam, Mullahs and the Media, Skullduggery and Man, Beast and Politics.

Kenan Malik’s latest book is From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and its Legacy. The book was shortlisted for the 2010 George Orwell Book Prize.

12.00 Andrew Copson
Blasphemy laws by the back door

Andrew Copson has been chief executive of the British humanist association since 2010 before which he spent five years coordinating the association's campaigns work including on blasphemy and free speech issues.

After decades of campaigning the criminal offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel have been abolished but censorship of blasphemous content and even threatened prosecution of blasphemes continues in the UK. Andrew explores how corporate interests, opaque advertising regulations and new criminal laws continue to stifle free expression and free criticism and mockery of gods and religions.

1.00-1.30 Lunch

1.30 Austin Dacey
The Future of Blasphemy

Austin Dacey, Ph.D., is a representative to the United Nations for the International Humanist and Ethical Union and the author of The Future of Blasphemy. He writes:

If blasphemy is an affront to values that are held sacred, then it is too important to be left to the traditionally religious. In the public contestation of the sacred, each of us—secular and religious alike—has equal right and authority to speak on its behalf and equal claim to redress for its violation. Laws against blasphemy and "religious hatred" are inherently discriminatory because they give traditional faith communities a legal remedy that is not available to religious minorities and secularists when their sense of the sacred is violated.

2.30 Jacob Mchangama
Between blasphemy and hate speech: How hate speech laws are being used to enforce blasphemy norms

Most European states have abolished or ceased enforcing blasphemy laws. Yet “controversial” criticism of religion still risk falling afoul of speech restrictions in the form of hate-speech laws prohibiting incitement to religious hatred. A term which is defined differently in many jurisdictions and may include anything from satirical religious cartoons to harsh criticism of religions. Rather than securing tolerance and social peace modern hate speech laws reinforce group identities and illiberal religious norms to the detriment of freedom of expression and conscience.

Jacob Mchangama is director of legal affairs at Danish think tank CEPOS and an external lecturer in International Human Rights law at the University of Copenhagen. Jacob has a special focus on freedom of expression and has published articles in international newspapers such as Wall Street Journal Europe, Jerusalem Post, Spiked, Globe and Mail, The Australian and Jyllands Posten. His work on human rights and free speech has been mentioned in The Economist, CBS.com and Courrier International.

3.30 Maryam Namazie
Blasphemy, Offence, and Islamophobia limiting Citizen Rights

Maryam will be speaking on how accusations of blasphemy, offensive speech and ‘Islamophobia’ censor and restrict free speech, limit citizen rights, and aid and abet Islamism.

Maryam Namazie is Spokesperson of the One Law for All Campaign against Sharia Law in Britain, the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain and Equal Rights Now - Organisation against Women's Discrimination in Iran. She is also National Secular Society Honorary Associate and the NSS' 2005 Secularist of the Year award winner and was selected one of the top 45 women of the year 2007 by Elle magazine Quebec.

4.30 end

THINK contributions welcome

2011-12-22T14:18:00.004Z

I am looking for contributions to THINK: Philosophy For Everyone, which is a journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy published by CUP three times per year I'm the editor).

Pieces must be 4k words max and very accessible and clear. No endnotes or footnotes and minimal refereneces.

Mostly we publish stuff by professional philosophers but do include other pieces too if they're good. I also encourage unusual approaches, such as using dialogues. If you have a piece or an idea that might be appropriate let me know.

If you're a professional philosopher with a short piece for which you hold copyright that would be suitable, do please send it over.

Word documents sent as attachment to my email address (see the title bar above) are best, please.

Illustrator needed

2011-12-20T10:21:00.001Z

I am putting together a philosophy poster for my college and need an illustrator who can do, e.g. fun Quentin Blake style cartoon illustrations in colour. Preferably not too expensive! Anyone out there?

Glenn Peoples' moral argument for God

2011-12-18T12:31:00.020Z

Glenn Peoples' blog has been interesting me lately. He has just out up his version of a moral argument for the existence of God.

Glenn argues, as does Craig:

If there's no God, there are no objective moral values.
There are objective moral values
Therefore there is a God.

Of course, Glenn realizes his premises, especially the first premise, will require considerable support, so he makes his case for it here.

Here's part of my comment on People's moral argument...

Glenn – I’m tempted to start investigating your argument more but it would be really helpful if you could set out the argument more formally, so that the most basic premises supporting your conclusion are clearly identified. Make it very clear why there is objective moral value only if there is an all-powerful, all-good, personal God. E.g. why moral Platonism won’t do, for example. Why non-natural objective moral facts won’t do either. Why it’s got to be a person. Exactly how the is-ought gap plays a role in delivering the conclusion. It would also be good to see what your assessment of the probability of each of the basic premises of the argument is.

Notice by the way that as more premises are introduced that you may consider to be much more probable than not – that have, say, an 80% probability of being true – the probability of your conclusion being true may nevertheless drop like a stone. With, say, just five required basic premises of 80% probability each, the probability that your conclusion is true drops to just 32%.

That’s to say, the probability that your conclusion is FALSE is nearly 70% (p.s. given just those premises).

(Wes Morriston also points this out, I believe)

However some theists (not you) are very good at disguising this problem of plummeting probabilities with amazing rhetorical flourishes!

Post Script.

In case it's not clear, I am pointing out that a deductively valid moral argument based on even say five basic premises with an 80% probability of truth each, produces a conclusion that has 68% probability of being false, given just those premises. It's much more likely to be false than true!

Now your moral argument, which you putting up against the problem of evil (which it apears you've entirely failed to deal with, and which itself renders the moral argument more or less useless, even if its first premise *could* be established), seems on the face of it to be based on a series of thoughts which you find fairly plausible which you think entail your God exists. But even if (i) your argument makes say just 5 basic assumptions with an 80% probability of truth each, and (ii) they do collectively deductively entail your god exists, your argument is still a dismal flop.

I asked that you clarify what your argument is so we can check if this obvious seeming flaw in your argument is really there. But you say you haven't got the time.

POSTSCRIPT 21 DECEMBER. I have just added this comment...

Glenn and others want to create a smokescreen of technicality to disguise the fact that his argument, looks, prima facie, like a dismal flop given its based on a series of "more probable than not" premises. The rule I am applying is: to get the highest probability you can assign to the conclusion in a valid deductive argument, you just multiply the probabilities of the basic premises.

Now yes, there are some exceptions to this general rule. So for example, when a premises is redundant, like so: A, B therefore A. Here, you don't factor in the probability of B, for obvious reasons. Also, when the conclusion is a tautology, its probability will be 1, irrespective of the probability of the premises (though the premises are then all redundant, of course). Also, simple multiplication is not appropriate where there's a logical or known causal connection between premises. The probability of the conclusion may then be either higher or lower than the figure you get by simple multiplying. E.g.

A is male
A is female
Therefore A is male and A is female.

Given our background knowledge that being male makes it highly unlikely you are female (unless a hermaphrodite), it's clear we should not give a value of 26% to the conclusion given a prob of 51% to each premise. The probability is LOWER than you get by simply multiplication. Given that further background knowledge. Ditto (and here the we’re dealing with logical exclusion – the conclusion has a mathematically guaranteed probability of 0):

A is 60 years old
A is 61 years old
A is 60 years old and A is 61 years old.

Other times the probability of the conclusion can indeed be higher.

So yes, there are exceptions to the rule. But the point is they are exceptions to a general rule that does otherwise generally apply and which we'll be entitled to suppose applies in the case of Glenn's moral argument too, unless Glenn can explain why it doesn’t. At this point, we cannot tell for sure, because Glenn won’t even clearly set out what the basic premises of his argument actually are. In which case, we should just shrug and walk away. Glenn’s given us nothing.

Incidentally the “upper bound” stuff, while it looks awfully impressive especially when articulated using long strings of formulae, appears to be based on some rather dubious ideas. I cannot find any reference to it outside of theistic circles (e.g. Tim McGrew). Can you point me to some?

Craig’s reference to it is opaque, btw, in the context of what he says. That looks like an attempt to baffle with bullshit.

But I note in any case that the “upper bound” point, even if it is correct, appears to give us no reason at all to suppose that we cannot, on the basis of saying that Glenn’s basic premises are five with a probability of 0.8 each, draw the conclusion that the probability of his conclusion cannot reasonably be estimated as higher than 0.32, given knowledge of just those premises. Indeed, that’s exactly the conclusion we’re usually entitled to draw in such cases (noting, of course, that there are indeed a few exceptions – perhaps Glenn will say “God exists” is a tautology? In which case the premises will have a lower probability than the conclusion but will be redundant!). So why not in this case? That’s what Glenn would need to explain, once he’s actually identified what his premises are (hint: Glenn might insist there’s some connection between the premises that means the probability of the conclusion should be higher – but the onus is surely then on him to identify this connection). Remember, I am not saying the probability of Glenn’s conclusion will be low. I am saying that if it’s based on a series of merely more-probable-than-not basic premises then (unless this is some sort of special case – see above) the probability of the conclusion cannot be considered, on that basis alone, very high.

POST SCRIPT 23 DEC. Well, I have been getting clearer about how all this upper bound of 1 stuff works, largely thanks to Tim (McGrew?) who is v knowledgeable about it and has been commenting on Glenn's website. It now seems to me that the logic concerning an upper bound of 1 is indeed impeccable. And, it turns out, once all the logical symbolism etc. has been unpacked and understood, completely irrelevant to the point I'm making.

I'll explain exactly why in another full post. It's important to get this stuff straight because, if I am correct, saying "Ah but that's just the lower bound of the probability; the upper bound of the probability of the conclusion is 1" in response to the objection that the probability of the conclusion (assuming independent, non-redundant premises) given just validity and the probabilities of the premises is just those probabilities multiplied, is a complete red herring (indeed, the person who says this is committing the straw man fallacy).

Glenn Peoples on the Evil God Challenge

2011-12-16T16:32:00.015Z

I have been having an exchange with Glenn Peoples on his blog about the Evil God Challenge. Glenn thinks the problem of evil (and reverse problem of good) is neutralized by the theodicies (and reverse theodicies). Hence there's no reason provided by the vast quantities of evil/good we observe to conclude that belief in a good or evil god is unreasonable. So all Glenn has to do to show that belief in a good god is quite reasonable is, he thinks, to come up with e.g. a fairly good moral argument for the existence of God. So here's my latest comment...

Let me explain how things look from my end.

I give you what appears to be overwhelming empirical evidence against the existence of your particular God - the evidential problem of evil (e.g. hundreds of millions of years of horror before humans show up, a million plus generations of children around half of which are killed through disease and/or starvation before they reach the age of 5 before Jesus shows up, etc. etc.)

You appear to respond, in effect, by saying: (i) but we theists have all sorts of explanations for all this evil (theodicies), which I think are quite good explanations (ii) even if they are not that good, they can be supplemented by sceptical theism which I don’t rule out, so (iii) the onus is on you to show all these theodicies collectively fail and that sceptical theism is untenable, before you can say that you have provided good evidence against the existence of my God.

But the thing about the theodicies, Glenn, is that they are what Popper calls ad hoc. They lead to now new tests. Or, if they do, but the further test fails, there’s always another gerrymandered explanation for the failure that can be cooked up. Similarly, appeals to God’s mysterious ways and facts-beyond-our-ken are ad hoc. There’s no way empirically to test the claim that such facts-beyond-our-ken is indeed the correct explanation for why there’s so much evil.

Much the same intellectual strategy that you are employing to defend theism is also employed by Young Earth Creationists (YEC), conspiracy theorists, Erich von Daniken style alternative historians (aliens built the pyramids) and countless other wackos to convince themselves and their followers that what they believe cannot be so silly after all.

For of course, if I present a series of evidence-based arguments against YEC, its proponents can say, “Ah, but we have some, we think, quite good explanations of the order of the fossil record, for light from distant stars, etc. - hundreds of such explanations in fact” (explanations cooked up at the Institute for Creation Research and other multi-million dollar funded “research” institutions), and (ii) in any case, God might have his mysterious reasons for arranging the fossils, etc. like that, so (iii) the onus is on you to show all these YEC-type explanations collectively fail and that such appeals to God’s mysterious reasons is untenable, before you can say that the facts to which you point provide good evidence against YEC.

Of course, when we then try to show the failings of the YEC explanations offered, the proponent of YEC can always gerrymander up yet more explanations, and then even more, thereby continuing to make their theory “fit” the evidence. They thus render their theory empirically unfalsifiable (this is the strategy I call “But it Fits!” in my book Believing Bullshit).

But that is, indeed, all bullshit, isn’t it? The fact is, YEC IS pretty straightforwardly falsified by the available empirical evidence, notwithstanding the possibility of endlessly explaining that evidence away by ad hoc means and/or appeals to mystery. Most of us can see that straightaway (those of us whose minds have not been captured by YEC, that is). The endless ad hoc-ery and mystery-mongering is just a smokescreen.

The onus is clearly not on us to refute all the explanations on offer by the YECs. In fact that’s an impossible task given the ad hoc character of their explanations and the fact they're prepared to keep constructing them ad nauseum. It’s entirely reasonable for us to insist that the available empirical evidence DOES indeed very effectively undermine YEC, and that it does so precisely because the YECs’ method of explaining it away is so hopelessly ad hoc.

This is why, before we are presented with any argument FOR classical theism or YEC that might be furnished to save or support the theory, it is indeed entirely reasonable to conclude, on the basis of the kind of observational evidence outlined, that classical theism/YEC is false.

POSTSCRIPT. Glenn has responded with three points, to which I've responded. Here's the points with my responses...
PPS 18th Dec. I have now expanded the explanations below because they were too sketchy.

Hi Glenn

my quick response to your three comments.

First, here's what an ad hoc hypothesis actually is (as Popper and I use the term). It's a hypothesis introduced to save a theory from refutation, a hypothesis that is not independently testable.

Illustration. The Aristotelean cosmology said the heavenly bodies are perfectly spherical. Galileo observed mountains on the moon through his telescope. One Aristotelean attempted to save his theory by insisting there was an invisible substance on the moon that covered the mountains, making it perfectly spherical. This theory-saving hypothesis was ad hoc because (at the time) it was untestable.

Not all theory-saving hypotheses are ad hoc. Newton's theory of universal gravitation predicted a smooth orbit for Uranus. Uranus was observed to have a wobbly orbit. To save Newton's theory, scientists introduced the hypothesis that there was a further planet tugging Uranus out of orbit. This new hypothesis was not ad hoc as it led to new tests - astronomers looked at where the mystery planet would have to be, and found it - that's how Neptune was discovered.

Even when individual theory saving hypotheses are not individually ad hoc, they can be collectively rendered ad hoc if the defender of the theory is prepared endlessly to cook up new hypotheses to save the theory. Or appeals to mystery, of course, which are also, in effect, ad hoc. This is the strategy I call "But it Fits!" in the book Believing Bullshit.

Now to Glenn's response. He says...

GLENN: 1) I’m not even close to being persuaded that the plausibility of theodicies is anything like the plausibility of explanations for why we should believe in a young universe.

ME: What you’re persuaded of is irrelevant. I have pointed out why your method of dealing with the problem of evil is essentially similar to that employed by Young Earth Creationists to deal with counter-evidence.

GLENN: 2) Theodicies don’t strike me as ad hoc. Things like the free will defence or the soul building defence (etc) are generalisable. E.g. the might be stated something like “For any perfectly good and all powerful being, it would still be conceivable that they allow X provided it has some outcome that is compatible with their good character, such as Y.” Ad hoc explanations are really one-off explanations of a sort that are just made up to explain one very specific situation by appealing to principles that are of no use otherwise. So it’s not ad hoc at all.

ME: That’s not what ad hoc means, Glenn. Ad hoc explanations lead to no new tests. The theodicies are ad hoc, by Popper’s definition (he coined the phrase). Look it up. Or, when the theodicies are not ad hoc, and the further test is failed, they are salvaged by yet another defensive manouevre, just as in the case of YEC, thereby rendering the theory unfalsifiable (or an appeal to mystery, of course). Nutters who believe dogs are spies from the planet Venus, etc. employ the exact same strategy.

Ad hoc hoc defences CAN be generalizable. For example, to defend my theory that the Earth is ruled by alien lizards, I can deal with an apparent counter-evidence by saying: "Ah, but that evidence was of course planted there by the alien lizards to fool us." That's a great general, blanket immunizing strategy. it's not one off.

GLENN: 3) Even if things were different and theodicies were ad hoc, they are intended as explanations for why a person might do or allow something that you didn’t expect them to. If anything is allowed to be ad hoc, surely it’s something about why so-and-so might do something. If you rejected the explanation because it was ad hoc, you’d be effectively stacking the deck against any explanation in terms of a person’s intentions, which would be unfair in this case, to put it mildly. But this is moot, since theodicies aren’t ad hoc in any important sense anyway.

ME: The theodicies are indeed ad hoc in Popper's sense. They lead to no new tests (either that, or further explaining away is done ad nauseum to deal with further explanatory failures, or they're supplemented by appeals to mystery). This is NOT like when someone does something out of character and we say, ah, but they probably had this reason for doing it. Often, we can test our hypothesis. So the suggestion is not ad hoc at all. And the occasional ad hoc explanation for anomolies is in any case acceptable (even Popper thought so). However, when there’s considerable evidence against a theory and it’s all dealt with by ad hoc means (and/or appeals to mystery), then that counter-evidence is NOT neutralized.

You’re strategy is, in short, very much like a wife who, when presented with a husband who very often acts in seemingly cruel and vicious way, beating her and her children, maintains he is nevertheless entirely noble and virtuous. She simply explains all the bad stuff away in a manner that is entirely ad hoc (or, when her excuses and explanations for his behaviour clearly fail, just constructs yet more explanations ad nauseum, and/or appeals to his having mysterious unknown reasons).

You, Glenn, say: "If you rejected the explanation because it was ad hoc, you’d be effectively stacking the deck against any explanation in terms of a person’s intentions". This is just false. You have misunderstood what "ad hoc" actually means, as I and Popper use the term. Explanations in terms of people's intentions usually aren't ad hoc, as it's usually possible to test the explanation. E.g. We believe Tom is kind and non-violent. We discover he has killed someone with a knife. We postulate that he killed in self-defence. That it was a case of self-defence is something that can be investigated and indeed potentially shown to be false. It's not ad hoc. But even if it were, it would acceptable if it's a one off example. What's not acceptable is to rely almost entirely on ad hoc means to save your theory from refutation. That's what you are doing, Glenn.

To return to the beaten wife - the wife is being irrational if she insists there’s no prima facie good evidence that her husband is NOT entirely noble and good. She’s deluded. You seem, to me, are a similar case.

Now of course, the wife might insist she has these other very good reasons for thinking her husband really is noble after all. Perhaps she has. But, as things stand, her husband’s horrific behaviour really is excellent evidence that he’s not entirely noble and good, notwithstanding the wife’s endless supply of untestable excuses and explanations.

That’s right, I am suggesting you’re deluded, Glenn. Not very gracious of me, but it’s what I think. Clearly, when we are both so very confident of the reasonableness of our respective, but mutually exclusive, positions, one of us very probably is pretty deluded. The above considerations suggest it’s you.

PPPS. That this is the fundamental problem with the theodicies (and skeptical theism, actually), a problem that the EGC brings out at an intuitive level, is something I'm writing up as an academic paper.

Postscript 20 Dec. Glenn has responded again. Here's my (slightly edited) reply (quoting him):

Glenn you say: "you've got to insist that even explanations that are compatible with all the facts an are true will be discarded by your method of labelling explanations as ad hoc, basically ensuring that no explanation at all will get through your filter,"

Of course true explanations can quite rightly and justifiably be rejected. Happens all the time. But in any case you haven't shown your explanations are true, at this point (considering just the evidential problem of evil prior to considerations favouring theism). You are just assuming they are, at this point!

"No explanations at all will get through your filter." Not sure what this means. Non ad hoc explanations of counter-evidence are fine. Even the occasional ad hoc explanation is acceptable. The only thing I am ruling out is a theory defended against seemingly very powerful counter-evidence more or less entirely by ad-hoc means (plus mystery-mongering). I'm saying, very sensibly, that that does NOT neutralize the counter-evidence! This must, by now, be blindingly obvious to you.

But the key point, Glenn, is, once explaining away all counter-evidence by more or less entirely ad hoc means (plus mystery mongering) is allowed - and that IS your strategy, as you seem finally to have realized - EVERY NUTTY THEORY BECOMES ENTIRELY IMMUNE TO COUNTER EVIDENCE. Indeed, this is the preferred method of dealing with counter-evidence by nutcases the world over.

I can now quite reasonably believe the world is ruled by evil, shape-shifting alien lizards. A wife can quite reasonably believe the husband who beats her and her children is wholly noble and good. Any counter-evidence can quite reasonably be endlessly explained away by ad hoc means (supplemented, if required, by mystery-mongering). Our absurd beliefs will be just as reasonable as yours. And yours as reasonable as ours.

Naturalism, Evolution and True Belief

2011-12-10T10:21:00.003Z

This article on Plantinga i just published in Analysis. It's a fairly short attempt to refute Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism. Go here. PDF is here.

Abstract

Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism aims to show that naturalism is, as he puts it, ‘incoherent or self defeating’. Plantinga supposes that, in the absence of any God-like being to guide the process, natural selection is unlikely to favour true belief. Plantinga overlooks the fact that adherents of naturalism may plausibly hold that there exist certain conceptual links between belief content and behaviour. Given such links, natural selection will favour true belief. A further rather surprising consequence of the existence of such links is this: even if semantic properties are epiphenomenal, unguided evolution will still favour true belief.

Answers in Genesis responds to my 4thought slot

2011-12-08T13:09:00.020Z

Answers In Genesis, the bonkers Young Earth Creationist website headed by Ken Ham (who gets special mention in my book Believing Bullshit), singled out my Channel 4thought slot for comment. Go here and scroll a little over halfway down. I am very pleased.

All I need now is to be attacked by "Mad Mel" Melanie Phillips and I can die happy.

P.S. This guy at "They Don't Fool Me!" has also got cross about the Channel 4 thing, after reading the above Answers in Genesis post. Apparently anyone who thinks the world is older the 6k years is a "leftist". I just posted this comment (which I suspect won't ever appear):

Stephen Law December 8, 2011, 8:04 am Reply
Your comment is awaiting moderation

Yeh, let’s string up this leftwing atheist commie punk for insisting the Earth is older than 6 thousand years. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyOZRMIe768&feature=related

P.S. 12th December: As I predicted above - They Don't Fool Me! blogger refused to put up the above comment and instead put this up in a post: "Today in the House of Horrors, we have the Christian hating philosopher Stephen Law responding to my post that included “Are Christians Mentally Ill?” in comments saying something nutty about ‘stringing up atheists’ and linking to a youtube video."

Seems They Don't Fool Me! is not too keen on me posting a link to William Lane Craig Lane explaining why the universe is very probably 13.7 billion years old and Young Earth Creationism is implausible.

Subscribe to my updates

2011-12-08T11:21:00.004Z

To subscribe to email updates about the Centre For Inquiry UK events I am arranging, please email me the phrase "subscribe cfi". You can unsubscribe any time.

The next event is this pretty amazing one on ghosts, spirits, etc, btw. Sat 14th Jan. Magicians are involved so it will be entertaining as well as educational.

To subscribe to email updates about Heythrop and other conferences and events of interest to pupils doing A Level RS and/or Philosophy, please email me the phrase "subscribe Heythrop".

use the email address s.law AT heythrop.ac.uk (but fixing this anti-spam version, of course!)

The next Heythrop Conference is this one on Sat 21st Jan 2012 with Keith Ward, Richard Harries, John Cottingham and myself. It's free but you need to book.

Philosophy Conference Sat 21st Jan

2011-12-08T09:14:00.011Z

Here's an upcoming event I have organized for my college. Venue is Heythrop College, Kensington Square. It's free. Aimed especially at VIth formers and their teachers.To book email me or Karoline Wilhelm-Brown k.wilhelm-brown@heythrop.ac.uk

HEYTHROP RELIGIOUS STUDIES CONFERENCE

KEITH WARD, JOHN COTTINGHAM, STEPHEN LAW, RICHARD HARRIES

21st Jan 2012

Particularly aimed at students of RS, though all are welcome.

Bookshop by Newham books. Book signings.

11.00 KEITH WARD
Life, the Universe, and Everything

Keith Ward is a Fellow of British Academy, one-time Professor of the Philosophy of Religion, King's London, Regius Professor of Divinity, Oxford, and now Professorial Research Fellow at Heythrop.

12.00 JOHN COTTINGHAM
Ethics and Religion: How They Fit Together

John Cottingham is Professorial Research Fellow at Heythrop College, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Reading University, and an Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford. He is Editor of Ratio, the international journal of analytic philosophy.”

1.00-2.00 lunch

2.00 STEPHEN LAW
The Evil God Challenge

Stephen Law is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Heythrop College, university of London, editor of THINK (journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy) and author of The Philosophy Gym (Headline) and The Philosophy Files (Orion).

3.00 RICHARD HARRIES
Justice for hedgehogs: Ronald Dworkins’ ‘value holism’ in theological perspective

Richard Harries is Gresham Professor of Divinity. His latest books include Faith in Politics? Rediscovering the Christian Roots of our Political Values (DLT) and The Re-enchantment of Morality (SPCK) which was short-listed for the 2011 Michael Ramsey Prize for Theological writing.

Al Jazeera - my contribution to discussion

2011-12-07T12:48:00.004Z

Here's the Al Jazeera discussion programme I appeared on last night. It was a very good discussion I thought. Al Jazeera produce exceptionally high quality TV. The other contributors were Salman Hameed and Imam Joe Bradford from the US.

The discussion was prompted by an article by Geneticist Steve Jones in the Telegraph. In fact I had not seen this earlier interview in the Australian where Jones does say the problem of students boycotting evolution classes is predominantly with Muslim students.

The Stream, Al Jazeera tonight

2011-12-06T09:18:00.003Z

I'll be on the Stream programme this evening, talking about Muslims who (it's alleged) walk out of or boycott lectures on evolution that form part of their university course.

Steve Jones has previously expressed a concern.

From 7.30-8.00 via Skype, along with some others.

I'll be tweeting afterwards....@stephenlaw60

Believing Bullshit chpt 2

2011-12-05T21:34:00.002Z

“BUT IT FITS!” AND THE BLUNDERBUSS

“But It Fits!” is one of the most popular strategies for immunizing beliefs against refutation. In fact, “But it fits!” does double duty. Not only is it a great immunizing strategy, it can also be used to create the illusion that a ridiculous belief system is not, after all, ridiculous, but at least as well confirmed as its rivals. I’ll explain how “But It Fits!” works by means of a particularly impressive example: Young Earth Creationism.

Young Earth Creationism

Young Earth Creationism is a theory based on a literal reading of the Old Testament. Young Earth Creationists maintain that the entire universe is less than ten thousand years old (a typical estimate is about six thousand years old). They claim that the universe, the Earth, and every living species were created literally as described in Genesis, over a period of six days.

So, according to Young Earth Creationists, the theory of evolution, which says that new species can evolve, and have been doing so over many millions years, is false. So are current cosmological theories that say that the universe came into existence several billions of years ago (between 13 and 14 billions years ago).

Young Earth Creationism is popular. Polls fairly consistently indicate that around about 45% of U.S. citizens believe it. Nor is it restricted to the uneducated. A 1972 Gallup poll suggested that about a third of U.S. graduates believe we are all descendents of Adam and Eve. For many, Creationism is a moral crusade. According to H. M. Morris, a leading proponent,

Evolution is the root of atheism, of communism, nazism, behaviourism, economic imperialism, militarism, libertinism, anarchism, and all manner of anti-Christian systems of belief and practice.

Young Earth Creationists typically see themselves fighting a battle over the souls of coming generations, and are particular keen to have their beliefs taught in schools.

Extraordinarily, not only do many millions of Americans believe the universe is only about six thousand years old, many also believe that Young Earth Creationism is good science. They consider the Biblical account of creation to be at least as scientifically well-confirmed as the theories of evolution and a billions-of-years-old universe.

How, you may be wondering, can any sane, reasonably well-educated person believe that Young Earth Creationism is just as scientifically credible and well-confirmed as its more orthodox scientific rivals? After, isn’t there overwhelming empirical evidence against Young Earth Creationism? What about the fossil record, which reveals the species currently living on this planet have evolved from common ancestors over many millions of years? And of course, you might well add that the fossil record is merely one piece of evidence for the theory of evolution. The theory is also powerfully confirmed by discoveries in genetics (indeed, an overwhelming case for evolution can now be made even without appealing to the fossil record at all) . Surely there’s also a mountain of evidence that the universe is much older than ten thousand years. For example:

What of the light from distant galaxies, which, given the speed of light, would have taken hundreds of millions of years to get here (and even that from stars within our own galaxy can take tens of thousands of years to arrive)?

What of the movement of tectonic plates, which we know to be very slow, but also have succeeded in separating the Atlantic coasts by thousands of miles?

What of the seasonal layers of ice found at the Poles, the drilled out cores of which reveal a seasonal history dating back hundreds of thousands of years?

What of radio-carbon and other forms of dating which reliably date objects to be much older than Young Earth Creationists claim they must be?

What of the chalk beds revealed by the white cliffs of Dover, which are over hundreds of metres deep? Under a microscope, chalk is revealed to be made of the compressed shells of tiny micro-organisms. They died, their shells sank to the bottom producing a sediment that finally solidified into the chalk beds we see today. At current rates of deposit, the deepest beds would have taken tens of millions of years to produce. According to Young Earth Creationists, the entire universe is less than one thousandth as old as that.

We might go on and on. There’s hardly a branch of science that doesn’t supply us with evidence that the universe is vastly older than Young Earth Creationists claim it to be. These sciences together provide a consistent, coherent and increasingly detailed history of life, the Earth and the Universe that is almost entirely at odds with the Biblical account.

How, then, do so many Young Earth Creationists convince themselves that their theory is not falsified by the empirical evidence? How are they persuaded that it is in fact scientifically confirmed? Let’s begin by looking at how they approach the fossil record.

The Flood theory

Most Young Earth Creationists appeal to one or more catastrophes to explain geological features – mountain ranges, sedimentary layers, etc. – that might otherwise seem far older. There’s nothing wrong with catastrophe theories as such. Even orthodox scientists suppose catastrophes – comet strikes, volcanic eruptions, floods, and so on – have played an important role in shaping this planet and the life on it. According to most contemporary Young Earth Creationists, however, the key catastrophe involved in shaping our contemporary landscape was the Biblical Flood: the flood on which Noah famously floated his Ark. They believe that Old Testament story is literally true. Noah really did build an Ark onto which he was instructed by God to put seven mated pairs of every kind of clean kind of animal and every kind of bird (Genesis 7.2). The waters then rose, drowning the rest. The current inhabitants of the land and sky are the descendents of those who boarded the Ark.

So how does the Flood supposed to account for various geological features, such as the fossil record? It’s claimed that, when the waters rose, they produced huge amounts of silt and mud. This material settled and solidified, eventually forming many of the sedimentary rock layers we find today. Most of the fossils we find within these layers are fossils of creatures drowned by the rising waters. The Flood also explains other geological features, such as the Grand Canyon, which was carved out when the flood waters subsided.

Perhaps you are wondering why creatures are not buried randomly within the sedimentary layers, but arranged in a very specific order? Why, if the Flood theory is true, do we never find the fossils of large mammals within the same layers as dinosaurs? Why do the lower layers contain fossils of only simple sea creatures? Why does man only appear in only the very topmost layers? Why, if they were all buried by the same catastrophic flood, aren’t their remains largely jumbled up?

Young Earth Creationists have their answers. They say we would expect the simple sea creatures living at the bottom of the ocean to be buried first. Birds would be restricted to the higher layers as they would be able to fly from the rising waters. Mankind, being the smartest, would probably have found ways to avoid being drowned until the last moment, so it is not surprising we find human remains only in the top layers. We should also expect to see some order in the fossil record due, for example, to the fact that different ecological zones were submerged at different times, and also because of the different rates at which the corpses of different species bloat and then sink. “So you see?” say Young Earth Creationists. “The fossil record is, after all, consistent with our theory!”

We might say, in reply “But these moves made by Creationists only postpone their difficulties, as they generate a myriad of further puzzles. What about flightless birds, such as penguins and ostriches, which would not have been able postpone being drowned? Why do their fossils never show up in layers lower than other birds? Why do we find sharks, but no dolphins in the lower sedimentary layers, given they occupy similar ecological zones? Surely both would have been buried in the early stages of the Flood? we could go on, and on, and on, citing a mountain of fossil evidence that contradicts the Flood theory.” However, Young Earth Creationists have in some cases constructed Flood-friendly explanations for these observations, and continue to work on developing Flood-friendly explanations for the rest.

Of course it’s not just the fossil record that generates puzzles for Young Earth Creationism. Let’s think for a moment about the logistics of Noah’s expedition. Genesis 16.2 says the Ark was 300 x 50 x 30 cubits – that’s about 460 x 75 x 44 feet. Not a particularly large vessel (a cross section of 75 by 44 feet is, coincidentally, similar to that of my four-bedroomed Victorian terraced house). How did at least two of every kind fit aboard this rather small vessel? Noah didn’t just need specimens of modern creatures such as African elephants, rhinos and giraffes. If dinosaurs were drowned in the Flood, then Noah must have put at least two of each species of dinosaur on board his Ark. Young Earth Creationists accept this. But then how did he get two T. Rex, two Stegosaurs, two Brontosaurs, and so on, safely aboard? And these aren’t even the very largest dinosaurs. What about, for example, two Argentinosaurs, at 120ft long and 100 tons each?

Other questions arise. What did Noah feed his creatures during their voyage? How did Noah round up the known 900,000 insect species from around the planet, and how did he ensure they weren’t trodden on during the voyage? Also, how did Noah acquire polar bears from the Arctic and possums from Australia – how did they cross the vast oceans and continents to reach the Ark?

However, Young Earth Creationists are not so easily defeated, and have constructed answers to all these and other obvious questions about Noah’s voyage. For example, the website of Christian Information Ministries suggest that Noah did not need at least two of every named species of dinosaur, merely two of every “kind” (whatever that is, exactly):

…some creationists believe there may have been far fewer animals if Noah only took on board pairs of "kinds" as the word is used in Genesis 1. God created these "kinds" with potential for rich genetic diversity.

Creation Ministries International endorses this explanation, adding that:

Although there are about 668 names of dinosaurs, there are perhaps only 55 different ‘kinds’ of dinosaurs.

The same source also suggest that Noah did not need full-sized adult specimens – young examples would do:

Furthermore, not all dinosaurs were huge like the Brachiosaurus, and even those dinosaurs on the Ark were probably ‘teenagers’ or young adults. Indeed, dinosaurs were recently discovered to go through a growth spurt, so God could have brought dinosaurs of the right age to start this spurt as soon as they disembarked.

So how did Noah feed all his creatures while they were at sea? Christian Information Ministries suggests they hibernated:

How Noah and his small family could have cared for this large menagerie is unknown, not to mention the sanitation problem! What we must remember is that this event, i.e., the Flood, had supernatural elements. For instance, the animals came to the Ark against their natural instincts (Gen. 6:20). It is therefore reasonable to assume, as some creationists do, that the animals' metabolism may have been slowed down during their confinement, even to the point where some of the animals may have gone into a state of hibernation.

Of course, once we allow “supernatural elements” to play a role, we could just say that God shrank the dinosaurs to pocket size during their journey. That would also deal with many of these problems.

How did Young Earth Creationists explain how polar bears and possums made it all the way to Noah’s Ark across the great oceans? According to Ken Ham and Tim Lovett at Answers in Genesis, there were no separate continents at that time. There was a single continent that the Flood subsequently broke apart, as they here explain:

As even secular geologists observe, it does appear that the continents were at one time “together” and not separated by the vast oceans of today. The forces involved in the Flood were certainly sufficient to change all of this.

Really? The forces were sufficient to push vast continents around the face of the planet, but not enough to sink a wooden vessel with a cross section of 75 by 44 feet? I guess God must have somehow protected the Ark from these extraordinary forces.

Even setting aside Ark logistics, the Flood theory raises a host of other questions, such as where did all the water sufficient to cover the Earth’s great mountain ranges go? Answer: there were no great ranges at that time – they were created by the Flood. Because the surface of the Earth was relatively flat, there was, and still is, more than enough water to cover the land, as Ham and Lovett also explain:

Simply put, the water from the Flood is in the oceans and seas we see today. Three-quarters of the earth’s surface is covered with water.

So how did creatures get back to their respective newly-created continents after the Ark was finally deposited on the mountains of Ararat (Genesis 8.4)? The marmosets could hardly have walked and swum half way round the world, across the Atlantic Ocean, to the Amazonian rainforests where they now dwell. I guess Noah must have dropped the marmosets off in South America and the possums off in Australia as the waters receded (though how, then, did the Ark end up deposited high on the mountains of Ararat?) Or perhaps Noah built them rafts.

So you see? Young Earth Creationists can deal with very many of these questions! Admittedly, they don’t have all the answers – and don’t claim to. But, as they correctly point out, who does? Even orthodox science faces questions it is not currently able to answer, and perhaps never will.

Explanations such as those outlined above are continuously being developed and refined by people describing themselves as “scientists” in multi-million dollar “research institutes” dedicated to the pursuit of something called “creation science”. These “scientists” insist that, far from falsifying Young Earth Creationism, the empirical evidence is broadly consistent with it. Young Earth Creationism, they maintain, fits the evidence at least as well as its orthodox scientific rivals. Surely, they add, good science is all about developing theories to fit the evidence. But then, because they are developing their theory to make it fit the evidence, what they practising is good science. Moreover, if theories are confirmed to the extent that they fit the evidence, then Young Earth Creationism, developed and refined in these ways, is as well confirmed as its rivals.

“Dogs are spies from the planet Venus”

To summarize: Young Earth Creationism is supposedly:

(i) not falsified by the empirical evidence, but actually consistent with it.
(ii) good science
(iii) at least as well confirmed as the theory of evolution, etc.

All three of these claims are false. To begin to see why, let’s start with an analogy.

Dave believes dogs are spies from the planet Venus. He views any canine with great suspicion, for he believes they originate on Venus, and are here to do reconnaissance. Dogs, Dave supposes, secretly send their reports back to Venus, where the rest of their fiendishly cunning alien species are meticulously planning their invasion of the Earth. Their spaceships will shortly arrive from Venus to enslave the human race and take over the world.

Unsurprisingly, Dave’s friends think he has a screw loose, and try to convince him that dogs are comparatively benign pets, not cunning alien spies. Here’s a typical example of how their conversations with Dave go.

DAVE: It’s only a matter of weeks now! The spaceships will arrive and then you’ll wish you’d listened to me. We must act now – let the government know!
MARY: Look Dave, dogs are pretty obviously not space invaders, they’re just dumb pets. Dogs can’t even speak, for goodness sake, let alone communicate with Venus!
DAVE: They can speak – they just choose to hide their linguistic ability from us. They wait till we leave the room before they talk to each other.
PETE: But Venus is a dead planet, Dave. It’s horrifically hot and swathed in clouds of acid. Nothing could live there, certainly not a dog!
DAVE: Dogs don’t live on the surface of Venus, you fool - they live below, in deep underground bunkers.
MARY: But then how do Earth-bound dogs communicate with their allies on Venus? I’ve got a dog, and I’ve never found an alien transmitter hidden in his basket.
DAVE: They don’t use technology we can observe. Their transmitters are hidden inside their brains!
MARY: But Pete is a vet, and he’s X-rayed several dog’s heads, and he’s never found anything in there!
PETE: In fact, I once chopped up a dog’s brain in veterinary school – let me assure you Dave, there was no transmitter in there!
DAVE: You’re assuming their transmitters would be recognizable as such. They are actually made of organic material indistinguishable from brain stuff. That’s why they don’t show up on X-Rays. This is advanced alien technology remember – of course we cannot detect it!
MARY: But we don’t detect any weird signals being directed at Venus from the Earth.
DAVE: Of course, we don’t – like I said, remember this is advanced alien technology beyond our limited understanding!
PETE: How do dogs fly spaceships? They don’t even have hands. So they can’t hold things like steering wheels and joy sticks.
DAVE: Really, Pete. Think about it. You are assuming that their spacecraft will be designed to be operated by human hands. Obviously they won’t. They’ll be designed to be manoeuvred by a dog’s limbs, mouth, tongue and so on.

You can see how this conversation might continue ad nauseum. Mary and Pete keep coming up with evidence against Dave’s belief that dogs are Venusian spies. But, given a little ingenuity, Dave can always salvage his core theory. He can continually adjust and develop it so that it continues to “fit” the evidence.

Confirmation - the “fit” model

Clearly, Dave’s theory about dogs is not well-confirmed by the available evidence. The first moral we can extract from this example is that, whatever is required in order for a theory to be well-confirmed, rather more is required than achieving mere consistency with that evidence.

As Dave illustrates, any belief, no matter how ludicrous, can be made consistent with the available evidence, given a little ingenuity. Believe that the Earth is flat, that the Moon is made of cheese, that the World Trade Centre was brought down by the U.S. Government, are that George W. Bush is really Elvis Presley in disguise? All these theories can be endlessly adjusted and developed so that they remain consistent with the available evidence. Yet they are not well-confirmed.

The claim that Young Earth Creationism is at least as well confirmed as its scientific rivals relies crucially on what we might call the “fit” model of confirmation. According to the “fit” model, confirmation is all about “fitting” the evidence. But more is required for genuine confirmation than mere “fit”, which any theory, no matter how absurd, can, in principle, achieve. So what else is required?

Genuine confirmation

While scientists and philosophers of science may disagree on the details, most would sign up to something like the following.

In order for a theory to be strongly confirmed by the data, at least three conditions must be met. The theory must make predictions that are:

(i) clear and precise,
(ii) surprising, and
(iii) true

Let’s unpack these conditions.

Prediction

First off, let’s say a little more about predictions. To be strongly confirmed, your theory must allow for the derivation of predictions about the observable. So, for example, from the theory that water freezes below zero degrees centigrade, we can derive the prediction that if the temperature of this particular sample of water is reduced to below zero, it will freeze. From the theory that all swans are white, we can derive the prediction that the next swan we observe will be white. And (a slightly more complex example), from Newton’s theory of universal gravitation we can derive the prediction that the planet Uranus will move in a smooth elliptical orbit around the sun.

Notice that, very often, the derivation of a prediction from a theory involves the use of certain auxiliary hypotheses. The reason the above example involving Newton’s theory is more complex is that it does not by itself directly entail that Uranus will have a smooth elliptical orbit. In order to derive that particular prediction, we have to help ourselves to certain auxiliary hypothesis, including the auxiliary hypothesis that there are no other bodies exerting a gravitational pull on that planet (which might distort Uranus’ elliptical orbit).

The fact that we can derive from a theory a prediction about the observable means that the theory can, in principle, be tested. We can check and see whether the prediction is true. Let’s suppose the prediction is true. What follows?

Notice that confirmation is a matter of degree: theories can be more or less well confirmed by a piece of evidence. For example, observing a single white swan provides some confirmation that all swans are white, but not very much. So what is required for strong confirmation?

Clarity and precision

Suppose the prediction I derive from my theory is ambiguous and vague. Then it won’t be difficult to interpret it in such a way that, whatever is observed, I can say, “Hey, my prediction came true!”

Predictions made by psychics often have this character. Take the claim that you will “shortly meet a tall, dark and handsome stranger”. What does “shortly” mean? Today? This week? This year? Is five foot eleven “tall”? Does brown hair qualify someone as “dark”? What counts as “handsome”? Because of the usually rather ambiguous nature of a psychic’s prediction, it’s easy to interpret it in such a way that it comes out as “true”. The same is true of the prophecies of Nostradamus, the medieval seer whose cryptic prose supposedly predicts all sorts of dramatic events, such as the rise of Hitler, and 9/11. Nostradamus’ writing is so vague that, when some major event happens, it’s not difficult to find a passage that “predicts” it (I look more closely at the work of Nostradamus in the conclusion to this book).

For strong confirmation, we need to be able to derive from our theory predictions that are clear and precise, and one very obvious way in which they can do this is if they concern mathematically quantifiable and objectively measurable phenomena. The claim that every dog will be “heavy-ish” is so vague as to be unfalsifiable, while the claim that every dog weighs more than five kilos can easily be falsified with the aid of a scale.

Surprisingness

However, even a clear, precise and true prediction is not enough to guarantee strong confirmation. A further, key ingredient is required. The prediction must also exhibit a certain kind of surprisingness.

Suppose I believe fairies cause trees to grow more quickly during the summer months. From this theory we can derive the fairly clear and precise prediction that this copse of trees will grow more during the summer months. The prediction, it turns out, is true. Does that strongly confirm my theory that fairies cause trees to grow more in the summer months? Clearly not. For, though it is true that my theory predicts just such a growth pattern, that pattern is to be expected anyway, even on more orthodox scientific theories about why trees grow.

Similarly, from Dave’s theory that dogs are Venusian spies so ingenious that their devious activities will remain undetected we can derive the prediction that dogs will be observed to behave like harmless pets. This prediction is true. But of course, while consistent with Dave’s theory, the observed behaviour of dogs in no way confirms his theory, as this is just the sort of behaviour we’d expect from dogs anyway, even if they are harmless pets.

The moral is: if the prediction derived from a theory is of something that would not be particularly unexpected anyway, even on rival theories, then the fact that the prediction is true does not strongly confirm the theory. For strong confirmation, the prediction must be surprising in this sense: that, if the theory were not true, then what is predicted would not be particularly expected.

Putting these various points together, we can sum up by saying that, in order for a theory to be strongly confirmed, that theory has to stick it’s neck out with respect to the evidence. It has to be bold, to risk being proved wrong. If a theory either fails to make any predictions, or makes only vague and woolly predictions, or else predicts things that are not particularly unexpected anyway – if, in short, it takes no significant risks with the evidence – then not only is it not strongly confirmed, it can’t be.

Let’s now consider whether Young Earth Creationism and the theory of evolution are, or might be, strongly confirmed by empirical evidence.

Strong confirmation by the fossil record?

We have seen that Young Earth Creationism can be endlessly adjusted so that it continues to “fit” whatever happens to be dug up. Does that mean that it is strongly confirmed by the fossil record?

No. For Young Earth Creationists don’t predict very much at all about what fossils, if any, will be dug up. If we find no fossils, they will say, “Hey, this fits my theory – there hasn’t been enough time for fossils to form”. If we find, as we do, fossils of only simple marine creatures in the lower layers and larger mammals in only the top most layers, then Young Earth Creationist say – “Hey, this fits my theory – this is explained by the differential rates at which corpses decompose and sink”, or: “This is explained by the fact that different ecological zones were submerged at different times.” But suppose species had been found fairly randomly through the layers? Then Young Earth Creationists would say, “Hey, this fits my theory! – The Flood drowned these creatures more or less simultaneously.” Young Earth Creationists fail to make any bold predictions regarding the fossil record. They take no real risks with the fossil evidence. But then their theory can’t be strongly confirmed by the fossil evidence.

What about the theory of evolution? Can that be strongly confirmed? Yes. The theory is a theory of common descent. It says that contemporary species evolved from common ancestors in a tree-like manner, with contemporary species at the tips of the branches and the most common ancestor at the base of the trunk. If the theory is true, the sedimentary layers should reveal fossils arranged in a very specific order, consistent with such a tree-like structure.

In its fully-developed form, the theory of evolution also says that birds and mammals developed fairly late on in the history of life, after the Devonian period. So the theory predicts that not even one fossil of a bird or mammal will ever show up in the lower pre-Devonian deposits (which constitute over half the history of multicellular organisms). As one scientist puts it:

Even one incontrovertible find of any pre-Devonian mammal [or] bird … would shatter the theory of common descent.

These are both clear and precise predictions. They are also surprising predictions, in the sense that, were the theory of evolution not true, and, say, the Flood theory were true instead, there would be no particular reason not to expect, among the countless thousands of fossils dug up each year, at least one or two avian or mammalian fossils in the pre-Devonian layers (Young Earth Creationists would not be remotely surprised if they did). Nor would there be any reason to expect fossils to line up in precisely the way predicted by the theory of common descent. Indeed, that the fossils should happen to line up precisely that way would be a gob-smacking coincidence if the theory weren’t true.

So, in predicting no such fossils will be found, the theory of evolution takes a very significant risk. Which is why the fact that no such fossil has ever shown up very strongly confirms the theory of evolution. (And of course, this is just one example of how the theory of evolution is strongly confirmed. There are numerous others ).

Falsification

We have seen that Young Earth Creationism is not strongly confirmed by the fossil record. The theory of evolution, by contrast, is. Let’s now turn from the notion of confirmation to that of falsification. What of the claim that Young Earth Creationism is not falsified by the fossil record?

A pivotal figure, so far as the notion of falsification is concerned, is the philosopher Karl Popper. Popper developed a philosophical theory of how science progresses called falsificationism. Few philosophers now embrace falsificationism, and I certainly won’t be relying on that theory here. Nevertheless, Popper did make a number of incisive points about falsifiability that are relevant to our discussion.

We have already seen how scientific theories can be falsified – we can derive from them observational predictions that can be checked. If the prediction turns out to be false, then the theory is falsified. However, Popper notes that various strategies can be employed by defenders of a theory to deal with an apparent falsification – to protect or immunize it against falsification.

For example, we have already seen that, in order to derive a prediction from a theory, it’s often necessary to employ auxiliary hypothesis. We saw that Newton’s theory of universal gravitation predicts a smooth elliptical orbit for Uranus only if no other planet is exerting a gravitational effect on it. When Uranus turned out not to have a smooth elliptical orbit – it wobbles slightly in and out of its predicted orbit – defenders of Newton’s theory insisted that, rather than falsifying Newton’s theory, this observation revealed only that there was another as yet unknown object in the vicinity of Uranus tugging it out of its elliptical orbit. In other words, the falsification was deflected away from the core theory and onto an auxiliary hypothesis. Scientists calculated where this mystery object would have to be in order to exert such a pull, looked for it, and discovered a new planet: Neptune.

Here’s an other example. When Galileo constructed his telescope, looked at the Moon, and observed mountains and valleys, it seemed that Aristotle’s theory that every heavenly body is perfectly spherical had been falsified. Instead of accepting this, some defenders of Aristotle’s view suggested that there must be an invisible substance covering the surface of the Moon, filling up its valleys right to the tops of the mountains, so that the Moon is, after all, perfectly spherical. The falsification was in this case deflected away from Aristotle’s theory and on to the auxiliary hypothesis that any material making up the surface of the Moon must be visible.

Other strategies for defending a theory include exploiting vagueness and ambiguity in the theory or the predictions derived from it - to reinterpret them so that what is observed turns out to “fit” the prediction after all. This is, as already noted, a favourite trick of psychics and soothsayers.

Ad hoc manoeuvres

Popper realized that even mainstream scientists can and do employ such strategies in order to defend their theories. He did not think this was always a bad thing. In particular, Popper thought that defending Newton’s theory of universal gravitation by postulating a mystery planet was entirely acceptable, because it led to new tests – scientists could actually look and see if there was planet in the place predicted.

What Popper considered particularly suspect were attempts to defend a theory by means of modifications that introduced no new tests. So, for example, the postulation of an invisible substance on the surface of Moon in order to salvage the Aristotelean theory that all heavenly bodies are perfectly spherical led to no new tests – there was nothing scientists could do at the time to check whether any such substance was there. Popper calls such untestable hypotheses introduced to immunize a theory against falsification “ad hoc”.

Popper noted that the more such strategies are employed to protect a theory from falsification, the less falsifiable it becomes, until eventually we end up with a theory that is not falsifiable at all. In Popper’s view, an unfalsifiable theory is not scientific. Theories that claim to be scientific, but fail to meet the test of falsifiability, are mere pseudo-science.

Two kinds of immunity to falsification

As you have probably guessed, I’m going to suggest that Young Earth Creationism is also an unfalsifiable theory. But, before we look again at Young Earth Creationism, it’s worth taking a short detour to look at two quite different ways in which theories can achieve unfalsifiability. We’ll see that, interestingly, there are two versions of Young Earth Creationism, that each achieves unfalsifiability in one of these two different ways.

Popper distinguishes two ways in which a theory might be rendered unfalsifiable. Indeed, he considered both Marx’s theory of history and the psychoanalytic theories of Freud and Adler unfalsifiable, but for different reasons.

The problem with Freud and Adler’s psychoanalytic theories, thought Popper, is that, whatever human behaviour is observed, it can always be interpreted to “fit” either theory. Popper, who knew Adler, remarks:

As for Adler, I was much impressed by a personal experience. Once, in 1919, I reported to him a case which to me did not seem particularly Adlerian, but which he found no difficulty in analyzing in terms of his theory of inferiority feelings, although he had not even seen the child.

The same, Popper believed, was true of Freud’s theories. They both appeared to fit the evidence, and thus be supported by the evidence, no matter what evidence might show up. Popper illustrated by considering two hypothetical situations – one in which a man pushes a child into water with the intention of drowning it, and one in which a man sacrifices himself to save a child. Popper claims each of these two events can be explained with equal ease in Freudian and Adlerian terms:

According to Freud the first man suffered from repression (say, of some component of his Oedipus complex), while the second man had achieved sublimation. According to Adler the first man suffered from feelings of inferiority (producing perhaps the need to prove to himself that he dared to commit some crime), and so did the second man (whose need was to prove to himself that he dared to rescue the child).

Popper found he couldn’t think of any human behaviour that wouldn’t fit either theory.
It was precisely this fact—that they always fitted, that they were always confirmed—which in the eyes of their admirers constituted the strongest argument in favor of these theories. It began to dawn on me that this apparent strength was in fact their weakness.

So Popper thought both psycho-analytic theories were unfalsifiable, and for much the same reason. Popper also thought that the Marxist theory of history was also unfalsifiable. But for a different reason. According to Popper, unlike Freud’s and Adler’s theories, Marx’s theory started out as a falsifiable theory. In fact, it made some rather risky predictions about how history would unfold. For example, it predicted the character of a coming social revolution (e.g. it predicted a revolution would happen in an industrially advanced society such as Britain). However, this prediction turned out to be largely incorrect (there was a revolution, but not in the way Marx predicted - e.g. it actually happened in industrially backward Russia). Marx’s theory was therefore falsified. Rather than accept this, Marx’s followers employed an immunizing strategy, re-interpreting theory and evidence so that the theory continued to fit the evidence after all.

…instead of accepting the refutations the followers of Marx re-interpreted both the theory and the evidence in order to make them agree. In this way they rescued the theory from refutation; but they did so at the price of adopting a device which made it irrefutable… [by] this stratagem they destroyed its much advertised claim to scientific status.

Whether or not we accept Popper’s claim that an unfalsifiable theory isn’t a scientific theory at all, Popper is surely correct that unfalsifiability is not a virtue in a theory, but a vice.

Dave’s immunizing strategy

Let’s now return to Dave’s theory that dogs are spies from the planet Venus. Mary and Pete tried to falsify Dave’s theory, but each time they try, Pete comes up with yet another explanation for why his theory is, after all, consistent with the evidence. While some of Dave’s moves are rather ad hoc in nature, others are not. His suggestion that the dog’s transmitters were located in their brains did lead to a new test – we could look inside dogs’ brains to check whether any transmitters are there. However, when no transmitters show up, Dave just makes another adjustment – he says the transmitters must be made of organic material indistinguishable from brain stuff. So while not every immunizing move Dave makes is ad hoc, his overall strategy renders his theory unfalsifiable.

In fact, Dave’s theory suffers from much the same problem that Popper found with Marxism. Dave’s theory starts off as potentially falsifiable. However, once it is falsified, Dave develops an immunizing strategy that makes it unfalsifiable. Then, e time his theory runs into trouble with the evidence, Dave just makes another modification to deal with it.

The kind of Young Earth Creationism outlined above is also unfalsifiable, and for much the same reason. The theory that the Earth was created just as described in Genesis starts out as a falsifiable theory. Indeed, it is straightforwardly falsified by a mountain of evidence. In response to the evidence, proponents of Young Earth Creationism, like Dave, then devise ever more ingenious moves to account for it. Once they have embarked on this strategy, their theory becomes unfalsifiable. It’s the strategy developed to defend the core theory, rather than anything about the theory itself, that makes it unfalsifiable.

Gosse’s omphalos hypothesis

There is a contrast to be drawn here with a rather different version of Young Earth Creationism, that developed by Philip Henry Gosse. In 1857, Gosse published a book titled Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot. Within it, Gosse tried to explain how the discoveries then being made in geology – such as the fossil record – that were beginning seriously to challenge the view that the Earth was just a few thousand years old, were in fact entirely compatible with Young Earth Creationism after all. “Omphalos” means navel, or belly-button. Some Christians wondered whether Adam had one. One the one hand, it seems he wouldn’t, because Adam had no mother to whom he was attached by umbilical cord. On the other hand, it would be seem odd if Adam didn’t have one, as it’s an otherwise universal feature of human beings.

Gosse thought Adam had belly-button, despite that fact that a belly-button might seem to suggest Adam had a mother. Gosse took a similar view about the trees in the garden of Eden, which he thought would have tree rings that might seem to suggest greater age. Gosse then extended this line of thought to the Earth itself. The sedimentary layers strewn with fossils were created by God just a few thousand years ago. Like Adam’s navel, they were put there, not to deceive or to test our religious faith (as some have suggested), but because such creations will inevitably bear the hallmarks of a non-existent past. “It may be objected” Gosse wrote,

that to assume the world to have been created with fossil skeletons in its crust – skeletons of animals that never really existed – is to charge the Creator with forming objects whose sole purpose was to deceive us. The reply is obvious. Were the concentric timber-rings of a created tree formed merely to deceive? Were the growth lines of a created shell intended to deceive? Was the navel of the created Man intended to deceive him into the persuasion that he had a parent?

Gosse concluded that the evidence provided by geology and other sciences failed to settle the age of the Earth: whether or not the Biblical account was true, the Earth would look just as it does.

A striking feature of Gosse’s version of Young Earth Creationism is that, unlike the contemporary version we have been examining, Gosse’s version is immune to refutation by geological and other natural sciences right from the start. It is, in this respect, much like Bertrand Russell’s famous hypothesis that the entire universe, with us in it, was created by God just five minutes ago, though with the appearance of a much longer past (including, of course, our own false memories of that non-existent past past). Both versions of creationism achieve consistency with the evidence. But they achieve it in different ways. Gosse’s version does so by virtue of its content. The currently dominant version, by contrast, achieves unfalsifiability through the use of immunizing strategies.

Biases and presuppositions

Let’s now nail the fundamental myth that lies at the heart of the modern Young Earth Creationist movement. Young Earth Creationists will often cheerily admit that they endlessly adjust and develop their core theory that the Biblical account of creation is literally correct to make it “fit” the evidence. But they typically deny that this entails that their account is not at least as well confirmed as the standard scientific account. Why? Because they think that those who believe in the theory of evolution and a billions-of-years-old universe are doing the same thing.

As this minister of a Creationist organization here explains, both the Bible-literalists and the evolutionists are doing no more than responding to the biases or presuppositions with which they start:

There were a lot of influences in Darwin’s background which would lead him almost inevitably to the point he reached. His father was clearly an atheist. And certainly there was a background of disbelief in the Bible. And certainly there was a belief about millions of years that existed before him. He started his theories from that point. Now I have a clear bias. The Bible. And I admit that. But most scientists do not want to admit these kinds of biases that they have themselves.

Young Earth Creationists accuse the contemporary scientific orthodoxy of having its own bias – towards evolution in particular. Orthodox scientists are doing no more than taking whatever evidence shows up and making it fit their prior commitments. So they are, in this respect, really behaving no differently than Young Earth Creationists.

The Young Earth Creationist Ken Ham concurs:

Increasing numbers of scientists are realizing that when you take the Bible as your basis and build your models of science and history upon it, all the evidence from the living animals and plants, the fossils, and the cultures fits. This confirms that the Bible really is the Word of God and can be trusted totally.

According to Ham, Young Earth Creationists and evolutionists do the same thing: they take the evidence, and then look for ways to make it fit the axioms of the framework theory to which they have already committed themselves:

Evolutionists have their own framework …into which they try to fit the data.

It should now be clear why Ham is misrepresenting what real scientists do. Science is not essentially about achieving fit between theory and data. As we have seen, any theory, no matter how nuts, can achieve that kind of fit, including Dave’s ludicrous theory that dogs are Venusian spies. What a scientific theory requires if it is to be credible is not merely consistency with the evidence, but confirmation by the evidence - the stronger the confirmation, the better. That is why real scientists prefer bold predictions. They take risks with the evidence wherever they can.

As a result of taking such risks, scientific theories can be, and often are, falsified. Even theories towards which scientists are initially very strongly biased can be, and have been, shown to be wrong. Sometimes the theoretical framework with which scientists begin is shown to be mistaken, resulting in a major scientific revolution.

However, because real scientists are prepared to take such risks, their theories can be, and sometimes are, strongly confirmed. Today’s Young Earth Creationists avoid such risks. Like Dave, they have adopted an immunizing strategy such that, no matter what’s discovered, it’s never going to be allowed to falsify their framework theory. One way or another, the evidence will be shown to “fit”. But then, because Young Earth Creationists take no such risks, their theory can never be strongly confirmed.

That Young Earth Creationists take no risks with the evidence is nicely illustrated by the following quote from proponent Bodie Hodge’s “Why Don’t We Find Human and Dinosaur Fossils Together?”:

If human and dinosaur bones are ever found in the same layers, it would be a fascinating find... Those who hold a biblical view of history wouldn’t be surprised… Evolutionists, on the other hand… would have a real challenge. In the old-earth view, man isn’t supposed to be the same age as dinosaurs…. As biblical creationists, we don’t require that human and dinosaur fossils be found in the same layers. Whether they are found or not, does not affect the biblical view of history.

Hodge makes no risky predictions regarding the fossil record. Whatever shows up will be consistent with his theory. Dinosaurs and humans discovered in different layers – fine. Dinosaurs and humans in the same layers – no problem. Hodge is quite explicit that neither discovery would constitute a “surprise”.

What Hodge fails to realize is that it is, precisely, the Bible literalist’s lack of commitment about how human, dinosaur and other fossils should be found that gives the theory of evolution a huge advantage over their own. The bottom line is this: because the theory of evolution takes a significant risk with that evidence, it can be confirmed by it; because Young Earth Creationism doesn’t, it can’t. Young Earth Creationism is no more “confirmed” than is the Dave’s theory that dogs are spies from the planet Venus.

The Blunderbuss

The strategy of making your theory “fit” the evidence and then claiming it is not, after all, falsified, (and is perhaps even confirmed) is often accompanied by another argumentative strategy which I call The Blunderbuss (n.b. a blunderbuss is a sort of early shotgun that flares out at the muzzle). The strategy is this: at the same time as you are employing “But It Fits!” to render your own theory consistent with the evidence, fire off endless salvos of bullshit at your opponents’s theory. Your salvos will comprise (i) a few real but largely irrelevant problems, and (ii) various invented problems.

Of course almost every theory, no matter how well-confirmed, faces puzzles and problem cases. This is certainly true of the theory that life on this planet is a product of natural mechanisms. There remain unanswered questions. Currently, orthodox science is not able to explain how life initially emerged on this planet. Genetic and evolutionary theory can explain how living organisms evolve over time, but it cannot yet fully explain how life initially appeared. Not surprisingly, then, Young Earth Creationists flag up these kinds of question at every available opportunity. The truth, of course, is this: that life has evolved over many millions of years by means of natural selection is nevertheless overwhelming confirmed by the evidence. This genuine and intriguing puzzle for orthodox science does nothing to throw this into question. Nor does it lend the Creationist theory that the entire universe and everything in it was created six thousand years ago any credibility at all. So this “problem” is, in truth, irrelevant to the debate between Young Earth Creationism and orthodox science. The impression that Young Earth Creationists try to create by firing off such “problems” – the impression that their own theory is at least intellectual on par with its orthodox rivals – is entirely misleading.

That was an example of a genuine puzzle that orthodox science cannot currently solve. However, the vast majority of puzzles and problems with which Young Earth Creationists pack their blunderbuss aren’t genuine puzzles and problems at all. More often than not they are invented.

A nice example is polystrate fossils – particularly vertically fossilized tree trunks. Young Earth Creationists will often wow audiences with dramatic images of fossilized trees which can be seen extending upwards through many sedimentary layers. “How can our opponents explain this?” the Young Earth Creationists ask. “According to evolutionists, these sedimentary layers were produced over millions of years, far too long for this tree to have remained without rotting away! Clearly, this tree was buried by these layers of sediment very quickly. That only makes sense on our Flood theory!” One Young Earth Creationist concludes:

Such phenomena clearly violate the idea of a gradually accumulated geologic column since, generally speaking, an evolutionary overview of that column suggests that each stratum (layer) was laid down over thousands (or even millions!) of years.

Except, of course, the “evolutionary overview” suggests no such thing. It allows, indeed it predicts, that trees will sometimes be buried very quickly by a series of sedimentary layers, for example, if located near a river-bank, a volcanic eruption, or area of rapid subsidence. This so-called “problem” for the “evolutionary overview” – which is also supposed to confirm Young Earth Creationism – is pure bunkum.

Sometimes the so-called “problems” for the theory of evolution are quite literally fabricated. Attend a Young Earth Creationist event and you may well be presented with photographs of of dinosaur and human footprints in the same sedmintary layer. The tracks are right there in a rock bed at Paluxy River – “proof” that man and the dinosaurs walked the Earth at the same time! What those peddling these photographs don’t usually mention is that the grand-daughter of George Adams, the man who originally discovered the prints, admits her grandfather carved the human prints by hand to make money.

Young Earth Creationists have amassed a vast arsenal of irrelevant or invented problems to fire off at their opponents in debate. It usually takes time and patience to deal properly with just one example. Often it also takes specialist knowledge, knowledge that scientists specializing in another field may not possess. So it’s often quite easy for Young Earth Creationists to get their opponents bogged down, seemingly stymied by the “problems” they have raised. “Explain this! And this! And this!” they say, and watch with mounting satisfaction as looks of confusion and desperation begin to creep across their opponents’ faces.

As a result, Young Earth Creationists are able to generate the illusion that not only are they able to make their theory “fit” the evidence, their opponents face all sorts of devastating objections. The audience to such a debate many depart misled into thinking that, whether or not Young Earth Creationism is true, there at least remains a live, on-going scientific debate.

Young Earth Creationism in schools

Young Earth Creationism has been, and continues to be, taught in schools. Often, this teaching is done covertly (I know of two British schools where it has been taught by science a teacher without the knowledge or permission of the school or other members of staff – one was one of Britain’s leading independent schools). Obviously I object to Young Earth Creationism being taught as a rival to orthodox scientific theories. People often object to the teaching of Young Earth Creationism on the grounds that children should not be taught things that are known to be false. But that is not my main objection (though teaching known falsehoods is bad enough). My main objection is this: teaching children Young Earth Creationism is scientifically respectable involves teaching children to think like Dave.

The Vision Thing

So effective can “But It Fits!” be in generating the illusion that a theory is overwhelmingly confirmed by the evidence that its defenders may come to think its truth is just obvious for anyone with eyes to see. This may in turn lead them to suspect that those who can’t see its manifest truth must be suffering from something like a perceptual defect. We might call reaching this advanced stage achieving The Vision Thing.

Popper noted something like this effect in some followers of Marx, Freud and Adler. He says:

I found that those of my friends who were admirers of Marx, Freud, and Adler, were impressed by a number of points common to these theories, and especially by their apparent explanatory power. These theories appear to be able to explain practically everything that happened within the fields to which they referred. The study of any of them seemed to have the effect of an intellectual conversion or revelation, open your eyes to a new truth hidden from those not yet initiated. Once your eyes were thus opened you saw confirmed instances everywhere: the world was full of verifications of the theory. Whatever happened always confirmed it. Thus its truth appeared manifest; and unbelievers were clearly people who did not want to see the manifest truth; who refuse to see it, either because it was against their class interest, or because of their repressions which were still "un-analyzed" and crying aloud for treatment.

Young Earth Creationist Ken Ham similarly puts down the inability of his opponents to “see” the manifest truth of creation to their arrogant and egotistical ways:

Why can’t the humanists, the evolutionists, see that all the evidence supports exactly what the Bible says? It is because they do not want to see it. It is not because the evidence is not there. They refuse to allow the evidence to be correctly interpreted in the light of biblical teaching.

Evolutionists deliberately choose not to see what’s right there in front of their noses. Clearly, Ken Ham has achieved The Vision Thing.

Young Earth Creationism, as defended and promoted by people like Ken Ham, is a very impressive Intellectual Black Hole. Indeed, Ham is one of the great contemporary masters of the “But It Fits!” strategy. However, “But It Fits!” is by no means restricted to Young Earth Creationism and fruitcakes like Dave. It crops up in all sorts of places. See the conclusion for more examples.

Gig Tonight in Oxfordshire

2011-12-03T12:08:00.002Z

I will be playing drums with The Heavy Dexters tonight at the Chequers Pub, Burcot, OX14 3DP. Jazz funk.

Premier Christian Radio - two upcoming interviews

2011-11-30T13:35:00.013Z

Two upcoming shows which I just recorded - link to shows is here:

Sat 10th December: "The Evil God Challenge"

I discuss the challenge with Christian philosopher Glenn Peoples. Glenn is based out in New Zealand. His blog is here.

This was a useful discussion as it allowed me to deal with several common misunderstandings about the challenge - including "But Christians don't base their belief about God's goodness on empirical evidence" (this is a complete red herring: it's irrelevant to the challenge, in fact, as I explain in this interview).

Saturday 18th December "Is Christianity an intellectual black hole?"

Second recording is based on my book "Believing Bullshit". Discussion with James Orr - a graduate philosophy student at Cambridge. We discuss whether its rational to believe in things like the miraculous. BTW I don't claim Christianity is an Intellectual black hole, or bullshit. As everyone on the show agrees. Take note Martin Cohen.

Also available as podcasts (post transmission) on itunes. Search premier christian unbelievable.

Live on Atheists Talk Radio

2011-11-27T10:26:00.003Z

Today, 9am Minnesotta time, 3pm UK time. I must not say "bullshit" When Radio 3 asked me not to say it, I ended up saying it about 20 times. So there may be a few bleeps....

Link here. It will be a podcast almost immediately I think.

BEYOND THE VEIL

2011-11-24T17:00:00.007Z

Blasphemy day

2011-11-24T16:36:00.006Z

'Blasphemy!' - blasphemy, religious hatred, and human rights: who speaks for the sacred?

Presented by CFI UK and The Ethical Society
Saturday 28th January 2012

CONWAY HALL,25 Red Lion Square Holborn

Introduced by Dr Stephen Law of Heythrop College, University of London and Editor of Think (Royal Institute Philosophy) Provost of Centre for Inquiry UK.

This event focuses on the criminalization of religious hatred, defamation, and insult under European human rights, and how this functions as a de facto blasphemy law.

Tickets on sale HERE.

General: £10 general public

Members and students: £8 BHA, AHS and SPES members and students with valid ID

Free to members of the Centre for Inquiry UK.

***Special offer*** Joint tickets to this event and the Beyond the Veil event on the 14th January: £16 general public and £12 members and student ticket offer.

PROGRAMME

10.30am REGISTRATION

11.00 am Kenan Malik - Title TBA

12.00 Andrew Copson – Blasphemy laws by the back door

Andrew Copson has been chief executive of the British Humanist Association since 2010 before which he spent five years coordinating the association’s campaigns work including on blasphemy and free speech issues.

After decades of campaigning the criminal offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel have been abolished but censorship of blasphemous content and even threatened prosecution of blasphemes continues in the UK. Andrew explores how corporate interests, opaque advertising regulations and new criminal laws continue to stifle free expression and free criticism and mockery of gods and religions.
1.00-1.30 Lunch

1.30 Austin Dacey – The Future of Blasphemy

Austin Dacey, Ph.D., is a representative to the United Nations for the International Humanist and Ethical Union and the author of The Future of Blasphemy:

If blasphemy is an affront to values that are held sacred, then it is too important to be left to the traditionally religious. In the public contestation of the sacred, each of us—secular and religious alike—has equal right and authority to speak on its behalf and equal claim to redress for its violation. Laws against blasphemy and "religious hatred" are inherently discriminatory because they give traditional faith communities a legal remedy that is not available to religious minorities and secularists when their sense of the sacred is violated.

2.30 Jacob Mchangama (to be confirmed)

3.30 Additional speaker TBA

4.30 End

A variety of interesting books will be on sale at the event, provided by Newham books.

Robin Ince on Intelligent Design

2011-11-23T10:35:00.000Z

On Channel 4 "4thought" slot on creationism TV tuesday

2011-11-21T10:09:00.007Z

I have a brief two minute slot at about 5 mins to eight, tomorrow night on Channel 4. Part of a week long series on whether (young earth) creationism should be taught in schools. In the 4thought TV. Website with links to all the clips including mine here.

P.S. They chose the "angry" bits out of the stuff they recorded with me!

PS Which is fine as I am angry about it.

Daily Mail article

2011-11-21T07:30:00.003Z

I have an article on bullshit in today's Daily Mail. Life&Style section.

Hang on... no I don't! Was misled. Maybe next Monday....

I'm tutor for admissions at Heythrop College, University of London

2011-11-17T12:50:00.005Z

I happen to be tutor for admission for the BA in philosophy at Heythrop College University of London. If you want to find about more about our BA programme, or an evening MA in philosophy, get in touch (email address is in the header to this page). Obviously with the new fees system, all colleges are focusing on recruitiment, and so are we of course. Obviously we're not as well known as some other colleges. But we are quite exceptional.

So here are a few facts about Heythrop you might be interested in, if you're thinking about pursuing a degree in Philosophy or Theology.

(1) Heythrop is the University of London college that specializes in just Philosophy and Theology. It's all we do.

(2) Heythrop students achieve remarkably good results, despite our comparatively modest entry requirements. We have outperformed other better known colleges in terms of number of first class hons degrees achieved, for example

(3) This is because, astonishingly, Heythrop runs a one-to-one tutorial system. Students receive individual one-to-one tutorials on all their second and third year essays. This is unheard outside of Oxbridge, of course, and is one of the main reasons are students are so academically successful.

(4) Heythrop is a Jesuit foundation (in fact it's the oldest college of the University of London, being founded by the Jesuits in 1614, though one of the most recent member colleges of the University). However, despite its religious foundation, it is highly diverse in its membership. I'm there, for goodness sake. And I'm made to feel very welcome too. The student body is no more "religious" than at other London colleges, and the staff have all sorts of views on the subject. There's no religious agenda at all in the philosophy teaching. We just ask that you think and question with an open mind.

(5) Heythrop is small, friendly, and located in beautiful, leafy Kensington Square, very close to Kensington High Street tube station.

(6) Heythrop has some excellent philosophy research going on. Tom Crowther is doing cutting edge work in the Philosophy of Perception, for example (recent paper in Philosophical Review). But our greatest strength is in Philosophy of Religion. We have Professors Keith Ward and John Cottingham working in this area as part of Heythrop's Centre for The Philosophy of Religion. And of course I am regularly publishing in philosophy of religion too (and other areas).

Here's a recent letter of mine published in the Independent:

Dominic Lawson ("A Private Sector Oxbridge? Not Exactly" 7th June) rightly celebrates the one-to-one tutorial system, offered by Oxford and Cambridge, which he describes as "the single most valuable aspect of their educational offering". But Lawson is wrong to say the system is only offered by Oxford and Cambridge. It is also offered by Heythrop College, University of London for undergraduate degrees in philosophy and theology.

If you want to know more, get in touch with me directly. Our website is here. Open days and student conferences available (I run the Philosophy Conferences which will be 8th and 9th March 2012. With Julian Baggini, Michael Lacewing, Chris Horner and myself speaking).

Stephen Law
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Tutor for Admissions BA Hons Philosophy, Heythrop College, University of London.

Feser saga continues

2011-11-14T21:35:00.006Z

Just posted this on Edward Feser's blog here.

It relates to this post of mine below.

It all ultimately related to my paper The Evil God Challenge.

Edward, you say:

“But your [evil god challenge] argument now sounds like it amounts to little more than the claim that the existence of evil is a challenge to the claim that there is no God.”

Ah right the penny has finally dropped. It is indeed a way of developing that traditional challenge and refining it somewhat.

“Which is just the ancient argument from evil warmed over rather than the novel challenge your "evil god challenge" was supposed to be!”

Warmed over, eh?! Charming. Well, the evil God challenge is a way of developing the evidential problem of evil in such a way that very many standard theistic responses are neutralized or revealed to be hopelessly inadequate. Because, it turns out, those responses work just as well in defence of an evil god. The key point is, the evil god hypothesis remains straightforwardly empirically falsified on the basis of what we see around us, notwithstanding the reverse theodicies I consider.

That’s what makes this way of developing the challenge posed by evil somewhat unusual, and worthy of inclusion in the journal Religious Studies, apparently.

Obviously, you’re not terribly impressed. It’s just the evidential problem of evil “warmed over”, you say. But let’s look at an illustration of the evil god challenge in action.

One author dismisses the evidential problem of evil as an argument against the existence of God as “worthless”. Why is it worthless? The author sweeps the problem to one side because they suppose it’s entirely dealt with by two points. The first point is: they suppose we can look forward to a limitless afterlife in which we’ll enjoy the beatific vision, and this is going to more than compensate us for all the horror we experience in this life. The author quotes St. Paul, who said: “the sufferings of the present time are not worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed to us.” The second point the author makes is this: that the pain etc. we experience now is the price paid for greater goods to be gained later. They illustrate by pointing out how suffering of child being forced to learn the violin is the price justifiably paid for great good of that child’s later being able to play violin (they admit this isn’t suffering on quite the scale of Auschwitz, but insist the same basic principle applies). Indeed, this particular author adds that, by supposing evil constitutes good evidence against a good God, the atheist is just assuming there’s no God and thus no wondrous afterlife etc. that more than compensates the evils we experience now. So the atheist’s argument based on suffering is hopelessly circular. Indeed, this author says that atheists who run such an argument need “a course in logic”!

But now here’s where the evil God challenge comes in. All these points made above can be flipped in defence of belief in an evil god. A defender of belief in an evil god can say we can look forward to an afterlife of unremitting terror and suffering, and this will more than compensate us for any good enjoyed now. Moreover, these goods we experience now are actually the price paid for greater evils (I give loads of examples in my paper). Moreover, by assuming that the goods we see around us constitute good evidence against an evil God, the evil-god-rejecter is just assuming there’s no evil God and thus no hellish afterlife that more than ouweighs the goods. So this objection against belief in an evil god is hopelessly circular. Clearly, this critic of the evil god hypothesis needs” a course in logic”!

Now, despite the above moves that might be made in defence of belief in an evil God, it remains pretty obvious that there’s just way, way too much good stuff in the world for this plausibly to be considered the creation of an evil God.

In fact, most of us (except e.g. the skeptical theists) will continue to consider the evil god hypothesis absurd on empirical grounds (whether or not also on other grounds), notwithstanding these rather ridiculous attempts at explaining all the good stuff away.

Of course, none of this is to say that the evil God challenge cannot be met. For example, the author in question might perhaps come up with some really extraordinarily good argument for the existence of a good god, an argument that’s so very, very compelling that it more than outweighs the mountain of evidence against such a god constituted by the vast quantities of horror and suffering we see around us (but boy it’s going to have to be a really good argument!).

But that’s what this particular author needs to do to really meet the evil god challenge. Otherwise, their attempts to deal with the problem of evil have been exposed as hopelessly inadequate. Despite all the dismissive posturing about critics needing a “course in logic”.

So who is the author in question?

He is the author of a book called “The Last Superstition” (see pages 161-165)

That’s to say, it’s you, Edward.

Superior audio recording of my debate with William Lane Craig

2011-11-14T21:09:00.004Z

Justicar has very kindly produced a much-improved version of the audio of the debate between myself and William Lane Craig. The original audio recording was pretty ropey. This is much better and the blurbs are largely edited out too.

Go here.

I am hoping the video, when released, will have better audio. I was kitted out with two shirt mics plus there were two lectern mikes so I assumed the audio would be fine. It wasn't.

Fumbling Feser

2011-11-14T08:20:00.013Z

Edward Feser, Catholic philosopher and big fan of Aquinas, wrote a post a year ago explaining why he thinks the evil God challenge doesn't apply to his sort of non-personal, classical God-of-the-philosophers. This is because Aquinas et al demonstrated that anything that's God must be good, given the medieval background metaphysics. Hence an evil god is impossible.

I pointed out that showing an evil God is impossible is irrelevant (I also pointed this out in the paper "The Evil God Challenge" which Feser has read). Even if there were a conceptual problem with the idea of an evil God (and there may also be similar problems with the notion of a good God, actually, but let's set that worry to one side), that does not prevent the evil God challenge from being run. Feser still can't understand why, but here's the reason.

Assume an evil God is conceptually impossible. Nevertheless, there might also be powerful empirical evidence against an evil God. In fact there is - far too much good in the world. And if that empirical evidence is sufficient to rule an evil God out beyond reasonable doubt (at least until some very good counter-argument etc. is forthcoming), why then isn't the evil we see sufficient to rule a good god out beyond reasonable doubt(at least until some very good counter-argument etc. is forthcoming)?

Some have objected that if something is ruled out conceptually, then it makes no sense to suppose there could also be empirical evidence against it. But it seems there can.

For example, William Lane Craig's cosmological argument relies on the thought that an infinitely old universe is a conceptual impossibility. Yet Craig also thinks there's also good empirical evidence that the universe is not infinitely old (i.e. evidence for a Big Bang). So he, for one, accepts that something that's ruled out conceptually might also be reasonably ruled out inductively, on the basis of empirical observation.

Anyhoo, Feser has responded again, in a post called "Broken Law", repeating the same old points. So I thought I'd call this post "Fumbling Feser" in reply. As Feser continues to fumble and drop the ball on the evil God challenge. He continues to maintain it just "doesn't apply" to his classical God. In fact, it does apply. Which is not to say it cannot be met (perhaps even by the construction of a cogent demonstrative proof of the existence of a good God, whether personal or non-personal, perhaps even in the style of Aquinas).

So here's my latest comment on his "Broken Law" post...

Hi Edward

You say:

"Suppose, finally, that you also think there are demonstrative (as opposed to merely inductive or evidential) arguments for the existence of the God of classical theism -- that you endorse an Aristotelian argument from motion to a purely actual Unmoved Mover, say, or Aquinas’s “existence argument” in On Being and Essence for something that is subsistent being itself, or a Neo-Platonic argument for a source of the world that is an absolute unity. If such arguments work at all, then given the background metaphysics, they prove conclusively (and not merely with some degree of probability) that there is a God who cannot in principle be anything less than perfectly good."

Perhaps you have such an argument. In setting out the challenge, I don't claim you don't. This is the bit you still don't understand. The evil God challenge is a challenge. Perhaps the above meets it. Perhaps not. But the above does not show that that the challenge does not apply, i.e. because if correct it shows an evil god is impossible.

Showing an evil God is impossible is irrelevant, for the reasons I explained and which you still don't get.

Demonstrating there's a good god IS relevant, but it is simply a way of meeting the challenge, rather than showing it "does not apply".

You may think this is a fine distinction that doesn't matter much, but it does matter. Because it leaves the very powerfully formulated version of the problem of evil set up via the evil god challenge still on the table, rather than just swept aside on the grounds it "doesn't apply".

Do your medieval "demonstrations" that few philosophers find persuasive really carry much weight against my otherwise overwhelming empirical evidence that your God does not exist?

We'd need to examine them and find out. Though, as I say, the verdict of the philosophical community is already in.

I know you think that's because most philosophers don't really understand them. Actually, I am pretty familiar with arguments of your sort. I've even read your book on Aquinas.

In effect, your response to the evil god challenge is just to say *the evidential problem of evil* "doesn't apply" to your classical God. Because you can demonstrate your God exists.

As a response to the problem of evil - and my evil god challenge - that's obviously hopelessly question-begging.

POSTSCRIPT: The moral is, if you think you can ignore the evil god challenge because you think you can show a priori that an evil god is impossible, think again. That does NOT deal with the challenge. Feser's objection is just an illustration of this more general error.

Universal Church of the Kingdom of God coming through your letter box soon

2011-11-12T17:52:00.027Z

I just got a newspaper though my front door (in Oxford) called City News, with a red top and front page splash about benefit cheats and scroungers. As you read through it, it starts to dawn on you that this might not be a free newspaper, but an advert of some sort.

It reads just like a paper. But there are references to something called UCKG, and how it has helped people out of welfare dependency, saving the Government millions. On the back page there's a full page spread promoting events round the country, at centres around the country, of the UCKG.

The UCKG is the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God.

The UCKG has been linked with charges of fraud, tax evasion, extracting money from the poor and directing it to church leaders, money laundering, child demonic-possession cases, and the appalling death of Victoria Climbie (see the wiki page on the church for details).

The UCKG is a focus of cult watcher Rick Ross. Go here for a long list of worrying reports.

There have also been charges of whipping up hatred against Catholics, and even pretending to be the Catholic Church.

If I had a scanner, I'd scan in a few pages of the newspaper so you could take a look....

STOP PRESS. I just found this video below. Note the references to curing cancer and creating wealth through prayer.

It's a different version of the paper to the one I got. The following video is kind of interesting. The Brazilian founder of the church appears part way though explaining to his followers how to con people out of their money, "Either you give or you go to hell!".

POSTSCRIPT. INCIDENTALLY... the UCKG has charitable status in the UK. The Charity Commission said, after their investigation of UCKG in 2003 (following the Victoria Climbie affair - Victoria was taken to the UCKG by her aunt Kouao, where she was seen by Pastor Lima. The Public Inquiry report said: "Pastor Lima expressed the view that Victoria was possessed by an evil spirit and advised Kouao to bring Victoria back to the church a week later." Victoria was tortured to death by her aunt and her boyfriend within a week), that it found no evidence that the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God claimed to be able to heal individuals or purge them of demons. Rick Ross's cult watch website says that on the same day the CC reported: "Despite the charity regulator's ruling the churches' website was today advertising "strong prayer to destroy witchcraft, demon-possession" - an apparent reference to exorcism."

Feser's criticsm of the "Evil God Challenge"

2011-11-12T11:16:00.005Z

Edward Feser thinks he has shown my evil God challenge doesn't apply to his god. I explained why he was mistaken ages ago, promised him a further response to his response but then never got round to it. Hence he posed this.

Well, I have now explained in the comments section in some detail why Edward is just mistaken (see comments on 11th and 12th nov 2011). I will post something here as his confusion is a quite common (even more common now, thanks to Edward).

The Evil God challenge - skeptical theist response

2011-11-09T09:11:00.017Z

I just put this comment as a reply to a comment made on the preceding post. As it's so long, and contains some details that may be of interest to others, I am also posting it here...

Hi Brigadier

The Evil God Challenge is supposed to be a challenge. The challenge is to explain why belief in a good god is significantly more reasonable than belief in an evil god. Craig tried to meet the challenge, but failed. I see you are coming close to admitting that he failed, as you are now attempting to bolster his arguments with additional arguments of your own.

Do your arguments succeed?

No.

I said earlier about intuitions generally that: "you can't just drop them without adequate justification."

You agreed, but said about our intuition that there’s more than enough empirical evidence to reasonably rule out an evil god: “Sure, but the point is that once you realize certain metaphysical/logical distinctions of which you were previously unaware, then you also realize that your intuitions, because insensitive to such distinctions, went astray. Your previous intuitions then cannot be used as justification for your beliefs.”

But that there is reason to reject such intuitions is, at this point, pure assertion! You need to justify your claim that this particular intuition is unreliable. And what is your justification? It’s this:

“God knows a lot more than I do; ergo, God knows a lot more about morality than I do; ergo, there are probably a lot more moral properties than I realize. But if that is true, I can't claim with confidence that none of these properties form the justifying goods for the many evils for which we cannot find apparent justification.”

This obviously won’t do as it stands. Suppose aliens of vastly greater intellectual and other powers visit earth. They kill and eat our kids. We watch as they parade with our with our kids’ heads stuck on poles, while sucking the marrow out of their bones. They makes us watch. We say: “Why, these aliens are terrible, evil things!” But someone says. “Ah, but they know a lot more than we do. Ergo they know a lot more about morality (especially the long term moral consequences of their actions) than we do. But then we cannot claim with confidence that there aren’t moral properties unknown to us but known to the aliens that form justifying good for the many evils they do for which we cannot find apparent justification.”

You will have to agree with that assessment, given the argument you just gave above. You must say, “Why yes, how silly of me – I now see my initial response was just an unreliable intuition resulting from my ignorance of certain metaphysical/logical distinctions. In fact, there’s no good empirical evidence that these aliens aren’t entirely caring, benevolent beings.” This would be a borderline insane response I’d suggest. And also bullshit.

Of course (I’m now doing your work for you), you might now try a different argument, perhaps one that stresses God’s *infinite* wisdom, which aliens, being finite beings, will lack. But why would introducing infinite wisdom transform your ludicrous argument into a good one? Why would that fact that God has infinite wisdom, if he exists, mean there’s no limit to the horror that can exist in the world without it being pretty good evidence there’s no such god? Argument please.

Remember, it’s not good enough to show, what is obviously true, that if there’s such a God, there will probably be some evils the justifying good for which will be unknown to us. You need to establish much more than that before you can justifiably sweep hundreds of millions of years of horror - e.g. of animals that must tear each other limb from limb to survive, of millions of generations of children about a third to a half of whom died slowly and agonizingly of disease or starvation before the age of five - under the carpet of “god’s mysterious ways”.

Incidentally, I also note that Craig’s cosmological argument relies on the claim that actual infinities are impossible. Which is why infinity doesn’t crop up in Craig’s characterization of God (so far as I can see). So this “infinite wisdom” move would appear to be blocked in any case - if I've understood him correctly.

Earlier I said:

"Also notice, by the way, that … the skepticism you're invoking to save your God belief from being empirically falsified would seem to be ridiculously endemic. It spreads to other beliefs. For example, it then follows we can't know God doesn't have good reasons for making it look like the world is older than 6k years even though it's not. So, show a little faith and stick to the scripture!"

You, Brigadier, have just replied to this: “I deny this follows because we can see that some things, such as lying, are intrinsically wrong, and will only be justified in very special cases, if at all, and that none of these cases will apply to God. Greater goods are relevant to extrinsic wrongs.”

You seem to be suggesting that God’s making a world that looks as it does, if it is 6k years old, would involve him lying. And God wouldn’t lie. I now reply: Who says God would be lying if he made a world that looks like it's much older than it's actual 6k years? Was he lying when he made a world that looks like it doesn’t move? No.

So, your counter-intuitive and inadequately justified skepticism regarding the possibility of us reasonably ruling out various god hypothesis on the basis of empirical evidence also has the apparent further absurd consequence that you have no good empirical reason to reject Young Earth Creationism. Your belief that the empirical evidence undermines YEC is, it turns out, just an “unreliable intuition”! One that Wykstra et al have shown to mistaken. You should abandon that mere intuition!

I might also add that, if this implausible degree of skepticism were adopted, then we would not be in a position reasonably to conclude on the basis of observation that mice are not the thing that God values most. True, this may not seem like the kind of world a mice-valuing God would create (it’s not sufficiently mice-friendly or mice-centered). But, for all we know, God’s apparent utter disregard for the well-being of mice, and, indeed, apparent sadism towards them (cats etc.), is really no evidence at all that he doesn’t value mice above everything else.

This degree of skepticism would be a wholly implausible, ad hoc way of salvaging belief in a mice-centered God from empirical refutation. It’s no less an implausible, ad hoc way of salvaging your belief in a human-centered or good-centered God.

One last thing. You continue to ignore my point that, in any case, even if skeptical theism COULD be shown to be true, it goes NO WAY AT ALL towards showing why belief in a good god is very significantly more reasonable than the absurd belief in an evil god. So it goes NO WAY AT ALL toward answering the evil god challenge.

But in any case I note that we have now strayed way beyond the parameters of anything Craig said in the debate or above. Craig has clearly failed to meet the evil god challenge.

Craig's website response re our debate

2011-11-07T11:05:00.044Z

This response to my evil god challenge has recently appeared on William Lane Craig’s website, after our debate. It’s posted in full below. With my comments in bold. The post takes the form of Craig responding to a question emailed by a fan.

Question:

Dr. Craig this is a simple question in regards to your debate with Stephen Law.
Suppose someone hypothetically argued for an Evil God that exists. Could one use the "Problem of Good" as an objection, just as Non-Theists use the "Problem of Evil" against theism?

Would all the arguments such as Plantinga's Free Will Defense be flipped around, and actually work against the problem of good?

So far, it truly does appear that Evil is a privation of good, and the arguments used to counter the "Problem of Good" against an Evil God do not work very well as a refutation.

Cornell
USA

BTW notice Craig never responds re the comment on flipping Plantinga's free will defence (which applies only to the logical problem of evil, and not this one, as Craig knows) or re. the "privation" view of evil, which I don't think Craig subscribes to (it's more of a Catholic thing)? Craig just ignores those bits of the email.

Dr. Craig responds:

Cornell, I’m grateful for your question because I think it’s very easy to misunderstand Stephen Law’s “evil god” objection as a result of conflating distinct questions.

First, let’s begin with the cosmological and teleological arguments. If successful, these give us a Creator and Designer of the universe. Notice, however, that they do not tell us much or anything about the moral character of the Creator/Designer. In my popular talks, I sometimes put this point by saying that the Creator/Designer might be an absolute stinker, for all we know!

Quite.

That’s why, by the way, the widespread objection to Intelligent Design based on the cruelties of Nature is worthless. As I point out in my debate with Francisco Ayala, one might as well argue that a medieval torture rack does not need an intelligent designer because anyone who would make such a thing couldn’t be a very nice person.

Precisely because the cosmological and teleological arguments say little or nothing about the moral character of the Creator/Designer, they are immune to the atheist’s most important argument, the problem of evil and suffering. They are therefore powerful components of a cumulative case for theism. They cannot be ignored.

But that’s just what Stephen Law did in the debate. His response to these arguments, as you saw, is simply to say that even if successful, these arguments do not prove the existence of God, since in order to infer that the Creator/Designer is God, one has to prove that He is good. But for all we know from these arguments, the Creator/Designer could be evil. This is NOT, however, the “evil god” objection.

Actually, the evil god objection does apply here, as I clearly explained both during the debate and in the academic paper. These arguments provide no more support to belief in a good god than belief in an evil god. So, given belief in an evil god is absurd, why should we suppose belief in a good god more reasonable, not withstanding the cosmological and teleological arguments?

Law is merely noting the incompleteness of the theist’s case so far: we’ve got a Creator/Designer, but we’ve as yet no reason to think Him good and therefore God.

BTW Craig defines God as good. Hence, if I establish beyond reasonable doubt that there’s no good god, then I have established there’s no God, as Craig defines God. That was my aim. Of course you can retreat to a deist god if you like. But that's not Craig's god.

In the debate, Law made the remarkable claim that the cosmological and teleological arguments are not even part of a cumulative case for theism!

No that is simply not true. I said they make equally as cumulative a case for an evil god. As Craig actually just admitted above. So the challenge I put to Craig is to explain why, if belief in an evil god is absurd, notwithstanding the cosmological and teleological arguments, belief in a good god is not similarly absurd. That is the evil god challenge.

This is clearly wrong. The probability of God’s existence given the evidence for a Creator/Designer of the universe is obviously higher than without it. To borrow Tim McGrew’s illustration, suppose you’re expecting an afternoon visit from a friend in the military. That afternoon your wife tells you, “There’s a man coming up the walk.” Do you shrug this off with the comment, “Oh, well, it could be anybody!” She then says, “He’s wearing a uniform!” Should you respond, “Well, maybe it’s a policeman” and continue to go about your affairs? Of course not! The probability that your friend has arrived, though not certain by any means, is definitely higher given your wife’s testimony than it would have been without it. It is thus part of a cumulative case for the conclusion that your friend has arrived, and it would be folly to ignore it. Similarly, the probability that God exists is much higher given the evidence for a Creator/Designer than it is in the absence of such evidence.

Even if correct, this is as much evidence for an evil god as for a good god. So why think belief in a good god is more reasonable than belief in an evil god. That’s the evil god challenge. Craig has so far entirely failed to meet it. When is Craig going to get to the reasons for believing in a good god, I wonder... ah here it comes...sort of....

So what argument does the natural theologian give for thinking that the Creator/Designer is good? Here Law mistakenly seems to think that the theist arrives at the conclusion that the Creator/Designer is good by an inductive survey of the world’s events.

No. I don’t do that. I explained why in my first rebuttal. Craig is simply choosing to ignore what I said and continuing to attack a straw man.

Seeing all the goods in the world, the theist supposedly infers that the Creator/Designer is (perfectly) good.

Of course Christians don’t do that. Obviously. Craig is still attacking a straw man.

That assumption is simply incorrect.

Yes, it is. Good job I don’t make it.

As Michael Bergmann and Jeff Brower point out in their response to Law, “no traditional theists we know of have ever argued for God’s perfect goodness . . . by simply inferring it from the existence of some good in the world.”i They conclude that Law hasn’t “done anything to touch, much less undermine, traditional belief in the existence of a being which is at once all-powerful and all-good.

Yes, Bergmann and Brouwer got quite the wrong end of the stick re my evil God challenge. I am asking – what is the case for supposing there’s not just a creator, but a good one? Please explains why belief in a good god is reasonable, or not unreasonable, while belief in an evil god remains downright absurd? Craig has still not yet given us an answer... it doesn’t have to be an empirically-based case. Obviously.

If Law wants to mount a real attack on traditional theism, he will need at the very least to engage some of the actual support that has been given . . . for belief in God’s goodness, explaining why it fails, rather than completely ignoring it.”ii

Right. I asked Craig to give it...

What many natural theologians, including myself, do to justify belief in the perfect goodness of the Creator/Designer proved by the cosmological and teleological arguments is to offer various moral arguments for God. In so doing, one needn’t appeal to the good in the world at all; one can instead point to instances of objective moral evil.

Right. Finally we get to a supposed reason for supposing belief in a good god is significantly more reasonable than belief in an evil god, which even Craig admits is absurd. Notice that all of the preceding text was irrelevant so far as meeting the evil god challenge is concerned.

So, in our debate, I argued:

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
2. Evil exists.
3. Therefore, objective moral values exist. (Some things are evil!)
4. Therefore, God exists.

Law takes almost no cognizance in his published work of such an argument for God as the foundation of objective moral values and duties. All I could find is the brief comment: “it remains possible that a cogent moral argument along the above lines might yet be constructed. I suspect that . . . this is the most promising line of attack [for theists to take].”iii I concur.

Like Professor Richard Swinburne (a far more widely and highly rated and pre-eminent philosopher than Craig) and several other Christian philosophers, I find Craig's moral argument, and indeed all moral arguments for the existence of God, utterly unconvincing. Hence I don't bother with them much

It’s worth noting that Law agrees with premiss (2) because he is a moral realist.

This is a little sneaky. I was very clear that I agree objective moral values exist up until I am shown reason to believe the first premise is true (which Craig never supplied). At that point, the rational thing for me to do, given overwhelming empirical evidence there’s no god (as Craig defines god), is to give up on moral realism. I explained all this not once but three times in the debate. In my second rebuttal, the QandA and in my summary too. Craig ignored what I said on the night and has here also just ignored what I said.

So in order to resist the force of this argument, he must deny (1).

No, as I just pointed out and pointed out three times in the debate, given the truth of the first premise and overwhelming evidence against the existence of a good god, the rational conclusion to draw is that there are no objective moral values. I might not like that conclusion very much. And it is counterintuitive. But, hey, sometimes we have to give up what seemed intuitively obvious, such as that the earth does not move, in the face of powerful evidence to the contrary.

Here's what I said about this in the debate. It's verbatim. Notice how Craig continues to ignore the point.

What of the second premise of Craig’s moral argument? Objective moral values exist.

This is undoubtedly a belief that just seems obviously true. But of course that doesn’t guarantee it is true.

Yes it seems like there are objective moral values. That isn’t a belief we should abandon easily. But it’s by no means irrefutable.

After all, we have a powerful impression that the Earth doesn’t move. It really, really doesn’t seem to move. But if we’re given powerful evidence that it does move, and it’s also explained why it nevertheless seems like it doesn’t, then the rational thing for us to believe is that our initial, highly convincing impression was wrong.

The moral is, even if Professor Craig could show his first premise is true, he can’t deal with the problem of evil by just digging in his heels and saying, “But look, it really, really seems to us as if there are objective moral values, so there must be a God.”

When placed next to the problem of evil, Craig’s argument does little to undermine the problem. Rather, it just combines with it to deliver the conclusion that there are no objective moral values.

That conclusion would be further reinforced by an evolutionary explanation of why it would still seem to us that there are objective moral values even if there aren’t.

Now I don’t doubt Professor Craig doesn’t want to believe there are no objective moral values. Hey, I don’t want to believe it. But this isn’t an exercise in wishful thinking.

So, even if its first premise were true, Craig’s moral argument still hardly offers much of a riposte to the evidential problem of evil.

But on this score, he has very little to offer by way of explanation of objective moral values and duties in an atheistic universe. Indeed, after presenting the old Euthyphro dilemma,...

Incidentally, I never presented the Euthyphro dilemma in the debate. Some wonder why. The answer is that Craig’s version of theism is immune to it (at least in it’s simplest form). Against Craig, I used different arguments, which Craig is now choosing to ignore (see above).

...he admits, “None of this is to deny that there is

a puzzle about the objectivity of morality—about how it is possible for things to be morally right or wrong independently of how we, or even God, might judge them to be.”iv

But he has no solution to this puzzle to offer.

This is all irrelevant. Craig needs to show his premises are true to make a case for a specifically good god. The onus is not on me to show the first premise is false. Hell, I could admit it’s true, and still Craig’s argument fails to produce much of a response to the evidential problem of evil, as I just pointed out. And pointed out three times in the debate. Note that, even if Craig can show his first premise is true, he faces a mountain of empirical evidence against the good god hypothesis. That mountain of evidence, when combined with the first premise, just delivers the conclusion there are no objective moral values.

But anyway, what is Craig’s argument for the truth of premise 1?

Then he notes the theistic solution: “suppose that ‘God’ refers, not to the creator of this yardstick, but to the yardstick itself . . . then to admit that there is an absolute standard of right and wrong is just to admit that God exists. . . .”v That’s absolutely right! So what’s his objection to the theistic solution? He says, “this is a very thin understanding of what ‘God’ means.”vi This objection is based on a confusion between semantics and ontology. The theist isn’t offering a definition of what the word “God” means. The theist is claiming that God, in all His fullness, is the paradigm of moral value.

Yes, but, as Craig says, this is just a claim, isn't it? Why suppose the yardstick is a god? What's the argument both that there's such a yardstick and it can only be the Judeo-Christian, Craig-type God? It's a huge leap from "There's an objective moral yardstick" to "The Judeo-Christian God exists." Even if the case for the yardstick could be made. What Christian's need to ask themselves, reading this, is, what is Craig's actual argument for his first premise?

God is the yardstick of moral value.

This is pure assertion.

By contrast Law more or less admits that the atheist has no explanation of the existence of the objective moral values and duties that we both apprehend.

I didn't and don't admit that. And I am still waiting for the argument that there can be no objective moral values if Craig's god does not exist. Where is it? And in any case, as I have just pointed out, to be effective, the evil god challenge does not require that the atheist provide an account of objective moral duties/values. The atheist can be a moral nihilist.

So far, the “evil god” objection has yet to appear on the scene. We have simply been discussing what grounds the theist might offer for thinking that God exists, i.e., that there is a perfectly good Creator/Designer of the universe.

What grounds? Craig just gave us an argument widely condemned even by some leading theists (e.g. Swinburne), and failed to support his premises, esp. premise (1). And, as I have pointed out, even if the first premise could be shown to be true, the argument is still almost entirely useless as a riposte to the evidential problem of evil.

It is at this juncture that Law raises the problem of evil. As we agreed in the debate, this problem can be stated in non-moral terms by substituting “suffering” for “evil.”

Yes, so I hope Craig will now stop insisting that he has a wonderful, knock-down refutation of the problem of evil. As he does here, for example... First year philosophers learn that this is a hopeless solution to the problem of evil, but Craig continues to repeat this stuff because he knows a lot of gullible, philosophically-unsophisticated theists will fall for it and go away thinking “Why, the problem of evil has been solved!”

The objection is that the suffering in the world provides, in Law’s words, “overwhelming evidence“ that God does not exist. For an all-powerful, all-good being, it is alleged, would not permit the suffering we observe in the world. Therefore, such a being probably does not exist.

Suppose that the theist responds, as I do, by saying that, for all we know, God may well have morally sufficient reasons for permitting the suffering in the world. We all know cases in which we permit suffering because we have morally sufficient reasons for doing so. What Law would have to prove...

I note that the weasel word “prove” crops up here. What does it mean? When Craig gets cornered, his opponents suddenly start having to “prove” things. All I am aiming to do is establish beyond reasonable doubt that Craig’s god does not exist.

The evidential problem of good is: there’s far too much good for it plausibly to put down as the price paid for some greater cosmic evil. Most of us can immediately recognize that this is true.

So, the evidential problem of evil is, similarly, that there’s such vast quantities of seemingly gratuitous evil over hundreds of millions of years that it’s just not plausible that it’s the price paid for some greater good. It's just not plausible that not even an ounce of it is really gratuitous. Is this a "proof"? It's a “proof” only in the sense that, in the absence of any good counter-argument, it gives us very good grounds for supposing there’s no good god (just as the evidential problem of good gives us very good grounds for supposing there’s no evil god).

...is that it’s improbable that God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting the suffering in the world. But how could he possibly prove that?

I don’t have to prove it beyond pointing out we have very good grounds for supposing it’s true. Which we do. And certainly most of us see this when we consider the evil god hypothesis.

The point is, there’s clearly evidence sufficient to establish beyond reasonable doubt that there’s no evil god. But then why isn’t there evidence sufficient to establish beyond reasonable doubt there’s no good god? Craig has no answer, yet. Just a bit of sleight of hand with the word “proof”.

God’s justifying reasons might never appear in our lifetime or locale or even in this life. Suppose, for example, that God’s purpose for human life is not happiness in this life but the knowledge of God, which is an incommensurable good. It may be the case, for all we know, that only in a world suffused with natural and moral evil would the maximum number of people freely come to know God and find eternal life. Law would have to show there is a feasible world available to God in which there is a comparable knowledge of God and His salvation but with less suffering. That’s pure speculation.

No, it’s not. It’s a reasonable conclusion based on a mountain of evidence. Most of us know it’s not “pure speculation” to suppose the vast quantities of good we see around us constitute very good evidence there’s no evil god. We can see there’s way too much good for this world plausibly to be considered the creation of such an evil being. So why is it suddenly “pure speculation” to suppose that hundreds of millions of years of appalling suffering is good evidence there’s no god god? After all, as I pointed out in the debate and the paper, an evil god may have his cosmic reasons for allowing good now so that greater evils can be achieved (perhaps even in an afterlife), or whatever! Yet it’s pretty clear that just won’t wash, isn’t it?

It is at this point that the “evil god” objection finally comes to the fore.

No, in the debate, it came to the fore when I was discussing the cosmological and teleological arguments, but Craig has conveniently airbrushed that out as it makes it clearer still why those two arguments are entirely irrelevant so far as an assessment of whether or not I succeeded in establishing beyond reasonable doubt that Craig's god does not exist.

Law’s response to the above is to say that if such a response is tenable, then someone who believes in an evil god could also justifiably say that the goods in the world do not constitute refutation of the existence of such a deity because the evil god could similarly have reasons for permitting all the goods in the world, which Law just takes to be absurd.

A couple of comments: the “evil god” hypothesis is not suggesting that God could be evil. For, by definition, God is a being which is worthy of worship, and so no being which is evil could be God. That’s why Peter Millican, who independently formulated a similar argument, refers to the evil supreme being, not as “God,” but as “anti-God.”vii That is less misleading than Law’s terminology.

Sure, I don’t care what you call him. Though I note that plenty of evil beings have been called gods, historically. This is just semantics.

One can refer to this being as “god” only by using the lower case “g,” as I have done. The idea is that there is a Creator/Designer of the universe who is evil. You can see immediately why this argument, which properly belongs to concerns of theodicy, gets conflated with arguments for God’s goodness.

Big "G", small "g". Frankly. Who cares?

Arguments for god’s goodness? We haven’t had one yet. Except for a highly dodgy one with suspect premises which weren’t even argued for. A moral argument, which would, in any case, even with an established first premise, fail to offer much of a riposte to the evidential problem of evil.

Notice, too, that Law is not giving reasons to think that an evil god exists. On the contrary, it is essential to his argument that such a supposition is absurd.
The claim of the argument is that given the existence of an evil god, it is highly improbable that the goods in the world would exist (Pr (goods½evil god << 0.5)).
Well, that all of them would, yes. There might well still be some.
By the same token, given the existence of God, it is highly improbable that the suffering in the world would exist (Pr (suffering½God << 0.5)). So just as the goods in the world constitute overwhelming evidence against the existence of an evil god, the suffering in the world constitutes overwhelming evidence against the existence of God.

I suspect that Law thinks that theists will try to deny the symmetry between these two cases.

No, not necessarily. Some don't.

But that would be a mistake. The two situations strike me as symmetrical—I would just say that in neither case would we be justified in thinking that the probability is low. Just as a good Creator/Designer could have good reasons for permitting the suffering in the world, so an evil Creator/Designer could have malicious reasons for allowing the goods in the world, precisely for the reasons Law explains. My initial response, then, still holds: we’re just not in a position to make these kinds of probability judgements with any sort of confidence.

Craig has spotted just how much trouble he is in with the evil god challenge, and has decided to play a skeptical card. He insists we just can’t know, on the basis of what we see around us, that there’s no evil god. This could quite easily turn out to be the creation of an all-powerful, all-evil deity, given what we see around us.

Right. Well, I’ve run the evil god challenge many times in front of audiences, and I have often started by asking why an evil god is absurd, and I have on almost every occasion got a mass of nodding heads when I have suggested we can rule this god out on the basis of what we observe around us. Even when the audience is almost entirely Christian.

It’s only later, when the repercussions of this are realized for Christianity, that Christians suddenly get highly skeptical about what conclusions can be drawn on the basis of what we see around us. As Craig has here.

So now notice that, if he is to salvage his belief in the reasonableness of belief in a God god, he must do several things.

First, he must justify this very radical skepticism. It’s counter-intuitive. The onus is clearly on him to explain why we should suppose that it’s unreasonable to reject belief in an evil god on the basis of what we see around us. So what’s his justification?

In our debate Law seemed flat-footed in the face of this response. He takes it as just obvious that an evil god would not permit the goods we see in the world—look at the rainbows, look at the children, etc.!

Actually, almost everyone does find it obvious, until the consequences for theism are realized.

But this is no better than the atheist who takes it to be just obvious that the suffering in the world would not be permitted by God—look at the tsunamis, look at the Holocaust, etc. This sort of response is basically an appeal to emotions and fails to grapple with the fact that a Creator/Designer of the world could well have sufficient reasons for permitting what he does.

Appeal to emotions? Eh? We have an emotional response, yes. That does not make it irrational. Any more than the fact Craig has an emotional response to the thought that Jesus loves him makes that belief irrational. This is pure rhetoric from Craig.

“...the fact that a Creator/Designer of the world could well have sufficient reasons for permitting what he does.” So where is the argument to support this? Here it comes…

I was gratified that other theists—like Steve Wykstra, Dan Howard-Snyder, and Mike Rea—who have specialized in the problem of evil share my assessment.

Yes and plenty of theists who specialize on the problem don’t share Craig’s assessment. Craig is here slipping in an argument from authority. Which he himself condemns. And condemned in our debate, funnily enough, when I pointed out Richard Swinburne, one of the top two or three philosophers of religion in the world, and a Christian, find Craig’s argument utterly unonconvincing. “That’s an argument from authority!” complained Craig. The irony.

Wykstra, for example, wrote:

any being (good or evil) big enough to make the heavens and the earth gives a high conditional probability that we'd regularly be unable to discern that being's ultimate purposes for many events around us. So our actual . . . inability to do so isn't strong evidence that those purposes (or that being) isn't there. . . . Just as the inscrutable evil in the world doesn't give much evidence that there's no totally good creator, so the inscrutable good in the world doesn't give much evidence that there's no totally evil Creator.viii

The point is that once you posit the existence of an evil Creator/Designer of the cosmos, all bets are off.

Yes, of course, if there’s a good/evil cosmic being there will probably be quite a few events the good/evil reasons for which we cannot understand. But that obviously doesn't establish that NO amount of good or horror, no matter how much, will always fail to provide us with ANY SIGNIFICANT EVIDENCE AT ALL that there’s no good/evil god. Which is what Craig would need to show in order to immunize his God belief against empirical refutation. He hasn’t shown that.

And in fact most of us have the very powerful starting intuition that there is in fact more than enough good stuff in the world for us to be able reasonably to rule out an evil god. So why not a good god?

But look, let's suppose that Craig and the skeptical theists like Wykstra are right. Suppose Craig did actually manage to construct a good supporting argument for his intuitively implausible skepticism. How would that help him, so far as meeting the evil god challenge is concerned, i.e. in terms of showing that a good god is significantly more reasonable than the absurd evil god hypothesis is concerned?

It wouldn't. Given Craig accepts the evil god hypothesis is absurd, he still faces the challenge of having to raise the reasonableness of the good god hypothesis from a base of being level-pegging with the downright absurd evil god hypothesis all the way up to "pretty reasonable'. And all he has to do that, here, is his moral argument. Which, as presented above, is pretty useless. So even adopting Wykstra-style skeptical theism doesn't help Craig much so far as dealing with the evil god challenge is concerned.

Craig ends with a final note...

One final note: I talked earlier about reasons to think that the Creator/Designer of the universe is good.

Yes. We were given one highly contentious argument with a dubious first premise for which no supporting argument was given, and which, even if the first premise was true, would fail to offer any sort of significant riposte to the problem of evil.

Suppose we concede for the sake of argument that an evil Creator/Designer exists. Since this being is evil, that implies that he fails to discharge his moral obligations.

We don’t even have to say he’s evil, as Craig himself has almost conceded. We can just say – he likes suffering.

But where do those come from? How can this evil god have duties to perform which he is violating? Who forbids him to do the wrong things that he does?

This just assumes Craig has good moral argument for God. But we are still waiting to see what it is.

Immediately, we see that such an evil being cannot be supreme: there must be a being who is even higher than this evil god and is the source of the moral obligations which he chooses to flout, a being which is absolute goodness Himself. In other words, if Law’s evil god exists, then God exists.

Entirely question begging – as this assumes Craig has a good moral argument.

Overall assessment: Craig has no decent response to the evil God challenge. He tried (i) playing the skeptical card, insisting that empirical observation can give us no grounds for supposing there’s no good or evil god. This is (a) implausible, and (b) received no decent supporting argument. In addition, (c) even if Craig could establish that kind of skepticism, the onus would STILL be on him to show why belief in Craig’s good God is significantly more reasonable than (the absurd) belief in an evil God. And what was his argument…

It was a moral argument that: (a) is widely rejected, even by some leading Christian philosophers, (b) has dodgy first premise for which Craig has here failed to provide any supporting argument, and (c) even if the first premise could be established, fails to produce an argument that constitutes much of a riposte to the evidential problem of evil. When combined with the evidential problem of evil, the first premise merely delivers the conclusion that there are no objective moral values. Which is counter-intuitive. But hey, that’s doesn’t mean it’s not true. Sometimes reason leads us to abandon beliefs that really seemed to be true (e.g. the earth is stationary).

On the basis of the arguments presented here, it’s almost impossible to avoid the conclusion that Craig’s god belief has, indeed, been straightforwardly empirically refuted. He’s failed to deal with the argument against (he’s just played a counter-intuitive and unjustified skeptical card) and his argument for why belief in a good god is more reasonable than the absurd belief in an evil god was his moral argument – which has a dodgy and unargued-for first premise and which, even if the first premise could be shown to be true, still spectacularly fails to deal with the evidential problem of evil

William Lane Craig is a talented and highly skilled debater who travels the world doing his best to shore up the faith of Christians and provide them with ammunition against atheists and skeptics (such as “evil proves god” - a move that Craig himself conceded in the debate fails to deal with the problem of evil, but which I guarantee we’ll see trotted out again in future debates, because it’s good rhetoric).

Craig's an OK philosopher, though he likes to stick to his scripted answers rather than think on his feet, when he can get out of his depth if someone takes a line for which Craig has no script (which is why he is always weaker in QandA sessions - see e.g. the Shelley Kagan debate). Debating Craig is a little like talking to someone who is trying to sell you double-glazing down the phone. Almost any comeback from you is already anticipated, with a scripted response, and a response to your likely response. So he sounds very, very confident and polished. Spend 20 mins on the phone with the double glazing guy, and you'll find his script allows no other ultimate response than the one he wants - "Why yes, I'd like to buy double glazing".

It's a similar experience debating Craig. I spent a lot of time mapping his responses in advance, and little he said on the night was new. The thing about the evil god challenge is, it did pull him off his usual script a little bit - or at least made it look rather threadbare. Especially in the QandA. That Craig's got remarkably little in the way of response to the evil god challenge is apparent in the text above. There's very little argument - just assertion. As to who won - make up your own minds...

BTW I also think Craig’s a genuine guy, though some of his views (on atheists, the Canaanites, and hell) are not just nutty but really odious.

Still, while he may be a philosopher, the above is a remarkably weak response to the evil god challenge.

Gig in Oxford, Thursday evening

2011-11-02T08:49:00.002Z

My band the Heavy Dexters playing here tomorrow night:

JOE'S BAR AND GRILL
260 Banbury Rd Oxford OX2 7DX.
8.30pm - 10.15pm.Tel. 01865 554484

Notes on "Morality without religion has no firm foundation"

2011-11-02T08:39:00.003Z

Here are some notes I used for the debate: “Morality without religion has no firm foundation”

Notice the focus of this debate is not on god. God gets no mention. The question is specifically about religion. The question before us is: can morality have a firm foundation in the absence of religion. And so it’s on religion that I shall focus.

I think the answer is pretty clearly yes – morality can have at least as firm a foundation in the absence of religion as it can with it.

I want to start by outlining an alternative, non-religious approach to morality which I think is preferable to most traditional, religious approaches.

What are the characteristics of humanism?

1. First, humanists don’t believe in a God. They are atheists, or at least agnostics.

2. Secondly, humanists, like many sensible religious folk, are secularists. They favour an open, democratic society in which the state takes a neutral position with respect to religion.

3. Thirdly, humanists sign up to the idea that morality should focus on achieving human flourishing in this life, rather than on achieving fulfilment in some mythical life-to-come. Obviously they deny that morality is a matter of obeying the commands of supernatural beings, or doing good because of threats of divine punishment. However, there is no specific humanist theory of moral value. Some humanists are utilitarians, but plenty are not. Some are Kantians. And some even reject naturalism.

4. Fourthly, humanists believe in the importance of a certain kind of moral autonomy. They believe people should be encouraged to think and question, and ultimately make their own judgements about what is right or wrong, rather than defer to some external authority – be it religious or political – that will make the judgement for them.

Religions, by contrast, have typically placed far greater emphasis on deference to authority – to a text, a prophet, a leader, or a tradition whose pronouncements are to be accepted more or less without question.

Of course there are plenty of fairly liberal-minded clerics around today who would sign up to the Enlightenment ideal, but many don’t.

The mainstream religions have long track record of attempting to stifle dissent, shutting down and censoring criticism. Of dissuading children from asking certain sorts of “difficult” question.

A friend of mine, no longer a Catholic, tells me that, even today, half a century after her education at the hands of a traditional Catholic school, she still feels guilty if she dares to question a Catholic belief.

Many religions have, historically, focused on instilling such unquestioning, deferential attitudes among the faithful. In many places, they still do.

Visit the US Bible belt and you will find church signs that read “A free thinker is Satan’s slave”.

Indeed, Christian Churches have a long track record of attempting to stifle dissent and criticism by violent means.

Holy Inquisition last victim. Ancient history! Actually, the last victim died in 1824 – just over four of my lifetimes ago. Our freedom to question or reject religious teaching is a very recently won and precious freedom that we shouldn’t just assume will now be around forever.

And of course we’re not just talking about Christian obsession with thought-control. A poll conducted a few years ago of Young British Muslims found that 33% of them thought the appropriate penalty for anyone who leaves the Muslim faith is death.

Even today, several Muslim theocracies will execute anyone who leaves the Muslim faith.

Of course, atheists, too, have had a violent obsession with policing people’s thoughts. Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were all concerned with forcing atheism on people.

But of course, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, while atheists, weren’t humanists. They certainly didn’t value moral autonomy – on encouraging individuals to think and question, any more than did the Holy Inquisition. You can’t blame humanism for the killing fields of Cambodia.

Now here’s what I think is an important advantage of a humanist approach to moral education over both authoritarian atheist approaches and traditional religious approaches.

It’s sometimes said that what motivated those who helped rescue Jews during the Holocaust was their religious conviction. In fact, religious conviction had little….

Philosopher Jonathan Glover says:

If you look at the people who shelter Jews under the Nazis, you find a number of things about them. One is that they tended to have a different kind of upbringing from the average person, they tended to be brought up in a non-authoritarian way, bought up to have sympathy with other people and to discuss things rather than just do what they were told.

Oliners: it was on their emphasis on reasoning in talking about morality with their children that marked out rescuers from non-rescuers. By contrast, the Oliners found that “religiosity was only weakly related to rescue”.

So, if we want to immunize future generations against this sort of moral catastrophe, this evidence at least suggest that our best bet is NOT to rely on religion, but on an approach to moral education that, as it happens, is promoted by humanism.

Evidence that in fact it’s not a religious upbringing that’s required for a firm moral foundation, but the kind of philosophical approach promoted and practices by humanists.

Of course, there are plenty of liberal-minded religious folk who would endorse humanist view. So I don’t say this is an advantage over every form of religious upbringing. But it is far better, I’d suggest, than many forms of traditional religious upbringing - those that, too this day, still tend to dominate around much of the world.

In fact, what many religions encourage people to do cannot be done. Convenient though it might be, I cannot hand over responsibility for making moral judgements to some text, or prophet, or tradition. For suppose my chosen religious moral expert tells me to do some dreadful thing – to go a blow myself up in a supermarket, or slaughter every last Canaanite, say.

Clearly, if I do as I am told, I remain culpable. I can’t absolve myself of responsibility, by saying “But I was just obeying orders”, as I could if I’d been given bad chemical or medical advice, say. Morality is different. We all have an unavoidable responsibility to think and make our own judgement. It’s worth listening to others, even to religious people, for their advice. But, like it or not, you must take responsibility for making the judgements you do.

You have to choose which religion if any to follow, which interpretation of that religion, which leader, and so on. You have to decide whether you ought to follow the advice they give you. And in making that judgement you inevitably have to rely on your own moral compass.

So, like it or not, we do all have to make our own moral judgements. The supposed “firm foundation” that religions provide in the form of ancient texts, or gurus, or prophets, or religions, or traditions, to which can turn for moral certainties, are really not firm at all.

At the end of the day, we all - religious or not - have to make our own moral judgements, relying on our own moral intuitions and sense of what is right and wrong – which are themselves open to question. Better we face up to this fact rather than pretend it is not so.

But isn’t it clear that loss of religion has caused a great many social ills? That religion is necessary if morality is to flourish properly?

No. There’s no good evidence to support that view.

LOSS OF RELIGION HAS CAUSED SOCIAL PROBLEMS

1. Co-occurrence doesn’t establish causal connection. Many other changes: homes stand empty. People don’t know their neighbours or community.

2. 200 years ago 50 times more crime in UK than there is now. Yet far more religious.

3. When we look across world’s developed democracies, we find that those that are most religious – including, of course, the United States (where 43% of citizens claim to attend church weekly) – have the highest rates of homicide, sexually transmitted disease (STD), teen pregnancy and abortion. The least religious countries, such as Canada, Japan and Sweden, have the lowest rates.

4. As historian Francis Fukuyama points out, China also provides an important counter-example to the view that moral order depends on religion:

The dominant cultural force in traditional Chinese society was, of course, Confucianism, which is not a religion at all but rather a rational, secular ethical doctrine. The history of China is replete with instances of moral decline and moral renewal, but none of these is linked particularly to anything a Westerner would call religion. And it is hard to make the case that levels of ordinary morality are lower in Asia than in parts of the world dominated by transcendental religion.

5. To other cultures widespread Western assumption that people won’t be good without belief in God is baffling. Chinese writer Lin Yu Tang”:

To the West, it seems hardly imaginable that the relationship between man and man (morality) could be maintained without reference to a Supreme Being, while to the Chinese it is equally amazing that men should not, or could not, behave toward one another as decent beings without thinking of their indirect relationship through a third party.

6. Our basic morality is a pretty much universal feature of human societies, religious or not.

In many societies, morality has had little to do with religion, and yet those societies, while obviously not always perfect, have hardly been less moral than, say, their Christian or Muslim counterparts. Indeed, we find much the same basic morality.

Religion, it turns out, did not create morality. Rather, religions take a basic morality that is there anyway, probably written into our genes, and then rigidly codifies it and adds a few prohibitions of its own, usually concerning some foodstuffs and sexual practices. Then it says, “Voila! Religion has created morality!”

debate tonight in Farnham, Surrey 8pm

2011-11-01T08:13:00.001Z

farnham HUMANISTS

“Morality without religion has no firm foundation”.

1. The debate will take place on Tuesday 1st November at South Farnham School, Menin Way, Farnham, Surrey GU9 8DY at 7.45pm, (actual introduction and debate starts at 8.00pm), ending promptly at 10.00pm. We will arrange to collect you from the station or, if you prefer, we can send you some maps and directions.

2. The motion is “Morality without religion has no firm foundation”.

3. The motion will be proposed and seconded by Professor Lord Harries of Pentregarth and Dr Nabil Mustapha, Baha’i and Interfaith. It will be opposed by Dr Stephen Law, Provost, Centre for Enquiry and David Pollock, President of the European Humanist Federation. Each side will decide who will speak first and who second. Mrs Norma Corkish, head of Citizen’s Advice Waverley will chair the debate.

4. The debate will be opened by the Chairman of Farnham Humanists who will welcome and thank everyone, introduce the Debate Chairman and say that the debate will be followed by a collection for our charities (charities to be confirmed nearer the debate). The Debate Chairman will introduce the speakers.

5. Each of the four main speakers will be given up to 10 minutes to present their case. Following the four speakers, the debate will be opened to the floor where members of the public can air their views or ask questions for up to 3 minutes each. A small number of nominated people may be specifically invited to speak from the floor. The Chairman will seek to keep contributions for and against the motion equal as far as possible. Following the contributions from the floor the proposer/seconder, then the opposer/seconder will have 10 minutes to respond to questions and to sum up. Each side will decide if one or both of their speakers will respond/sum up.

6. The motion will then be put to a vote (including abstentions). A timekeeper and tellers will be appointed.

Economic quackery: the entirely illusory "skill" of the traders

2011-10-31T11:21:00.011Z

A bit more on economic quackery. This is from an article published yesterday. The associated book by Kahneman looks very interesting. I previously noted this suspicious "skill". It's non-existent character is increasingly well-documented. But incredibly well rewarded!

Mutual funds are run by highly experienced and hardworking professionals who buy and sell stocks to achieve the best possible results for their clients. Nevertheless, the evidence from more than 50 years of research is conclusive: for a large majority of fund managers, the selection of stocks is more like rolling dice than like playing poker. Typically at least two out of every three mutual funds underperform the overall market in any given year.

More important, the year-to-year correlation between the outcomes of mutual funds is very small, barely higher than zero. The successful funds in any given year are mostly lucky; they have a good roll of the dice. There is general agreement among researchers that nearly all stock pickers, whether they know it or not – and few of them do – are playing a game of chance.

The subjective experience of traders is that they are making sensible educated guesses in a situation of great uncertainty. In highly efficient markets, however, educated guesses are no more accurate than blind guesses.

Some years ago I had an unusual opportunity to examine the illusion of financial skill up close. I had been invited to speak to a group of investment advisers in a firm that provided financial advice and other services to very wealthy clients. I asked for some data to prepare my presentation and was granted a small treasure: a spreadsheet summarising the investment outcomes of some 25 anonymous wealth advisers, for each of eight consecutive years. Each adviser's score for each year was his (most of them were men) main determinant of his year-end bonus. It was a simple matter to rank the advisers by their performance in each year and to determine whether there were persistent differences in skill among them and whether the same advisers consistently achieved better returns for their clients year after year.

To answer the question, I computed correlation coefficients between the rankings in each pair of years: year 1 with year 2, year 1 with year 3, and so on up through year 7 with year 8. That yielded 28 correlation coefficients, one for each pair of years. I knew the theory and was prepared to find weak evidence of persistence of skill. Still, I was surprised to find that the average of the 28 correlations was 0.01. In other words, zero. The consistent correlations that would indicate differences in skill were not to be found. The results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill.

No one in the firm seemed to be aware of the nature of the game that its stock pickers were playing. The advisers themselves felt they were competent professionals doing a serious job, and their superiors agreed. On the evening before the seminar, Richard Thaler and I had dinner with some of the top executives of the firm, the people who decide on the size of bonuses.

We asked them to guess the year-to-year correlation in the rankings of individual advisers. They thought they knew what was coming and smiled as they said "not very high" or "performance certainly fluctuates". It quickly became clear, however, that no one expected the average correlation to be zero.

Our message to the executives was that, at least when it came to building portfolios, the firm was rewarding luck as if it were skill. This should have been shocking news to them, but it was not. There was no sign they disbelieved us. How could they? After all, we had analysed their own results, and they were sophisticated enough to see the implications, which we politely refrained from spelling out. We all went on calmly with our dinner, and I have no doubt that both our findings and their implications were quickly swept under the rug and that life in the firm went on as before. The illusion of skill is not only an individual aberration; it is deeply ingrained in their culture. Facts that challenge such basic assumptions – and thereby threaten people's livelihood and self-esteem – are simply not absorbed. The mind does not digest them. This is particularly true of statistical studies of performance, which provide base-rate information that people generally ignore when it clashes with their personal impressions from experience.

The next morning, we reported the findings to the advisers, and their response was equally bland. Their own experience of exercising careful judgment on complex problems was far more compelling to them than an obscure statistical fact. When we were done, one of the executives with whom I had dined the previous evening drove me to the airport. He told me, with a trace of defensiveness: "I have done very well for the firm and no one can take that away from me." I smiled and said nothing. But I thought: "Well, I took it away from you this morning. If your success was due mostly to chance, how much credit are you entitled to take for it?"

Cognitive illusions can be more stubborn than visual illusions. When my colleagues and I in the army learned that our leadership assessment tests had low validity, we accepted that fact intellectually, but it had no impact on either our feelings or our subsequent actions. The response we encountered in the financial firm was even more extreme. I am convinced that the message that Thaler and I delivered to both the executives and the portfolio managers was instantly put away in a dark corner of memory where it would cause no damage.

Why do investors, both amateur and professional, stubbornly believe that they can do better than the market, contrary to an economic theory that most of them accept, and contrary to what they could learn from a dispassionate evaluation of their personal experience? The most potent psychological cause of the illusion is certainly that the people who pick stocks are exercising high-level skills. They consult economic data and forecasts, they examine income statements and balance sheets, they evaluate the quality of top management, and they assess the competition. All this is serious work that requires extensive training. Unfortunately, skill in evaluating the business prospects of a firm is not sufficient for successful stock trading, where the key question is whether the information about the firm is already incorporated in the price of its stock. Traders apparently lack the skill to answer this crucial question, but they appear to be ignorant of their ignorance.

Britain's harmful "quack" economic cure

2011-10-31T10:13:00.012Z

Editorial from the New York Times, Oct 14th.

For a year now, Britain’s economy has been stuck in a vicious cycle of low growth, high unemployment and fiscal austerity. But unlike Greece, which has been forced into induced recession by misguided European Union creditors, Britain has inflicted this harmful quack cure on itself.

Austerity was a deliberate ideological choice by Prime Minister David Cameron’s ruling coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, elected 17 months ago. It has failed and can be expected to keep failing. But neither party is yet prepared to acknowledge that reality and change course.

Britain’s economy has barely grown since the budget cuts began taking effect late last year. The most recent quarterly figures showed the economy flat-lining, with growth at 0.1 percent.

New figures released this week reported Britain’s highest jobless numbers in more than 15 years. Independent analysts expect unemployment — now 8.1 percent — to keep rising in the months ahead. The government has kept its promise to slash public-sector jobs — more than 100,000 have been lost in recent months. But its deficit-reduction policies have failed to revive the business confidence that was supposed to spur private-sector hiring.

Drastic public spending cuts were the wrong deficit-reduction strategy for the weakened British economy a year ago. And they are the wrong strategy for the faltering American economy today. Britain’s unhappy experience is further evidence that radical reductions in federal spending will do little but stifle economic recovery.

A few years of robust growth would go far toward making swollen federal deficits more manageable. But slashing government spending in an already stalled economy weakens anemic demand, leading to lost output and lost tax revenues. As revenues fall, deficit reduction requires longer, deeper spending cuts. Cut too far, too fast, and the result is not a balanced budget but a lost decade of no growth. That could now happen in Britain. And if the Republicans have their way, it could also happen here.

Austerity is a political ideology masquerading as an economic policy. It rests on a myth, impervious to facts, that portrays all government spending as wasteful and harmful, and unnecessary to the recovery. The real world is a lot more complicated. America has no need to repeat Mr. Cameron’s failed experiment.

[end]

Incidentally, here's a report about that Observer letter penned by 100 leading figures (incl economists) telling Osborne he needs a Plan B - Plan A has caused disaster (as was widely predicted).

Here are my thoughts on the "quackery" charge. As I've mentioned previously, the one thing to ask about any major Tory economic policy is: "Cui bono?" - who, primarily, benefits? And the answer is always exactly the same: the very rich and/or big business (or at least what they perceive to be in their self-interest: obviously it's not in their interest to screw the economy as they appear to have done).

I am open to persuasion that some right-wing economic policies are in the best-interests of the nation. But I can't see there's much evidence to support any such policies. At best, the evidence leaves it unclear whether any given preferred right-wing policy is better (and I notice that quite often the case "for" turns out to be articulated by people from "think-tanks" that are, in effect, little more than PR companies for the rich/big business guys that fund them).

Once we apply the "Cui bono?" test, it's very hard to avoid the conclusion that what primarily drives Tory economic policy is not evidence, per se, but what the rich and powerful perceive to be in their self-interest. Who, of course, ain't necessarily even that bright.

The "evidence" is then gerrymandered and cherry-picked to justify their preferred policies. Those who question it are accused of "outdated" thinking.

That is, indeed, quackery.

Thanks for all the feedback re WLC debate

2011-10-25T12:34:00.002Z

Apologies if I do not respond to every comment. There have been a lot.

I'm genuinely grateful for all the feedback - positive and negative. I want to believe what's true, of course. So counter-arguments are to be welcomed - especially if they're good ones!

Apparently I will burn in hell for all eternity for failing to believe in Craig's God, if he exists. So would prefer not to get this wrong.

I'm in Sweden for a few days from tomorrow, so won't be posting much if at all.

POSTSCRIPT

I was asked to prepare some questions for Craig for the Q&A session at the end. In fact I was never given the opportunity to ask any. But I had prepared a couple. Here they are:

NUCLEAR QUESTION

You claim to just know in your heart, with utter certainty, that God exists and Christianity is true.

I want you to imagine that you have become President of the United States. Imagine also that there’s a red button on the table.

You know that pressing the button will bring about a nuclear holocaust, unleash unimaginable horror, and bring about a nuclear winter that will render humankind extinct with a decade or two.

It now suppose it seems to you that God wants you to press the button. In fact it seems as clearly and unambiguously true that this is what God wants you to do as it seems true to you that God exists.

My question is: what would be the reasonable thing for you to do, and why?

[p.s. I am pretty sure Craig would say "Press the button". Which is worrying. Let's hope he never stands for office.]

LYING QUESTION

You believe that every human knows in his or her heart that your God exists. So there’s no excuse for unbelief.

So am I just, well, lying when I say “There is no God”, and when I tell you I have no such inner knowledge? For, according to you, I'm telling you something that I know not to be true, right?

Follow up point: If I know God has not made himself known in my heart, but Craig’s God is one who makes himself known in every human heart, then I can know immediately that Craig’s God does not exist.

Prof Craig says he just knows his god exists. It turns out, that, if he's right, I can just know he doesn’t!

CELEBRITY WOO EXAMPLES QUICKLY PLEASE

2011-10-23T14:58:00.003Z

Help needed. I quickly need some examples of celebrities buying into or endorsing, e.g. miracles cures, new age philosophers, psychics, mediums, ghost stories, homeopathy and other alt. medicines. Any examples and/or links of celebrity woo v gratefully received. Bigger the celebrity and the more recent the better.

Thanks!

My remaining notes from the Craig debate

2011-10-23T07:52:00.000Z

Here are my remaining notes prepared for the debate on God's existence with William Lane Craig. These anticipated Craig's likely responses to my attacks on hos moral and resurrection arguments. I didn't really use this stuff on the night, except a little in Q&A session at the end. Notice I was also ready for the ontological argument.

2. CRAIG’S POSSIBLE DEFENCES OF MORAL ARGUMENT

IF NO GOD, THEN WE’RE NOT SPECIAL. WE’RE JUST ANIMALS, LIKE OTHER ANIMALS. THEY HAVE NO MORAL DUTIES TO EACH OTHER. SO NEITHER DO WE.

It doesn’t follow from the fact that we are animals that we are not special. We can still be, and are, special in all sorts of ways.

Unlike other animals we can write poetry, contemplate the great questions of philosophy, derive a profound sense of meaning and enjoyment from great works of art. We are rational agents capable of reflecting on the moral consequences of our actions.

In fact, it’s this last difference between us and other animals that explains why they’re not morally responsible but we are – why lions can’t murder, but we can.

I’m not insisting this fact is also sufficient to make us objectively morally significant. But Professor Craig has not explained why it isn’t.

IF NO GOD THEN NO OBJECTIVE MORAL VALUES BECAUSE – IF THERE’S NO GOD, THEN WE ALL END UP AS DUST, AND THE UNIVERSE ENDS IN HEAT DEATH, SO WHAT DOES IT ULTIMATELY MATTER HOW WE BEHAVE?

This is an obviously fallacious argument. Just because two roads end at the same destination doesn’t entail that it doesn’t matter which one we take. It doesn’t follow from the fact that we inevitably and permanently die that it doesn’t matter how we live. It does not follow from the fact that it doesn’t matter to how the universe ends how I treat you to, that it doesn’t matter how I treat you.

CRAIG SAYS THAT I REJECT BELIEF IN GOD ON THE BASIS OF APPEARANCE, YET WON’T ACCEPT THE EXISTENCE OF OBJECTIVE MORAL VALUES ON THE BASIS OF APPEARANCE. I AM IN EFFECT, GUILTY OF A DOUBLE STANDARD.

This is to overlook the fact that the appearance of immense gratuitous suffering, plus the assumption the appearance is reliable, immediately delivers the conclusion there’s no God, while the appearance of objective moral values, plus the assumption that the appearance is reliable, does not immediately deliver the conclusion there is a God. You need the further premise that if there’s no god there are no objective moral values. And that premise is (i) not obviously true, (ii) very widely rejected by moral philosophers, including even Christian philosophers. So, if we’re going to start trusting appearances, appearance is far more of a direct threat to theism than it is to atheism.

In addition, there’s a pretty good evolutionary explanation for why the appearance of objective moral value can’t be trusted.

IF THERE’S NO GOD THEN WE ARE JUST COLLECTIONS OF MOLECULES. WE CAN HAVE NO MORAL OBLIGATIONS TO COLLECTIONS OF MOLECULES.

Craig us here assuming that if we are collections of molecules then that’s all we are. But of course we are much more than that, even on a non-theistic view. We are collections of molecules that can write poetry, contemplate the great questions of philosophy, derive a profound sense of meaning and enjoyment from great works of art. We are also rational agents capable of reflecting on the moral consequences of our actions.

This, many philosophers would say, explains why we are special, why we matter, even if a mere glass of water does not. I cannot see how Professor Craig yet succeeded in showing this view to be wrong.

3. CRAIG’S POSSIBLE DEFENCES OF RESURRECTION ARGUMENT.

I USED A UFO CASE TO ILLUSTRATE THE POINT THAT WE SHOULD EXPECT A FEW BAFFLING, HARD TO EXPLAIN REPORTS TO CROP UP ANYWAY, WHETHER OR NOT THERE’S ANY TRUTH TO SUCH REPORTS. THE SAME GOES FOR MIRACLE CLAIMS. PROF CRAIG HAS ATTACKED MY SUGGESTION BY INSISTING HIS MIRACLE STORY IS NOT VERY LIKE MY UFO STORY.

Well, yes, obviously it isn’t. My UFO reports come directly from first-hand eye witnesses. Craig’s Biblical reports do not. My UFO story involved hard supporting data – a blip on a radar scope. Craig’s story lacks any such hard data. The reports I referred to came from police officers – trained eyewitnesses with no ideological axe to grind. Craig’s reports come via wide-eyed true believers about whom we know almost nothing.

Yes, of course there are differences between the cases. Pointing that out does nothing to undermine the moral I drew.

YOU MAY SAY I HAVE FAILED TO OFFER ANY DECENT ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATION OF WHAT WAS REPORTED.

True. But that’s entirely to overlook the fact that I explained why our inability to come up with an intuitively plausible-sounding mundane explanation of such reports doesn’t give us much reason to suppose a miracle happened.

THE DISCIPLES DIED FOR WHAT THEY BELIEVED. THE POLICEMEN DIDN’T.

Sure it may be hard to explain why early Christian would die for their beliefs if those beliefs weren’t true. But followers of even ludicrous new cults often go to their deaths – consider the followers of Heaven’s Gate and Jim Jones.

SECOND REBUTTAL – PART FOUR

4. ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

It’s possible a maximally great being exists.

…Therefore, a maximally great being exists.

This argument has no force at all against the evidential problem of evil. In fact, ironically, it actually serves to reinforce my conclusion. For if I can use the evidential problem of evil to show there’s actually no god – that the conclusion of Craig’s ontological argument is false - then the validity of the argument entitles me to draw the further conclusion that’s it’s not even possible that god exists!

So my thanks to Professor Craig for furnishing me with an argument that serves actually to amplify my conclusion – allowing me to move from: there’s no god to: necessarily, there’s no god.

FOLLOW UP: I suppose Prof Craig might say: but there’s intuitive support for the first premise that it’s possible that a maximally great being exists. Such a being is conceivable. There’s no logical contradiction involved in supposing such a being exists. And that’s good reason to suppose such a being is metaphysically possible.

But as anyone familiar with developments in philosophical logic over the last half century can tell you, conceivability or imaginability provides no guarantee of metaphysical possibility. For example, though they are actually identical, it seems conceivable that the evening star is not the morning star. Yet, if they are identical at the actual world – and they are - then they’re identical at every possible world in which they exist. So, despite the fact that I can imagine or conceive of them not being identical, it’s not metaphysically possible for them to fail to be identical.

Brief sketch of my overall argument in the debate

2011-10-19T14:48:00.022Z

Some have said they struggled to follow my line of argument in the William Lane Craig debate. So here’s a brief overview (check my closing statement too)

[post script - after presenting the evidential problem of evil] I asked Craig to explain why belief in a good god is significantly more reasonable than belief in an evil god - given an evil god is absurd (and Craig agreed it is absurd).

Most people will happily conclude there’s no evil god purely on the basis of the evidential problem of good (whether or not there are other reasons to reject the evil god hypothesis). So why isn’t the problem of evil similarly fatal to belief in a good god?

After all, most standard methods of explaining away the evil can be reversed to explain away the good. E.g. appeal to an afterlife and playing the sceptical, God-has-his-ultimate-reasons-of-which-we’re-ignorant card.

Now Craig, quite amazingly, actually chose to play that sceptical card on the night, endorsing the (highly counter-intuitive and, by him on the night, pretty much unjustified) claim that observation of the the world can give us no grounds at all for supposing there's no evil god (or good god).

But note that that STILL doesn’t help Craig at all, so far as explaining why it’s more reasonable to believe in a good god rather than an evil god (the latter belief being absurd).

The point is this: whether or not Craig plays the sceptical card, he’s still left having to explain why belief in his good god is very significantly more reasonable than the obviously absurd belief that there’s an evil god.

Now, the only arguments he gave to support his specific good god hypothesis were his moral and resurrection arguments. But those arguments, as he gave them on the night, weren’t nearly good enough, if my criticisms were correct (if you unsure about what my criticism were, then check them here and listen to the Q&A where I explained them in more detail) (however, it’s also clear quite a few people didn’t understand them – especially my criticism of the resurrection argument, which is actually a bit more sophisticated and thought-through than it might first appear. It's original, has never been addressed by Craig before in any of his books nor in any debate I've heard, and I'll probably publish it as an academic paper. But, as I say, it seems many in the audience only heard, "Blah, blah, UFOs, blah, blah!").

Notice by the way just how much intellectual heavy-lifting these two arguments had to do to show belief in Craig's god is reasonable. They had to raise his god hypothesis up to being reasonable from a starting position of being downright absurd (i.e. level pegging with the evil god hypothesis). So they had to be really good arguments! It's pretty clear they weren't, especially not as Craig presented them on the night.

So, it appears Craig failed to explain why belief in his good god is significantly more reasonable than the absurd belief that there’s an evil god.

I think quite a lot of people actually grasped that point, and so have switched to “But what about a deist god, then”? Someone actually shouted that out during my closing statement.

Well, I went this debate with one aim – to undermine belief in one specific god: Craig’s.

The debate was “Does God exist?” And both Craig and myself understood “God” to be defined, in this context, as his all-powerful and good god.

I think an impartial observer will find it pretty hard to avoid the conclusion that I won in terms of the arguments given on the night (though of course you might say I still lost the debate in terms of presentations skills, rhetoric, and so on; and you might still think that, given other arguments, the issue remains far from settled, or even that it can be settled in Craig's favour).

Some thoughtful Christians are being fair-minded and generous enough to say I won the arguments on the night (e.g. apologiapad: "Bill Craig loses a debate!") - which is good of them.

PS This all followed the evidential problem of evil argument, of course.

PPS. Many - incl even some atheists - have the mistaken impression that atheists need to come up with an account of moral value if they are to defeat Craig's moral argument. That's obviously not the case. In fact, it's a big strategic mistake to even try. The onus is not on me to come up with an account. It's on him to show his premises are true. His argument for his first premise (rejected even by Swinburne) was, in effect: "This evolutionary account of moral belief fails to make the belief true, so no atheist account of what makes them true can be given". That's an obviously fallacious inductive argument. But that's actually all he gave on the night.

PPPS I am out of the country for a while from tomorrow am....

Notes for responding to Craig's possible criticism of my evil god challenge

2011-10-18T19:32:00.009Z

Finally (having provided all my other notes in postings below) here are my notes prepared for whatever Craig might have said in response to the evil god challenge. You can see I prepared for a much wider range of moves than he actually made. In fact, this is where I was weakest. I floundered a bit. I did nail him on his silly "evil proves there is a god" move (which he later acknowledged is not really a good objection to the problem of evil). But I failed to nail Craig him on the "earthly happiness" move, despite having it down here. Nor did I explain clearly enough that even if Craig did accept (as he did, amazingly) that there's no observational evidence at all against an evil god or good god, he is STILL stuck with the challenge of explaining why belief in a good god is more reasonable belief in an evil god, the latter being absurd (all Craig had left were his moral and resurrection arguments, which I did then go on to demolish). I should also have picked up on Craig's weak appeal to Wykstra (so weak I missed it was even supposed to an argument). The Wykstra quote is easily dealt with by pointing out it shows only the possibility of some long term higher value, not it's non-improbability given the observational evidence

1. CRAIG’S RESPONSES TO PROBLEM OF EVIL

CRAIG SUGGESTS AN EVIL GOD IS IMPOSSIBLE BECAUSE…. AND SO MY EVIL GOD CHALLENGE IS MET.

Even if it could be shown that an evil god is impossible while a good god is not, that would not deal with the evil god challenge that I set Prof Craig. For it remains the case that, irrespective of whether an evil god is impossible, the amount of good that exists would clearly be more than enough in any case to show that belief in such a god is downright unreasonable. But then why isn’t the amount of evil we observe more than enough to show that belief in a good god is downright unreasonable?

In short, the claim that an evil god is impossible, even if correct, does nothing to show that belief in a good god is any more reasonable than downright unreasonable!

PROF. CRAIG ARGUES THAT EVIL PROVES THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. SO MY ARGUMENT, BASED ON THE ASSUMPTION THAT EVIL EXISTS, IS SELF-DEFEATING.

This is just to overlook the fact that problem of evil can be set up without buying into the concept of evil at all. As an atheist, I don’t require the existence of evil to run the argument. Indeed, I can be a moral nihilist and deny the existence of both moral good and evil. All I require is the existence of, say, hundreds of thousands of years of extraordinary, untold gratuitous suffering. Craig’s God won’t unleash gratuitous suffering, whether we choose to call it evil or not.

AFTER LIFE.

Prof Craig suggests that the evils we experience in this world become easier to understand for a theist once we remember that we can each look forward to an eternity of bliss in heaven. That will more than compensate a young child for her rape and murder.

Well, as I already pointed out in my opening speech, such an afterlife explanation can also be run by someone who believes in an evil god. They can insist that goods we experience in this life will be more than adequately outweighed by the horrors of spending eternity in the company of the supremely malignant deity. As the same explanation can be run in defence of each god hypothesis, it fails to make belief in a good god more reasonable than belief in an evil god.

WE SHOULD REMEMBER THAT EARTHLY HAPPINESS IS NOT GOD’S ULTIMATE AIM. HIS AIM IS FOR US TO ENTER FREELY INTO A LOVING RELATIONSHIP WITH HIM. IT MAY TAKE CONSIDERABLE PAIN FOR THAT TO BE ACHIEVED.

Well, I haven’t assumed that earthly happiness must be God’s ultimate aim. But earthly pain and misery will surely be of some importance to Craig’s God. Craig’s God, is after all, good. He’s compassionate. He’s supposed to care about suffering. So he’s not going to unleash untold horror over hundreds of thousands of years for no particularly good reason. He must have a good reason. And how plausible is it that there is such a reason?

WE ARE NOT IN A POSITION TO JUDGE WITH ANY CONFIDENCE THAT IT’S IMPROBABLE THAT GOD LACKS MORALLY GOOD REASONS FOR CREATING OR ALLOWING ALL THIS SUFFERING

Prof. Craig argues our failure to discern god’s reasons is not a good reason to suppose he does not have them. Perhaps, in some way we cannot fathom, they contribute to our eternal salvation.

Well, as I pointed out in my opening speech, much the same reply can be made by someone who believes in an evil god. Evil god is also omnipotent and omniscient, so of course his reasons are also likely largely to be beyond our ken. Those goods that seem gratuitous with regard to the aims of an evil god may not be gratuitous at all. Show a little humility. Don’t presume to know the mind of evil God.

If this sort of sceptical smokescreen doesn’t succeed in salvaging belief in an evil god, then I fail to see why it salvages belief in Craig’s good god either.

PROF CRAIG POINTS OUT THAT IT CAN BE DIFFICULT TO PREDICT THE LONG TERM CONSEQUENCES OF EVENTS. A BUTTERFLY FLAPPING ITS WING CAN CAUSE A HURRICANCE.

But of course, despite the truth of chaos theory, we can still predict the weather pretty accurately. While a butterfly wing can cause a hurricane – that doesn’t stop us successfully predicting long-term general weather patterns. We know it’s likely to get hotter over coming decades for example. So, ironically, the butterfly wing example if anything confirms the extent to which we can still predict long term general outcomes, despite the fact that small events can have big consequences.

Let’s also remember that even if such unpredictability did entail that we can’t reasonably rule out the existence of Craig’s god on the basis of the evil we observe, then it would also entail that we cannot reasonably rule out the existence of an evil god on the basis of the good we observe. So Craig would still not have succeeded in showing that belief in his good god is any more reasonable than belief in an evil god.

ALSTON’S ARGUMENT

Prof. Craig mentioned Alston’s six “cognitive limitations” which are supposed to show we can’t know God doesn’t have sufficient reasons for unleashing hundreds of thousands of years of horror. The problem with Alston’s argument is it would succeed in showing that we can’t know an evil god doesn’t have sufficient reasons for unleashing a very great deal of good. So it’s quite useless in establishing that belief in a good god is more reasonable than belief in an evil god.

PUNCHLINE

So, Professor Craig has produced a range of moves designed to neutralize what appears to be overwhelming empirical evidence against his God.

The key point to notice is this: [most/all] of these moves work just as well to neutralize the overwhelming empirical evidence that exists against an evil god. So they do nothing show why belief in his god is any better supported by the evidence and arguments than belief in an evil god.

In short, Professor Craig’s responses to the problem of evil entirely fail to meet the challenge I’ve set him.

EXTRAS:

YOU CANNOT WEIGH UP GOOD/EVIL SO THERE MIGHT BE MUCH MORE GOOD THAN EVIL, MAKING GOOD GOD MUCH MORE LIKELY.

If it’s true that we can’t weigh up good and evil effectively, then it might be true there’s far more good than evil, making a good god much more likely.

On the other hand, if we can’t weigh up good and evil effectively, it also might be true there far more evil than good, making an evil god much more likely.

So even if it were true that we can’t weigh up good and an evil effectively, that fact would fail to lend any more support to belief in a good god than it would an evil god.

CRAIG SUGGESTS THE GOOD GOD HYPOTHESIS IS SIMPLER, AND SO MORE REASONABLE THAN THE EVIL GOD HYPOTHESIS.

Well, even if it was true that the good god hypothesis was significantly simpler, that would have little effect on it’s reasonableness relative to the evil god hypothesis. If two hypotheses have little supporting argument, and both face powerful disconfirmatory evidence, pointing out one is simpler than the other hardly raises it’s credibility by very much. So Craig’s appeal to simplicity, even if correct, fails to show the good god hypothesis is significantly more reasonable than the evil god hypothesis.

CLEARLY THERE’S MUCH MORE GOOD THAN EVIL IN THE WORLD. SO A GOOD GOD IS MUCH MORE LIKELY.

This objection misunderstands my argument. It doesn’t require there be more evil than good, or even at least as much. There could be less evil than good but still sufficiently vast quantities of both that there’s more than enough to justify both the conclusion that there’s no good god and the conclusion there’s no evil god.

My closing statement

2011-10-18T11:06:00.007Z

From yesterday's debate with William Lane Craig. I removed a few phrases from the beginning. My opening statement and my refutations of Craig's moral and resurrection arguments are posted below.

As we look back across the hundreds of millions of years of sentient life on this planet, we find suffering on a stupendous scale. For example, we humans have - over many hundreds of thousands of generations before before either Jesus or the idea of Prof. Craig’s god were known to us - had to watch a third to a half of our children die painfully in our arms. Immense suffering and horror are built into the fabric of the world we are forced to inhabit.

My contention is this suffering constitutes powerful evidence against Professor Craig’s god. Even many Christians acknowledge it constitutes a very powerful intellectual threat to their belief.

I’ve challenged Professor Craig to explain why, given this mountain of evidence, belief in his God is supported by the evidence and arguments. Why, in particular, is belief in his good god better supported than belief in an evil god, which is clearly absurd.

Professor Craig has failed to meet this challenge.

He tried to explain that mountain of suffering, of course.

He appealed to the promise of an after life.

He also played the mystery card – insisting that God has his good reasons for unleashing hundreds of thousands of years of horror – it’s just that we don’t know what they are.

I pointed out these explanations can be used just as effectively to deal with the evidence against the evil god hypothesis. So obviously they fail to show that belief in a good god is better supported than belief in an evil god.

Professor Craig offered three arguments for god, of course. But only two were even relevant to meeting my challenge. The arguments he did offer for his good god were, at best, remarkably weak.

He offered a moral argument, of course. But such moral arguments are rejected by vast majority of moral philosophers. Even Richard Swinburne thinks Craig’s moral argument fails.

Professor Craig’s particular version has a highly dubious first premise – that if there’s no God, there are no objective moral values – a premise for which Craig failed to provide a decent supporting argument.

But even if Craig he could show that the premise was true, he would hardly have succeeded in showing that belief in his god is reasonable after all. For of course, when placed next to a mountain of observational evidence that there’s no such god, his moral argument merely generates the conclusion that there are no objective moral values. A conclusion that, while counter-intuitive, can’t just be assumed false.

Craig’s other argument was his resurrection argument, which is, frankly, almost comically flimsy. Even many Christians – including Alvin Plantinga, consider it terribly weak

So let’s not lose sight of the weight of argument and evidence on either side of debate. There is a mountain of observational evidence against Craig’s god. He has signally failed to explain that evidence away.

He offered a couple of arguments for his particular God, but they turned out to be at best, well, weedy. Indeed, both have high-profile Christian critics.

So it’s clear where the balance of probability lies.

We may not know why the universe exists. But we can quite reasonably rule certain answers out, such as that an evil god created it. We can, for much the same sort of reasons, quite reasonably also rule out the suggestion that Professor Craig’s good god created it.

Opening speech - Craig debate

2011-10-18T09:43:00.006Z

The opening speech from my debate with William Lane Craig last night. My criticism of his moral and resurrection arguments are posted immediately below. Interestingly, Craig ran only three arguments instead of the usual five - those two and his cosmological argument. Possibly he dropped the fine-tuning argument because it would be as irrelevant as his cosmological in dealing with the evil god challenge. Possibly he dropped the appeal to his personal experience - "I just know" - because of this.

My thanks to the organizers of this debate for the invitation to take part – I’m genuinely honoured to share the stage with Professor Craig.

We’re here to debate the question “Does God exist?” We’ve just heard various arguments that are supposed to justify an affirmative answer. I’ll address those arguments in the first rebuttal period.

I’m going to devote my opening speech to sketching out an argument against the existence of God. There are many such arguments. I’m going to make things relatively easy for Prof Craig by sketching out just one.

It’s an argument with which I’m sure you’re familiar. It’s often called the evidential problem of evil.

There’s a great deal of bad stuff in the world. There are moral evils: the terrible moral deeds we do. There are also natural evils – such as natural diseases and disasters that cause humans and other creatures immense suffering.

Let’s start with animal suffering. I recently watched a documentary about Komodo dragons poisoning, tracking for a week or so, and then, finally, when their victim became too weak to defend itself, disembowelling and eating alive, a water buffalo. The cameraman said this had been his first ever wildlife assignment, and it would probably also be his last, because he just couldn’t cope with the depths of suffering he had been forced to witness.

Each day, millions of animals are similarly forced to tear each other limb from limb to survive. And this has been going on for hundreds of millions of years. This might, in many ways, be a beautiful world. But it’s also a quite staggeringly cruel and horrific world for very many of its inhabitants.

Perhaps some will dismiss all this animal suffering by saying, “But they’re just animals. They don’t ultimately matter.” I wonder if they’d say the same thing if took a red-hot poker to their cat.

Then there’s human suffering. Take, for example, the psychological suffering a parent must go through who has to watch, helpless, as their young child dies slowly of starvation or an agonizing disease.

The consensus among population experts is that, over the sweep of human prehistory - hundreds of thousands of years - the parents of each generation have had to watch, on average, between a third and a half of their under-five children die, usually from disease.

Kenneth Hill, Director of the Hopkins Population Centre at John Hopkins University, writes (and I quote)

“over the long haul of prehistory, the probability of dying by the age of five for females was probably no lower than 440 per thousand live births, and was probably no higher than 600.”

That’s to say, on average around half of literally millions of generations of girls never made it beyond their fifth birthday.

This appalling suffering and death was not something these children and parents brought on themselves.

Unavoidable, unspeakable horror on an almost unimaginably vast scale is built into the very fabric of the world we find ourselves forced to inhabit.

So now here’s the argument. If Professor Craig’s God exists, then these hundreds of thousands, nay, hundreds of millions, of years of horror must, ultimately, be, well, all for the best!

For an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good God: (i) will know about, (ii) will have the power to prevent, and (iii) will desire that the world not contain, any pointless, gratuitous suffering. If Professor Craig’s god exists, there must be, not just some reason, but an entirely adequate reason for every last ounce of all this suffering and horror.

But surely, as we look back across the aeons, we witness suffering of such depth and magnitude that it becomes highly implausible that it can all be fully explained away.

In which case, it looks like very powerful evidence against the existence of Professor Craig’s God.

Now, interestingly, a similar argument can be run against an alternative god hypothesis I want you now to consider.

Suppose that, after a bump on the head, I become convinced that the universe is the creation of a single, all-powerful designer. However, I also believe this being is evil. There’s just one god and he’s cruel and evil as it is possible for him to be.

Who believes in a creator like that?

Hardly anyone outside of a mental institution.

Yet notice that this evil god hypothesis is as well supported by, say, Professor Craig’s cosmological and fine-tuning arguments as is belief in his good god hypotheses.

For those arguments fail to provide us with any clue at all as to our creator’s moral character.

Yet, still, I’m sure you consider the idea of such an evil creator absurd. Why?

Well, one obvious reason for dismissing the idea is that our world is clearly not the sort of world an all-powerful and maximally evil being would create. Take a look at it. Yes, it contains suffering. But it also contains a great deal of good. Far too much for it plausibly to be considered the creation of such an evil being.

Why, for example, would an evil creator intent on maximizing evil give us beautiful scenery to enjoy?

Why would he allow people to reduce the suffering of others, sometimes quite selflessly? An evil god would want to maximize suffering and prevent morally virtuous behaviour. So surely he’d clamp down on, say, Mother Theresa’s activities straight away. And he’d destroy all the hospitals.

Why, you might also ask, would an evil god bestow on some people immense health, wealth and happiness? David Beckham, for example, who leads a charmed existence.

And why would an evil God give us children to love? Evil God hates love. Surely the last thing he’d do is populate the world with bundles of joy.

So, you might think there is, on the face of it, overwhelming observational evidence against the evil god hypothesis.

I’m sure some of you have spotted that what we’re looking at here is, in effect, the evidential problem of good. If you believe in a good god, you face the problem of explaining why there’s so very much bad stuff in the world. Similarly, if you believe in an evil god, you face the mirror problem of explaining why there’s so very much good.

So why, we might ask, if the problem of good is fatal to the evil god hypothesis – and it is – is the problem of evil not similarly fatal to the good god hypothesis? If one hypothesis is pretty straightforwardly falsified by observation of the world around us, why isn’t the other?

Now, as you know, Christians have cooked up some pretty ingenious explanations for all the bad stuff. Let’s look at a few such explanations, beginning with free will.

Some Christians try to explain certain evils by saying that, being good, god gave us free will – the ability to make free choices and act on them. Why? Because god wants to allow for the possibility of moral goodness. God could have made us puppet beings [act] or automata that always did the right thing. But puppet beings lack moral responsibility. Their good behaviour, if compelled, would not be morally good. So God cut our strings. He set us free. As a result, some of us choose to do evil. That’s the price god must pay to allow for moral goods.

I’m sure you’re familiar with that sort of explanation. But now notice that someone who believes in an evil god can mirror it with a free will explanation of their own. Evil god gave us free will. Why? To allow for the possibility moral evil. Evil god could have made us puppet beings that always did the evil thing. But puppet beings lack moral responsibility. Their bad behaviour, if compelled, would not be morally evil. So evil god cut our strings. As a result, some of us choose to do good. That’s the price evil god must pay to allow for moral evils.

You can see that I have taken one standard Christian theodicy and just flipped it round.

Here’s another example of theodicy flipping. Some Christians try to explain some pain and suffering as the result of the operation of laws of nature – laws that are nevertheless, on balance, supposed to be good. So, for example, a Christian might argue that, without a law-governed universe in which the effects of our actions can be predicted, we can’t morally interact with each other. Suppose I see you cold and hungry. In order to help you by lighting you a warming fire and cooking you a much needed meal, I need to know both that by striking a match I will create a flame and that wood burns to release heat. Unfortunately, these same laws of nature have a downside – they entail that there will, occasionally, be spontaneous forest fires that cause suffering. That’s the price god pays for greater goods.

But again, someone who believes in an evil god can produce a mirror explanation to account for goods. In order to allow the very great evil of my burning down your wooden house with you and your family inside, they may say, I need to know both that by striking a match I will create a flame, and that wood burns. Such laws of nature are required for such very great evils to exist. True, these same laws have good consequences. They allow people to cook each other warming meals, for example. That’s the price evil god pays for greater evils.

We can similarly flip round the familiar Christian suggestion that the pain and suffering we endure are there to allow us to grow and develop morally and spiritually.

Yes, evil god wants us to suffer, do evil and despair. To that end, he introduces various goods into the world.

But then why, you may ask, would an evil god allow a few people, such as David Beckham, to lead a charmed life? Why, to make the rest of us feel worse, of course. To invoke feelings of jealousy and resentment in others. To motivate crime.

Why would an evil god pepper his creation with some beauty, which we enjoy? Why, because he requires a contrast. In order to fully appreciate the drab dreariness of day-to-day life, we need to BE reminded now and them of how much better things might have been.

Why would an evil god give us children to love? Because it’s only if we truly, unconditionally love someone that we can made to suffer as deeply as we do when evil god kills them slowly before our eyes.

In short, someone might conclude, this is not, as many Christians suppose, a vale of soul-making. It’s a vale of soul destruction – engineered by an evil god intent on crushing and breaking our spirits so that we bow out in agony and despair. As so very many of us do.

While not all standard Christian explanations for evil can be reversed in this way, most can. Take, for example, explaining evil in terms of god’s mysterious ways. A defender of belief in an evil god can adopt the same ruse, putting the good we see around us down to evil god’s mysterious ways. After all, evil god is omnipotent and omniscient, so of course his evil plans are likely to be largely beyond our understanding! Just because certain goods appear to us to be quite gratuitous given the aims of an evil god gives us no reason to suppose that they really are gratuitous.

Don’t presume to know the mind of evil god!

Moreover, just as some Christians maintain that whatever horror we experience in this life will be more than compensated for in the next, those who believe in an evil god can maintain that whatever goods we experience in this life will be more than compensated for by the far deeper, unremitting horror of the next.

Clearly, despite these and various other ingenious manoeuvres that might be made in defence of belief in an evil god, it remains the case that there’s far, far too much good stuff in this world for it to be the creation of such an evil deity. We can still, on the basis of what we observe around us, reasonably conclude there’s unlikely to be an evil god.

So my question is: if the evil god hypothesis can, solely on the basis of observational evidence, be ruled out as highly unlikely, why can’t we similarly rule out the good god hypothesis?

True, we may not know the answer to the question: “Why does the universe exist?” Perhaps we’ll never know. It doesn’t follow that we can’t reasonably rule certain answers out. Obviously we can quite reasonably rule out the evil god hypothesis. So why not the good god hypothesis?

Why suppose, as I assume Prof. Craig does, that the good god hypothesis is, not just a bit more reasonable, but very significantly more reasonable, than the evil god hypothesis? For remember, the latter hypothesis remains downright absurd, notwithstanding such appeals to evil god’s mysterious ways, and so on?

That’s the challenge I am setting Professor Craig tonight. To explain why belief in a good god is, on the basis of the available evidence and arguments, not just a bit more reasonable than belief in an evil god, but very significantly more reasonable.

How might Professor Craig respond to this challenge? He has given his arguments for his particular god of course. I’ll examine those next.

He may also try to disarm the problem of evil, perhaps by invoking a smokescreen of scepticism and mystery. He may say, “Well, we just can’t presume to know, regarding all the horror we see around us, that God lacks adequate reasons for it.”

But as we’ve just seen, we can use the same sort of smokescreen to defend belief in an evil god. We can say: “We just can’t presume to know, regarding all the goods we see around us, that evil god lacks adequate reasons for them.”

Professor Craig can’t, by means of such a smokescreen, show that belief in his good god is better supported than belief in an evil god.

It will be interesting to see how he thinks it can be shown to be better supported.

My criticisms of Craig's Moral and Resurrection arguments

2011-10-18T09:40:00.005Z

This is what I used against Craig's moral and resurrection arguments for the existence of God in last night's debate. His only other argument was the cosmological, which I ignored as irrelevant to Craig's showing that his good god exists as opposed to say, an evil God (for which a "cumulative case" based on the cosmological argument could also be based, and which we all nevertheless know can be justifiably rejected on the basis of observational evidence) Craig pretended that this was an amazing concession that it was a good argument and that my view was deism was true!

THE MORAL ARGUMENT

Let’s start with Craig's moral argument. It runs:

If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
Objective moral values do exist.
Therefore, God exists.

The vast majority of philosophers reject this argument. Take, for example, the Christian philosopher Professor Richard Swinburne of Oxford University. Swinburne says, “I cannot see any force in an argument to the existence of God from the existence of morality.”

So Professor Craig is putting up against a mountain of evidence against what he believes an argument that even one of the world’s leading Christian philosophers finds utterly unconvincing.

If Professor Craig wants, nevertheless, to run his moral argument, the onus is clearly him to show that its premises are true. Both are highly questionable.

The first premise is, again, rejected by the vast majority of moral philosophers.

So what argument does Professor Craig offer for supposing it is, nevertheless, true?

He points out that an evolutionary explanation of why we believe rape is objectively morally wrong wouldn’t make rape objectively morally wrong.

Well, so what? We all knew that. That doesn’t show that that belief isn’t or cannot be true, given atheism.

Remember, the onus is on Professor Craig to show that no atheist-friendly account of the objective truth of moral claims can be given. The fact that evolution provides no such account very obviously doesn’t entail no such account can be given.

The onus is on Professor Craig to show that all such atheist-friendly accounts are wrong – even the ones we haven’t thought of yet. And don’t forget, as theists regularly do, that they needn’t even be naturalistic accounts.

So far, Craig has shown one atheist-friendly account is wrong. Well, as I say, we knew that already.

What of the second premise of Craig’s moral argument? Objective moral values exist.

This is undoubtedly a belief that just seems obviously true. But of course that doesn’t guarantee it is true.

Yes it seems like there are objective moral values. That isn’t a belief we should abandon easily. But it’s by no means irrefutable.

After all, we have a powerful impression that the Earth doesn’t move. It really, really doesn’t seem to move. But if we’re given powerful evidence that it does move, and it’s also explained why it nevertheless seems like it doesn’t, then the rational thing for us to believe is that our initial, highly convincing impression was wrong.

The moral is, even if Professor Craig could show his first premise is true, he can’t deal with the problem of evil by just digging in his heels and saying, “But look, it really, really seems to us as if there are objective moral values, so there must be a God.”

When placed next to the problem of evil, Craig’s argument does little to undermine the problem. Rather, it just combines with it to deliver the conclusion that there are no objective moral values.

That conclusion would be further reinforced by an evolutionary explanation of why it would still seem to us that there are objective moral values even if there aren’t.

Now I don’t doubt Professor Craig doesn’t want to believe there are no objective moral values. Hey, I don’t want to believe it. But this isn’t an exercise in wishful thinking.

So, even if its first premise were true, Craig’s moral argument still hardly offers much of a riposte to the evidential problem of evil.

RESURRECTION ARGUMENT

Let’s now turn to the resurrection argument.

It turns on claims made in the New Testament: that there was an empty tomb, that there were independent eyewitness reports of Jesus alive after the crucifixion, and so on.

The claim is that the best explanation of these alleged facts is that Jesus was resurrected by god. You should always be suspicious of arguments to the best explanation in such contexts.

Let me tell you a UFO story from 1967. There were reports of a strange object appearing nightly over a nuclear power site in Wake County. The police investigated. An police officer confirmed “It was about half the size of the moon, and it just hung there over the plant.” The next night the same thing happened. The Deputy Sheriff described a “large lighted object.” The County magistrate saw, and I quote, “a rectangular object, looked like it was on fire… We figured it about the size of a football field. It was huge and very bright.” There was, in addition, hard data: a curious radar blip reported by local air traffic control.

Now, what’s the best explanation for these reports? We have multiple attestation. We have trained eye-witnesses – police officers – putting their reputations on the line by reporting a UFO. We have hard, independent confirmation – that blip on the radar scope. Surely, then, it’s highly unlikely these witnesses were, say, all hallucinating, or lying, or merely looking at a planet. Clearly, by far the best explanation is that they really did see a large, lighted object hovering close to the plant, right?

Wrong. Here’s the thing. We know, pretty much for sure, that what was seen by those police officers was the planet Venus. Journalists arrived on the scene, were shown the object, and chased it in their car. They found they couldn’t approach it. Finally, they looked at it through a long lens and saw it was Venus. That radar blip was just a coincidence.

What does this show? Every year there are countless amazing reports of religious miracles, alien abductions, ghosts, and so on. In most cases, it’s easy to come up with plausible mundane explanations for them. But not all. Some remain deeply baffling.

So should we believe in such things, then?

No. For, as my UFO story illustrates, we know that some very hard-to-explain reports of miracles, flying saucers, and so on are likely to crop up anyway, whether or not there’s any truth to such claims. That 1967 case could easily have been such a baffling case.

So, let’s suppose that Biblical documents written a decade or more after the events they report, written exclusively by devotees of a new religious movement, not even by first hand witnesses, detailing events for which there’s pretty much no independent confirmation, constitutes really, really good evidence that there was an empty tomb and that the disciples did report seeing the risen Christ.

Is that, in turn, good evidence Jesus was resurrected?

Evidence supports a hypothesis to the extent that the evidence is expected given the hypothesis is true, and unexpected otherwise.

The absolutely crucial point to note is this: we have good reason to expect some baffling, very hard-to-explain-in-mundane-terms reports to crop up occasionally anyway, whether or not there are any miracles, gods or flying saucers. So the fact that an otherwise baffling, hard-to-explain case has shown up provides us with little if any evidence that a miracle happened.

Please support...

2011-10-03T08:33:00.005Z

Go here. I think this is very well worth supporting, though I personally think the emphasis should be very much on the giving, compassion, etc. and not on the being godless (otherwise it makes it seem like it's a donation made to make a political point; "Here take this - that'll show those darn Christians!"). Though of course I do see there are good reasons for demonstrating the godless can be compassionate, generous etc. too. Here's the blurb...

Non-Prophet Week is the AHS's annual charity drive, and will be running on the 7th-13th of November this year. There will be a variety of events at many universities with AHS societies, all over the UK and ROI.

AHS President Jenny Bartle said: "Non-Prophet week is run to prove that non-believers are just as charitable as religious people. For too long have people believed that the religious have a monopoly on caring. This is wholly untrue, which is why we are encouraging our members to get out there and do something for a good cause!"

This year Non-Prophet Week is only a week ahead of Children in Need, which is why we have chosen to support it. Bartle commented: "Children in Need is a great humanistic cause, and it is wonderful to see so many people enthusiastic to help the futures of young people. Members of AHS societies raised £2700 last year and our target this year is £4,000. I would be very proud to see us donating this much to such an important charity." Not all money will go to Children in Need, as the choice of charity is up to those raising the money, but all charities will have a humanitarian and secular ethos.

There will be an events tracker on the Non-Prophet week website, recording all the sponsorships, live events, sales and general AHS socials going on during the week. Bartle added: "We are going to see a lot of inspired events throughout the week, although my personal favourite is probably still plain old selling brownies! We expect to see over 70 individual events across our whole membership, which will mean there is something for everyone to enjoy."

William Lane Craig vs me, October 17th

2011-10-02T11:01:00.009Z

Promotional video for the upcoming William Lane Craig tour (I'm his first opponent, of course). The feel is a little like a boxing promo. "William Lane Craig! Undefeated Heavy Weight Champion of The World! Against - some other guys! Come watch Craig smash his atheist opponents! Those that aren't too cowardly!"

I like it (the video I mean). All good knock about fun.

“BUT I JUST KNOW!”

2011-09-28T13:43:00.005Z

(this is adapted from my book Believing Bullshit - compressed version of the chapter of the same title)

Bush’s gut

Notoriously, during George W. Bush’s presidency, Bush’s gut became the oracle of the State. Bush was distrustful of book learning and those with established expertise in a given area. When Bush made the decision to invade Iraq, and was subsequently confronted by a skeptical audience, Bush said that ultimately, he just knew in his gut that invading was the right thing to do. As writer Rich Procter noted prior to the invasion:

Now we're preparing to invade a country in the middle of the most volatile "powder-keg" region on earth. We're going to toss out our history of using military force only when provoked. We're going to launch a "pre-emptive" invasion that violates two hundred-plus years of American history and culture. We're on the verge of becoming a fundamentally different kind of nation - an aggressive, "go-it-alone" rogue state - based on Bush's gut…

The invasion went ahead. A few months later, Senator Joe Biden told Bush of his growing worries about the aftermath. In response, Bush again appealed to the reliability of his “instincts”, as Ron Suskind here reports:

''I was in the Oval Office a few months after we swept into Baghdad,'' [Biden] began, ''and I was telling the president of my many concerns'' - concerns about growing problems winning the peace, the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and problems securing the oil fields. Bush, Biden recalled, just looked at him, unflappably sure that the United States was on the right course and that all was well. '''Mr. President,' I finally said, 'How can you be so sure when you know you don't know the facts?''' Biden said that Bush stood up and put his hand on the senator's shoulder. ''My instincts,'' he said. ''My instincts.'' …The Delaware senator was, in fact, hearing what Bush's top deputies - from cabinet members like Paul O'Neill, Christine Todd Whitman and Colin Powell to generals fighting in Iraq - have been told for years when they requested explanations for many of the president's decisions, policies that often seemed to collide with accepted facts. The president would say that he relied on his ''gut'' or his ''instinct'' to guide the ship of state…

How did Bush suppose his gut was able to steer the ship of state? He supposed it was functioning as a sort of God-sensing faculty. Bush believed that by means of his gut he could sense what God wanted of him. But how reasonable was it for Bush to trust what his gut was telling him?

Evidentialism

Many would say “not very”. Philosopher W. K. Clifford, for example, famously insisted that

it is wrong, always and everywhere, to believe anything on insufficient evidence.

People who believe despite not possessing good evidence that their belief is true are being downright irresponsible, thought Clifford. This quotation is often used to condemn those who believe in such things as the Loch Ness monster, angels, fairies and even God. Such beliefs, it is suggested, are not well-supported by the evidence. So it is wrong for people to believe them. So it was wrong for Bush to believe what he did, in the absence of good evidence.

The idea that it is, at the very least, unwise to accept claims for which we possess little or no supporting evidence is certainly widespread. Richard Dawkins, for example, writes:

Next time somebody tells you something that sounds important, think to yourself: ‘Is this the kind of thing that people probably know because of evidence? Or is it the kind of thing that people only believe because of tradition, authority or revelation?’ And next time somebody tells you that something is true, why not say to them: ‘What kind of evidence is there for that?’ And if they can’t give you a good answer, I hope you’ll think very carefully before you believe a word they say.

Let’s call the view that we ought not to accept any belief not well-supported by evidence evidentialism. Is evidentialism true?

Probably not. Evidentialism faces obvious difficulties. Perhaps the most glaring is this. Suppose I believe some claim A because I suppose I have supporting evidence B. But now ought I to believe that evidence B obtains? If evidentialism is true, it seems I ought to believe B obtains only if I posses, in turn, evidence for that – C, say. But then I should believe that C obtains only if there is, in turn, evidence for that, and so on ad infinitum. In short, evidentialism seems to entail that, before I adopt any belief, I must first acquire evidence to support an infinite number of beliefs – which, as a finite being, I can’t do. So Clifford’s injunction that I ought not to believe anything on the basis of insufficient evidence appears to have the disastrous consequence that I ought not to believe anything at all.

How might we escape this conclusion?

Before I address that question, let’s take a brief look at reliabilism, a theory of knowledge developed over the last half century or so would seem to entail that it is at least in principle possible (notice I don’t say likely) that some psychics, religious gurus and so on do indeed “just know” things by means of some sort of psychic or divinely-given sense. They do “just know” these things even if they don’t have any evidence to support what they believe. In which case, perhaps Bush might “just know” what God wants of him by means of his gut?

Reliabilism

Here is a simple reliabilist theory of knowledge. In order for person a to know that P,

(i) P must be true
(ii) a must believe that P
(iii) A’s belief that P must be brought about by the fact that P via a reliable mechanism

What’s meant by a “reliable mechanism”? A reliable mechanism is a mechanism that tends to produce true beliefs. My sense of sight is a fairly reliable belief-producing mechanism. It allows my beliefs fairly reliably to track how things are in my environment.

Suppose, for example, someone puts an orange on the table in front of me. Light bounces off the orange into me eyes, which in turn causes certain cells to fire in my retina, which causes a pattern of electrical impulses to pass down my optic nerves into my brain, eventually bringing it about that I believe there’s an orange before me. Remove the orange and that will in turn cause me, by means of the same mechanism, to believe the orange has gone.

The same goes for my other senses – they are fairly reliable belief-producing mechanisms. Blindfold me and put me in a crowded street and my ears, nose will, in response to the sound of car horns and the odour of hot dogs, cause me to believe I am in a crowded street. Move me to a fragrant garden filled with singing birds and those same senses will cause me to believe I am in such a garden. My senses of sight, touch, smell, hearing and taste cause me to hold beliefs that tend accurately to reflect how things actually are around me.

I don’t say our senses are one hundred percent reliable, of course. Sometimes we get things wrong. They are occasionally prone to illusion. But they are fairly reliable.

Let’s now apply our reliabilist definition of knowledge. Suppose someone puts an orange on the table in front of me. I look at the orange, and so come to believe there’s an orange there. Do I know there’s an orange on the table?

According to our reliabilist, I do. The simple reliabilist theory says that if (i) it’s true that there’s an orange there, (ii) I believe there’s an orange there, and (iii) my belief is produced via a reliable mechanism, e.g. sight, by the presence of an orange there, then I know there’s an orange there.

Now here is an interesting conseuqnece of this theory – a consequence very relevant to our discussion of psychic powers and George Bush’s gut. Notice, that, according to reliablism, in order to know there’s an orange on the table, I need not infer there’s an orange there. I need not arrive at my belief on the basis of good grounds or evidence. No evidence is required. All that’s required is that I hold the belief and that it be produced in the right sort of way – by a reliable mechanism.

Reliabilism and psychic powers

Many contemporary philosophers accept some form of reliabilism (though they have developed it in various ways). You can now see why reliabilism might also appeal to, say, a psychic who believes she “just knows” things about the dead.

Suppose a self-styled psychic – call her Mary – finds herself believing that her dead Aunt Sarah is currently in the room with her. Also suppose, for the sake of argument, that Mary really does have some sort of reliable psychic sense, that dead Aunt Sarah really is in the room with Mary, and that Mary’s psychic sense is what is causing Mary to believe Aunt Sarah is present. Then, says our reliabilist theory, Mary knows that Aunt Sarah is in the room with her.

Mary doesn’t infer that Aunt Sarah is present on the basis of evidence. Mary just finds herself stuck with that belief that Aunt Sarah is present, caused as it is by her reliable psychic sense. Yet, says our reliabilist, despite the fact that Mary doesn’t possess any evidence that Aunt Sarah is present, Mary knows Aunt Sarah is there. In fact, were Mary to claim that she “just knows” that Mary is in the room with her right now, she’d be right.

Of course, that they do “just know” such things despite not possessing good supporting evidence is a claim psychics make on a daily basis. So, while few psychics heard of reliabilism, reliabilism nevertheless opens up at least the possibility that these psychics are correct – they do know, despite not possessing any evidence.

“But hang on” you may object. “Even if reliabilism is correct and Mary does know her dead Aunt is in the room with her, that is not something she ought to believe. The fact is, Mary is being downright irresponsible in just accepting at face value this belief that happens to have popped into her head. Clifford is still correct – she shouldn’t believe it. It’s still unwise for her to believe it.”

In her own defence, Mary might now appeal to a further principle. Surely, Mary may insist, if something seems very clearly and obviously to be the case, then, other things being equal, it’s reasonable to believe it’s true. It’s reasonable to take appearance at face value. For example, if it seems clear and obvious to me that there’s on orange on the table before me, then surely it’s reasonable for me to believe there’s an orange there.

This principle does seem intuitively plausible. And it entails that, if it seems just clearly and obviously true to Mary that her dead Aunt is in the room with her, then, other things being equal, it is reasonable for Mary to hold that belief. Whether or not she can provide any publicly available evidence.

Reliabilism and religious experience

Let’s now return to Bush’s gut. Bush believes he can directly know, by means of his gut, what God wants him to do.

Many people believe that they “just know” directly, rather than on the basis of evidence, that God exists and that, say, the Bible is true. Ask them why they believe, and they may give reasons and justifications of one sort or another. But typically, even if such grounds are provided, not much weight is placed on them. Most Theists will say that they don’t believe on the basis of evidence. Rather, they “just know” God exists. They believe they experience God directly, perhaps in something like the way I just directly experience that orange on the table in front of me. To them, it seems perfectly clear and obvious that God exists.

Reliabilism seems to open up the possibility that some people might, indeed, “just know” that God exists. Suppose God has provided us with a sort of sensus divinitatis – a reliable, God-sensing faculty (in Bush’s case, that would be his gut). On the reliabilist view, it seems that a sensus diviniatis could provide such knowledge.

Moreover, a religious person might add, just as, if it seems clearly and obviously true to me that there’s an orange on the table, then it is reasonable for me to suppose there’s an orange there, so if it seems clearly and obviously true to someone that God exists, then it’s reasonable for them to believe God exists. There’s certainly nothing wrong, or irresponsible, about them taking their experience at face value.

This view about religious experience has been developed by several contemporary Christian philosophers, chief among whom is Alvin Plantinga. Plantinga’s version is detailed, but the gist is essentially this, that something like reliabilism is essentially correct, that God has indeed given everyone of us a God-sensing faculty or sensus divinitatis, and that consequently, some of us can know, directly and without evidence, that God exists. Indeed, that God exists is an entirely reasonable thing for such people to believe if that’s very much how things clearly and obviously seem to them even after careful reflection.

Plantinga adds that, if there is a God, he probably would want us to know of his existence directly by means of such a reliable God-sensing faculty. So, if there is a God, then some of us probably do know by such means that God exists.

You may be wondering: “But if we all have a sensus divinitatis, as Plantinga supposes, why don’t we all enjoy such God experiences?” Because, Plantinga explains, in many cases our sensus divinitatis has been damaged by sin:

Were it not for sin and its effects, God’s presence and glory would be as obvious and uncontroversial to us all as the presence of other minds, physical objects and the past. Like any cognitive process, however, the sensus divinitatis can malfunction; as a result of sin, it has been damaged.

Assessing psychic and religious claims to “just know”

We have seen how the reliabilist theory of knowledge seems to open up the possibility that some people might “just know” that their dead relative is in the room with them, or “just know” that God exists. We have also seen that evidentialism has been challenged, and that, according to Plantinga and others, it can be entirely reasonable for people to take their religious experiences at face value. Let’s now begin to assess these claims.

In fact, I find reliabilism plausible. I suspect that some version of reliabilism may well be correct. Let me also be clear that I do not rule out in principle the possibility that some people might be equipped with reliable psychic powers, or a sensus divinitatis, or whatever.

I’ll also concede that evidentialism is probably false, and that, generally speaking, it is indeed reasonable for us to take appearances at face value. If it seems just clearly and obviously the case that there’s an orange on the table in front of me, well then, other things being equal, it’s reasonable for me to believe there’s an orange on the table in front of me.

However, I remain entirely unconvinced that anyone who claims to “just know” that the dead walk among us, or that God exists, knows any such thing. Not only do I think the rest of us have good grounds for doubting their experience, I don’t believe it’s reasonable for them to take their own experience at face value either. I’ll explain why by means of what I call the case of the mad, fruit-fixated brain scientist.

The case of the mad, fruit-fixated brain scientist

Suppose Jane is shown what appears, quite clearly and obviously, to be an orange on the table in front of her. Surely then, it is, other things being equal, reasonable for Jane to believe there’s an orange there.

But now suppose the orange is presented to Jane in a rather unusual situation. Jane is one of several visitors to the laboratory of a mad brain scientist with a weird fruit fixation. She, like the other visitors, is wearing an electronic helmet that can influence what happens in her brain. From his central computer terminal, the mad brain scientist can, by means of these helmets, control what people are experiencing. He can create vivid and convincing hallucinations.

The scientist demonstrates by causing one of the visitors to hallucinate an apple. There’s much hilarity as the victim tries to grab for the fruit that’s not there. The visitors are then invited to wander round the lab where, the scientist tells them, they may experience several other virtual fruit. Jane then comes across what appears to be an orange on a table. Now, as a matter of fact, it is a real orange – one that fell out of someone’s packed lunch bag. Jane’s faculty of sight is functioning normally and reliably. This is no hallucination.

Now ask yourself two questions: (i) does Jane know there’s an orange on the table? And (ii) is it reasonable for Jane to suppose there’s an orange on the table?

Intuitively, it seems Jane doesn’t know there’s an orange present. After all, for all Jane knows, it could be one of the many hallucinatory fruit she knows about. But what would a reliabilist say? Well, sight is generally a reliable belief producing mechanism, and sight is what’s producing her belief. So some reliabilists may say that, yes, Jane does know. On the other hand, very many reliabilists say that, while in a standard environment, sight is reliable, it isn’t reliable in other kinds of environment, e.g. the kind of environment in which we will often as not be deceived by visual hallucinations. But then it follows that, because she is in just such an environment, Jane doesn’t know.

Now let’s turn to question (ii), which is the pivotal question: is it reasonable for Jane to believe there’s an orange before her?

Surely not. Given Jane knows that she is in an environment (the mad brain scientist’s laboratory) in which people regularly have compelling fruit hallucinations (indistinguishable from real fruit experiences), Jane should remain rather skeptical about her own fruit experience. For all she can tell, she’s probably having a mad-scientist-induced fruit hallucination.

I draw two morals for religious experience:

First of all, even if reliabilism is true, and even if some of us do have God-experiences produced by a sensus divinitatis, it remains debatable whether such people know that God exists. If human beings are highly prone to delusional religious experiences that they nevertheless find entirely convincing, then, even if, as a matter of fact, I happen to be having a wholly accurate religious experience revealing that, say, the Judeo-Christian God exists, it’s by no means clear I can be said to know the Judeo-Christian God exists, any more than Jane, coming upon a real orange in the brain scientist’s lab, can be said to know that there’s an orange on the table in front of her.

Second, and more importantly, even if it’s true, because of my religious experience, that I do know that the Judeo-Christian God exists, surely it still isn’t reasonable for me to take my experience at face value. For I find myself in a situation much like Jane finds herself in the brain scientist’s lab. Even though it looks to Jane clearly and obviously to be true that there’s an orange on the table in front of her, Jane should, surely, remain pretty skeptical about whether there’s actually an orange there, given that, for all she knows, she might very easily be having one of the many delusional fruit experiences currently being generated in the lab. Jane would be foolish to take appearance at face value. Similarly, if I have good evidence that many religious experiences are delusional – even the most compelling examples – then surely I should be equally skeptical about my own religious experiences, no matter how compelling those experiences might be. I would be foolish to take my experiences at face value.

A similar moral might be drawn about psychic experiences. If most – including even the most compelling examples – are delusional, then it’s debatable whether the psychic can be said to know. However, even if the psychic can be said to know, if they’re aware that many such experiences are delusional, then it surely isn’t reasonable for them to take their experience at face value.

Heythrop College, University of London

2011-09-23T13:16:00.007Z

If you are thinking of studying philosophy, or have students thinking of doing so, and want to find at more about studying at Heythrop College University of London - get in touch. I am tutor for admissions for the BA in Philosophy.

Heythrop is a small institution specializing in Philosophy and Theology. It's compact and friendly and in a beautiful central London location - Kensington Square.

As I pointed out in recent letter to The Independent, it's also a pretty extraordinary place, offering Oxbridge style tuition but for rather lower fees.

Dominic Lawson ("A Private Sector Oxbridge? Not Exactly" 7th June) rightly celebrates the one-to-one tutorial system, offered by Oxford and Cambridge, which he describes as "the single most valuable aspect of their educational offering". But Lawson is wrong to say the system is only offered by Oxford and Cambridge. It is also offered by Heythrop College, University of London for undergraduate degrees in philosophy and theology.

We award University of London degrees, and have achieved some spectacular results in philosophy, including, in recent years, the highest number of first class hons degrees in philosophy among London Colleges, and also the highest scoring first class philosophy degree.

It's a shame more people don't know about us. Please spread the word!

Heythrop website.

Bullshit alert

2011-09-22T08:38:00.000Z

I am very irritated by this, and have commented....

The “free market thinktanks” and their secret funders are a threat to democracy

2011-09-22T07:17:00.001Z

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 13th September 2011

Nadine Dorries won’t answer it. Lord Lawson won’t answer it. Michael Gove won’t answer it. But it’s a simple question, and if they don’t know it’s because they don’t want to. Where does the money come from? All are connected to groups whose purpose is to change the direction of public life. None will reveal who funds them.

When she attempted to restrict abortion counselling, Nadine Dorries MP was supported by a group called Right to Know. When other MPs asked her who funds it, she claimed she didn’t know(1,2). Lord Lawson is chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which casts doubt on climate science. It demands “openness and transparency” from scientists(3). Yet he refuses to say who pays, on the grounds that the donors “do not wish to be publicly engaged in controversy.”(4) Michael Gove was chairman of Policy Exchange, an influential conservative thinktank. When I asked who funded Policy Exchange when he ran it, his office told me “he doesn’t have that information and he won’t be able to help you.”(5)

We know that to understand politics and the peddling of influence we must follow the money. So it’s remarkable that the question of who funds the thinktanks has so seldom been asked.

There are dozens of groups in the UK which call themselves free market or conservative thinktanks, but they have a remarkably consistent agenda. They tend to oppose the laws which protect us from banks and corporations; to demand the privatisation of state assets; to argue that the rich should pay less tax; and to pour scorn on global warming. What the thinktanks call free market economics looks more like a programme for corporate power.

Some of them have a turnover of several million pounds a year, but in most cases that’s about all we know. In the US, groups claiming to be free market thinktanks have been exposed as sophisticated corporate lobbying outfits, acting in concert to promote the views of the people who fund them. In previous columns, I’ve shown how such groups, funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, built and directed the Tea Party movement(6,7).

The Kochs and the oil company Exxon have also funded a swarm of thinktanks which, by coincidence, all spontaneously decided that manmade climate change is a myth(8,9). A study in the journal Environmental Politics found that such groups, funded by economic elites and working through the media, have been “central to the reversal of US support for environmental protection, both domestically and internationally.”(10)

Jeff Judson, who has worked for 26 years as a corporate lobbyist in the US, has explained why thinktanks are more effective than other public relations agencies. They are, he says, “the source of many of the ideas and facts that appear in countless editorials, news articles, and syndicated columns.”(11) They have “considerable influence and close personal relationships with elected officials”. They “support and encourage one another, echo and amplify their messages, and can pull together … coalitions on the most important public policy issues.” Crucially, they are “virtually immune to retribution … the identity of donors to think tanks is protected from involuntary disclosure.”(12)

The harder you stare at them, the more they look like lobby groups working for big business without disclosing their interests. Yet throughout the media they are treated as independent sources of expertise. The BBC is particularly culpable. Even when the corporate funding of its contributors has been exposed by human rights or environmental groups, it still allows them to masquerade as unbiased commentators, without disclosing their interests.

For the sake of democracy, we should know who funds the organisations which call themselves thinktanks. To this end I contacted 15 groups. Eleven of them could be described as free market or conservative; four as progressive. I asked them all a simple question: “Could you give me the names of your major donors and the amount they contributed in the last financial year?”. I gave their answers a score out of five for transparency and accountability.

Three of the groups I contacted – Right to Know, the International Policy Network and Nurses for Reform – did not answer my calls or emails. Six others refused to give me any useful information. They are the Institute of Economic Affairs, Policy Exchange, the Adam Smith Institute, the TaxPayers’ Alliance, the Global Warming Policy Foundation and the Christian Medical Fellowship. They produced similar excuses, mostly concerning the need to protect the privacy of their donors. My view is that if you pay for influence, you should be accountable for it. Nul points.

Civitas did fractionally better, scoring 1. Its website names a small number of the donors to its schools(13), but it would not reveal the amount they had given or the identity of anyone else. The only rightwing thinktank that did well was Reform, which sent me a list of its biggest corporate donors: Lloyds (£50k), Novo Nordisk (£48k), Sky (£42k), General Electric (£41k) and Danone (£40k). Reform lists its other corporate sponsors in its annual review(14), and earns 4 points. If they can do it, why can’t the others?

The progressives were more accountable. Among them, Demos did least well. It sent me a list of its sponsors, but refused to reveal how much they gave. It scores 2.5. The Institute for Public Policy Research listed its donors and, after some stumbling, was able to identify the biggest of them: the European Union (a grant of E800,000) and the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation(£86k). It scores 3.5. The New Economics Foundation sent me a list of all its donors and the amount each gave over the past year, earning 4 points. The biggest funders are the Network for Social Change (£173k), the department of health (£124k) and the Aim Foundation (£100k). Compass had already published a full list in its annual report(15). The biggest source by far is the Communication Workers’ Union, which gave it £78k in 2009. Compass gets 5 out of 5.

The picture we see, with the striking exception of Reform, is of secrecy among the rightwing groups, creating a powerful impression that they have something to hide. Shockingly, this absence of accountability – and the influence-peddling it doubtless obscures – does not affect their charitable status.

The funding of these groups should not be a matter of voluntary disclosure. As someone remarked in February 2010, “secret corporate lobbying, like the expenses scandal, goes to the heart of why people are so fed up with politics … it’s time we shone the light of transparency on lobbying in our country and forced our politics to come clean about who is buying power and influence.”(16) Who was this leftwing firebrand? One David Cameron.

I charge that the groups which call themselves free market thinktanks are nothing of the kind. They are public relations agencies, secretly lobbying for the corporations and multi-millionaires who finance them. If they wish to refute this claim, they should disclose their funding. Until then, whenever you hear the term free market thinktank, think of a tank, crushing democracy, driven by big business.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/sep/02/abortion-debate-dorries-campaign

2. http://nsnewsflash.wordpress.com/2011/08/28/nadine-dorries-misleads-her-readers-this-time-over-evan-harris-losing-it-in-abortion-interview/

3. eg http://www.thegwpf.org/best-of-blogs/3299-an-open-letter-to-sir-paul-nurse.html

4. http://www.thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/accounts.pdf

5. By phone, 12th September 2011.

6. http://www.monbiot.com/2010/10/25/toxic-brew/

7. http://www.monbiot.com/2011/08/01/how-the-billionaires-broke-the-system/

8. http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/Global/usa/planet3/publications/gwe/Koch-Ind-Still-Fueling-Climate-Denial.pdf

9. http://www.exxonsecrets.org/maps.php

10. Peter Jacques, Riley Dunlap, and Mark Freeman, 2008. The organisation of denial: Conservative
think tanks and environmental scepticism. Environmental Politics, 17: 3, 349-385. DOI: 10.1080/09644010802055576

11. http://www.scribd.com/doc/30730535/Why-Think-Tanks-are-More-Effective

12. As above.

13. http://www.civitasschools.org.uk/funding.php

14. Page 24. http://www.reform.co.uk/portals/0/documents/AnnualReview2010.pdf

15. http://clients.squareeye.net/uploads/compass/documents/compass%20annual%20report%202009-10_WEB_1.pdf

16. http://www.conservatives.com/News/Speeches/2010/02/David_Cameron_Rebuilding_trust_in_politics.aspx

Let's move to Sweden

2011-09-21T07:21:00.022Z

Much current economic wisdom has it that the high taxing, high public spending, highly redistributive, bank-and-finance-regulating countries will be those that suffer most in the current economic crisis. They need to get lean and mean and cut, cut, cut, and free-up their financial sectors to remain economically competitive and healthy. Their economies need "rebalancing". State-heavy, socialist Sweden must surely be having a particularly terrible time, for example.

STOCKHOLM (MarketWatch) — Residents of this capital radiate a sense of well-being and it’s not only because they live in a beautiful city built on 14 islands that draws comparisons to Venice. It’s also because they call home one of Europe’s fastest growing economies.

The success of this export-oriented Nordic nation is noteworthy, because it’s in stark contrast to the debt woes plaguing Greece, Portugal and other southern euro-zone countries. Sweden is a member of the European Union, but it has chosen to keep its own currency. Public debt levels are relatively low and the government expects a budget surplus this year. Continues...

Er, so it seems high taxing, high public spending, highly redistributive countries can be pretty economically stable and healthy? I'm confused. At some point I need to spend some time learning economic theory (much of which currently looks like voodoo science to me)...

Quotes needed

2011-09-19T08:19:00.005Z

I am looking for good, pithy quotes from theists acknowledging that the various arguments for the existence of God are inconclusive or even poor (even though they think that doesn't matter). If you have examples (with sources), could you email me direct rather than stick them here? Email address above. Thanks...

Finsteraarhorn

2011-09-18T15:24:00.004Z

Another video I made on Finsteraarhorn couple of weeks ago. Can be viewed full screen and in 720pHD for the full effect.

What is the Tory party for - really?

2011-09-18T13:16:00.012Z

This time round with the Conservatives, it seems to me more obvious than ever that the party is, like the Republican party in the US, in essence nothing more than an organization devoted first and foremost to helping out the very, very rich, and big business, often at the expense of everyone else.

The real expertise of the party lies in dressing up policies designed to favour what the rich/big business perceive to be in their short-term interest as really being about "fairness".

This was masterfully done in the case of the Higher Education reforms, which stuffed the middle classes financially, saved the highest rate tax payers a fortune for generations, offered big business all sorts of opportunities, but dressed it all up as "Why should a postman have to pay for your university education?" That was quite brilliant PR.

Ditto the ongoing cuts which were 50% higher again than even Darling wanted (who was in turn much more pro-big-cuts than Balls and Brown), which were widely predicted to cause a double dip recession for obvious reasons, and which were nevertheless pursued on the basis of very little economic evidence (indeed pursued in the teeth of much historical evidence to the comtrary). Why? Because the very rich saw their opportunity to slash away at services that cost them a great deal in tax.

Now that the economy is in trouble, apparently as a direct result of that slashing away (as are many other economies, for much the same reason), the proposed solution, is of course, to now pump money in to the economy - by, er, cutting taxes for the very rich.

Ditto the NHS reforms. See my earlier post.

That this is the Tory party's ultimate reason d'etre seems to me transparently obvious. They may fiddle around with other policies too, of course. But, when it comes to serious money, that's what they do: stuff it into the pockets of their rich mates.

But perhaps I am in an intellectual black hole that blames Tory self-interest for most things. Perhaps I am being unfair? So set me straight. Can you Tories out there point to some examples where Government policy has been changed in such a way as to introduce a serious financial cost that falls primarily on the very rich and/or big business and benefits the rest of us? Other than when they've had a gun put to their heads?

John Gray: Can Religion Tell Us More Than Science?

2011-09-18T10:48:00.004Z

From BBC website...

When he recounts the story of his conversion to Catholicism in his autobiography A Sort of Life, Graham Greene writes that he went for instruction to Father Trollope, a very tall and very fat man who had once been an actor in the West End.

Trollope was a convert who became a priest and led a highly ascetic life, and Greene didn't warm to him very much, at least to begin with.

Yet the writer came to feel that in dealing with his instructor he was faced with "the challenge of an inexplicable goodness". It was this impression - rather than any of the arguments the devout Father presented to the writer for the existence of God - that eventually led to Greene's conversion.

The arguments that were patiently rehearsed by Father Trollope faded from his memory, and Greene had no interest in retrieving them. "I cannot be bothered to remember," he writes. "I accept."

It's clear that what Green accepted wasn't what he called "those unconvincing philosophical arguments". But what was it that he had accepted?

Continues..

If I get time I may go through this paragraph by paragraph, as it's fantastically instructive. However I haven't found time to respond to Randal Rauser yet...

Gig on Tuesday night

2011-09-18T10:30:00.004Z

I am playing with the Heavy Dexters at the Bullingdon Arms pub in Oxford, this coming Tuesday (20th Sept). It's a pretty good venue in the back room with stage PA, light rig, etc.

By the way our website with demo etc. is here. Available for weddings, bar mitzvahs etc.!

It's on the Cowley Road.

Live jazz plus DJs playing r'n'b, funk and soul
9.30pm-midnight. DJ set till 2am. Free entry
The Bullingdon Arms, 162 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1UE; Tel. 01865 244516.