{"id":16010,"date":"2014-04-06T11:13:31","date_gmt":"2014-04-06T15:13:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/?p=16010"},"modified":"2014-04-06T11:13:31","modified_gmt":"2014-04-06T15:13:31","slug":"thought-police-lineup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/thought-police-lineup\/","title":{"rendered":"Thought Police Lineup"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00c2\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The other day the head muckety-mucks of Saudi Arabia, a clique of oil-rich Bedouin barbarians (think bloodthirsty Beverly Hillbillies) have decided it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not enough to stone women who do not obediently hide their charms (and everything else) inside black garbage bags. No, that doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take them far enough back into the Bronze Age. So they have decreed that all atheists are henceforth to be considered and treated as terrorists.<\/p>\n

Of course, in one sense, the sheiks are right. The minute someone casts off the mental straightjacket of Islamic medievalism, he or she does in fact pose a dangerous threat to the regime of pious barbarism. The infection might prove contagious. And then, before long, you might have the kingdom enter the twenty-first century. Or at least the twentieth. Even the eighteenth would be a big improvement.<\/p>\n

(And don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t start giving me PC flack for making bigoted remarks about Arabs. Surely you can see I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sticking up for a group of Arabs, the atheists upon whom open season has just been declared.)<\/p>\n

So far I seem to be presupposing a big gap between our enlightened Western civilization and the backwards culture of Saudi Arabia. But not quite. I see shaping up a scenario in which the hyper-sensitivities of a decadent culture (the West) are aligning with the primitive half-civilization of the Middle East. It is a strange yet almost predictable convergence of opposites. Western decadence invites the destruction of its own free society by tolerating (even embracing) intolerance and giving it an equal seat at the big table, somehow failing to see that the intolerant will wind up the only ones at the table\u00e2\u20ac\u201dor at least setting the menu and the manners for everybody else.<\/p>\n

As you have anticipated, I have in mind the inexplicable equation of opposing Islamo-fascism with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Islamophobia.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But that is not my main point. Some Western countries have made it a crime to criticize Islam. In decadent America no such law is yet on the books, but there is strong social pressure against criticizing Islam, as I have just mentioned. What I mean to point out is the trend of PC politeness-censorship in the eventual direction of anti-blasphemy laws and the criminalizing of critics of religion. As religious believers portray themselves as victims and demand \u00e2\u20ac\u0153protection\u00e2\u20ac\u009d from criticism, we critics of faith may find ourselves empathizing with the endangered species of Saudi atheists. Atheists in America are already vilified as immoral or morally nihilistic because we do not claim a basis for morality in the divine will. For this reason, some religious people already regard us as threats to the social and moral order. And that is, as I say, not that far from the reasoning of the Saudi authorities.<\/p>\n

All this makes me think of an old sermonic conscience-prod: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If it became illegal to be a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d In the same way, if being a critic of religion makes one a villain, it might be good to rethink just what we have in mind when we call ourselves \u00e2\u20ac\u0153atheists\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or other labels usually thought to be synonymous (though they may not be\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6).<\/p>\n

Are you an atheist<\/em><\/strong>? What is<\/em> an atheist? Someone who does not believe in God (gods)? Not good enough. Agnostics don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe in God either. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll get to them in a minute. Now, does the atheist believe<\/em> there is no deity? That would seem to imply that theists are correct when they characterize atheism as a rival faith position. But it is my impression that most self-styled atheists would not describe their position this way. It would be more accurate to say that atheists just do not see sufficient reason to take the God option seriously, any more than they feel compelled to hold open the possibility that leprechauns exist. Sure, theoretically, the little guys might<\/em> be real, but what are the chances?<\/p>\n

This is where agnosticism<\/em><\/strong> comes in. As Thomas Henry Huxley, who coined the term, viewed the matter, the agnostic does not now see any way to prove a deity exists but thinks it is entirely possible. It is an open question, or, as William James put it, a live option. William James figured that as long as the odds are even and it was one of those cases where \u00e2\u20ac\u0153not to decide is<\/em> to decide\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (what James called a forced option), it is legitimate to exercise \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the will to believe\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to tip the balance, since you will have<\/em> to fall off the fence one way or the other anyway. Pascal must have had the same idea when he said one ought to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153wager\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that the Christian faith is true, even while admitting that it might not be. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re either going to live life as a religious person or as a nonreligious one. Ya pays yer money and ya takes yer choice. In this framework, I guess William James would have said Huxley had actually opted for irreligion, and I guess that would be correct. Agnostics are irreligious. They have effectively chosen a side.<\/p>\n

But you could<\/em> choose the other side. And many have. Evangelical theologian Clark H. Pinnock was probably not atypical when he readily admitted that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153know\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153believe\u00e2\u20ac\u009d do not mean the same thing. He realized that no mortal can possibly know<\/em> whether God exists. But he thought there was a pretty good case to be made for God and Christianity, and Pinnock figured that a step of faith (no leap being necessary) was justified\u00e2\u20ac\u201das a working hypothesis. This was a man with the courage to change his mind, which he had done more than once on various issues, and at some cost. So I think he meant it. Pinnock was technically an agnostic even while being a devout Christian. Many are.<\/p>\n

Back to Huxley. He was quick to point out that he wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t saying one could never know<\/em> there was no way to know if a God exists. That would presuppose just the sort of superhuman knowledge Huxley admitted he lacked. Maybe someone someday will come up with a definitive proof of God. Huxley\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s agnosticism grants that possibility. But most people who use the term today seem to mean that they believe you cannot know, you can never know, whether there is a God. Or do they? I suspect they really mean something akin to what I said about atheists: they just don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see any likelihood that it will ever prove possible to know about God.<\/p>\n

How about rationalists<\/em><\/strong>? Central here is epistemology: how can we know, whether about God or about anything else? By reason, processing the evidence of the senses. Intuition, feeling, sentiment: these things may rightly prompt certain of our actions, very important ones. But they do not yield true knowledge of factual matters. Religious belief pretends to offer such knowledge, but it does not, as long as we define \u00e2\u20ac\u0153knowledge\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153justified true belief.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d If the decision to embrace religious doctrines is based in any measure on an act of faith, it cannot claim to be rationally justified. Many advocates of religion are happy to admit that. To them, faith is the missing link. But rationalists call that a bridge to nowhere. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s using counterfeit money to make up the shortfall.<\/p>\n

Logical Positivists used to claim that any belief incapable of scientific verification was merely gibberish. Wittgenstein thought this at first but then decided that scientific verification was not the only game in town, not the only \u00e2\u20ac\u0153language game\u00e2\u20ac\u009d available. There are other uses of language that do not posit and postulate. Religious language follows a different trajectory and serves a different purpose. It is not cognitive in nature, but neither is it meaningless. It is emotional and expressive in nature. As Tillich taught, religious myths and symbols express and articulate a deeper level of meaning, much in the fashion of poetry. Religion has no business poaching on the preserves of science (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The earth was created in one week.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) or history (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Moses parted the Red Sea.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d). Of course, most religious folks do not draw those distinctions and insist on making fact claims they cannot support through evidence and thus are tempted to pretend they can, deceiving themselves and their audiences (e.g., \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Scientific Creationists,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d William Lane Craig, etc.).<\/p>\n

Humanists<\/em><\/strong> <\/strong>espouse the philosophy summed up by the singing group Up with People: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got to do the best we can with what we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Humanists (at least the ones we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re talking about) are usually atheists and agnostics, but they prefer the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153humanist\u00e2\u20ac\u009d label because they would rather fly the flag of what they do<\/em> stand for than what they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t.<\/em><\/p>\n

Let me take a moment to draw a distinction. Though humanists have many concerns and causes, there is one that I think disqualifies a non-theist as a humanist: radical environmentalism. If you believe that human beings are a pestilence, the worst thing ever to happen to the earth, you are no kind of humanist. If you think the interests of snail darters take precedence over the well-being of humans, you do not espouse humanism. If jobs for people and energy independence mean nothing to you, but \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Gaia\u00e2\u20ac\u009d does, you probably don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to call yourself a humanist, and I wish you wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t.<\/p>\n

Similarly, on another issue, if you think a fetus is no more valuable than a tumor, I think you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re confused if you think you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a humanist.<\/p>\n

In my lexicon, a secularist<\/em> <\/strong>is fundamentally an advocate of the separation of religion and state. But these days that has come to mean advocating the elimination of any and all expressions of religion on public property, which seems pretty scorched-earth to me. That crusade seems to me to pass beyond secularization<\/em> (dethronement of any official or state religion) to secularism<\/em>, the attempt to make the rejection of religion into<\/em> the ruling ideology.<\/p>\n

Then there are skeptics<\/em><\/strong>. To be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153skeptical\u00e2\u20ac\u009d means \u00e2\u20ac\u0153to scrutinize.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d We generally use the term for those like Joe Nickel and James Randi who investigate extraordinary, paranormal claims. Believers in things like telepathy and ghosts dismiss skeptics as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153paradigm police,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d defenders of an orthodoxy of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153normative science\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Thomas Kuhn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s term). This implies skeptics go in with minds made up, determined to debunk. But that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not really a problem, is it? Isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the procedure of scientists to try their best to debunk their own<\/em> hypotheses? That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the only way to see if your theory passes the test.<\/p>\n

It is not uncommon to find selective skepticism<\/em> in play. Local skeptic groups often have to tread lightly because they have welcomed fundamentalist Christians as members. These believers would not think of applying skeptical scrutiny to their own beliefs, but flying saucers and ghosts are fair game: they have no place in the fundamentalist (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153biblical\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) worldview, so fundamentalists are eager to shoot them down. Personally, I sometimes find myself baffled at atheistic skeptics vis a vis<\/em> the paranormal who seem however to swallow uncritically certain political dogmas \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and I am fully aware they look at me the same way!<\/p>\n

Tillich spoke of people who cannot seem to believe in anything, who are automatically skeptical of everything. But they are not to be written off as nothing more than jaded smart-asses. Tillich suggested that they do<\/em> believe in Truth, so fervently that they will not easily accept any claim as<\/em> the Truth. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re willing to wait as long as it takes, even if the Truth never comes along. One might say they are employing the concept of the Truth as a sailor employs the North Star: he navigates by<\/em> it but does not expect to reach<\/em> it.<\/p>\n

I think Nietzsche was saying the same thing when he warned that when we come to realize there is<\/em> no Truth, we are tempted to regard our favorite fictions as<\/em> the Truth. To avoid such a convenient self-deception, Nietzsche said we should not reject the category labeled \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Truth\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but should keep it as an empty drawer, just to remind ourselves that our fictions belong in the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Fiction\u00e2\u20ac\u009d drawer, not in the ever-empty \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Truth\u00e2\u20ac\u009d drawer. We need the empty, purely formal and not material notion of Truth to guard ourselves from imagining that some favorite fiction is not more than a fiction.<\/p>\n

Any and all of the above may add \u00e2\u20ac\u0153freethinker<\/em><\/strong>\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to their resume. But I will defend the right of religious folks to claim the title, too. I will admit that my experience and that of others I have observed lead me to expect that a conservative Christian who dares to rethink his theology in an honest and searching way is very likely to end up in one of the camps I have discussed here. His initial stance is one of accepting a package, a platform, a slate of beliefs learned from his inherited church or whichever church got him to convert from unbelief. These beliefs may gain their integrity from a systematic logic. If they do, then, when one discards one feature of the system, the whole thing may collapse.<\/p>\n

But even more basically, questioning any feature of a creed accepted on faith erodes the whole warrant of faith. If any single tenet of your creed is no longer safe from critical evaluation, where does it stop? How can you keep the iron curtain of cognitive invulnerability safely around the rest of the tenets? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think you can, without heavy-duty compartmentalizing, and you can keep up that effort for only so long. And once you realize that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153faith epistemology\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (fideism) amounts to arbitrary stubbornness, stonewalling, you will probably try your best to find or create rational justification for your beliefs. But that is indulging in after-the-fact rationalizing. Just like Creationists and resurrection apologists. I am not optimistic about the prospects for a religious freethinker. But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s possible; remember Clark Pinnock.<\/p>\n

Neither do I have any right to tell anyone not to bother continuing his quest because I can tell him in advance what he will find (namely, my oh-so-wise opinions!). That would make me into the very sort of dogmatist I despise! And even if I am right, for me to tell somebody to save himself the trouble and just agree with me, would be cheating him. Again, even if my conclusions are correct, someone else must come to these conclusions on his own, or they will be worthless because they will be based, once again (and ironically) on faith<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u201dfaith in me! Nope, you have to reach your own conclusions, even if they do wind up jiving with mine. And I have to remain agnostic as to whether you will.<\/p>\n

So says Zarathustra.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00c2\u00a0 The other day the head muckety-mucks of Saudi Arabia, a clique of oil-rich Bedouin barbarians (think bloodthirsty Beverly Hillbillies) have decided it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not enough to stone women who do not obediently hide their charms (and everything else) inside black … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16010\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}