For those who are interested, here are my two latest UK politics blogs at Huffington Post:
Why Do the Media Act as a Mouthpiece for Vested Interests and
The Tories have Nothing to Fear Except their own Extremists.
In other news, after a false start, we now have an Italian publisher for God's Philosophers, D'Ettoris Editori. A big thank you to them for picking it up.
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Thursday, June 27, 2013
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Eurosceptics are heading for defeat in the referendum
Another post on UK politics that I blogged at Huffington Post.
Let's imagine that David Cameron has come back from his short holiday in Ibiza refreshed and ready to lance the boil on Europe. He announces that there will be an in-out referendum on the EU this autumn and that he has already squared it with Nick Clegg. "It's time to settle this matter once and for all," he says. "Only the British people can do that." Eurosceptics are delighted. Brussels panics. And, in late October, Britain decides on Europe. The result, I can assure you, would be an overwhelming vote to stay in the EU. Judging by their public utterances, many Eurosceptics imagine that if we have ever get a say on Europe, an "out" vote is in the bag. Well, it isn't. British voters are far more likely to decide on staying in. Let me explain why.
In poll after poll, Europe is far down the list of voters' concerns. Political anoraks like me sometimes find this hard to believe. After all, EU rules affect everything from clean air to the regulation shape of bananas. Nonetheless, most people have no idea who their MEP is, let alone the identity of Britain's Commissioner (admittedly, Baroness Ashton richly deserves her obscurity). Even UKIP supporters are not as obsessed by Europe as you'd expect. And we know what happens in referenda about little known subjects on which the voters care little. Just ask the Liberal Democrats.
Until recently, to be a Liberal Democrat activist was to be fixated by voting reform. When she was out walking the dog, the Lib Dem member was musing on the importance of multi-member constituencies. When his kid was home from school, burbling about what he'd done that day, the Liberal Democrat was miles away, balancing the merits of the single transferable vote over cloneproof Schwartz sequential dropping. They thought that the case for PR was obvious. Surely the British people would vote for it given a chance. After all, opinion polls showed big majorities in favour of reform. Well, in May 2011 we got that chance. The result must have been a huge shock to the liberal system. Despite a lead at the start of the campaign and the support of every bien pensant in Islington, voters rejected change by a margin of two to one.
As the Liberal Democrats had discovered, there is a huge inbuilt bias towards the status quo in almost any referendum. On matters that are not everyday concerns to voters, this bias is even greater. The first time many voters will have thought seriously about the subject at hand will be immediately before they vote. They have no time to weigh up the pros and cons, or to decide whether they want to take a leap in the dark. By their nature, referenda are over big issues. Voters simply won't want to take the risk.
It will be the same in a referendum on Europe. True, voters find the EU mildly irritating and they certainly don't want to join the Euro. But faced with the voices of the establishment whispering about three million jobs being dependent on the single market, they'll decide they prefer the devil they know. Life outside is a risk. We could be isolated and lonely. A few Eurosceptics are building an attractive case for a glorious future in the Anglosphere, but it won't make any difference.
There isn't going to be a referendum in the autumn but there will probably be one in 2017. If Eurosceptics want to win that vote, we have to stop fighting with David Cameron and start campaigning now. When the vote comes, people must have already reached a settled decision to vote "out". They need to have conquered their fears about making a big change. Most importantly, they need to have thought about something that they don't usual bother to consider. Otherwise, it's already all over. The Eurosceptic cause will be lost.
Reposted from Huffington Post
Discuss this post at the Quodlibeta Forum
Let's imagine that David Cameron has come back from his short holiday in Ibiza refreshed and ready to lance the boil on Europe. He announces that there will be an in-out referendum on the EU this autumn and that he has already squared it with Nick Clegg. "It's time to settle this matter once and for all," he says. "Only the British people can do that." Eurosceptics are delighted. Brussels panics. And, in late October, Britain decides on Europe. The result, I can assure you, would be an overwhelming vote to stay in the EU. Judging by their public utterances, many Eurosceptics imagine that if we have ever get a say on Europe, an "out" vote is in the bag. Well, it isn't. British voters are far more likely to decide on staying in. Let me explain why.
In poll after poll, Europe is far down the list of voters' concerns. Political anoraks like me sometimes find this hard to believe. After all, EU rules affect everything from clean air to the regulation shape of bananas. Nonetheless, most people have no idea who their MEP is, let alone the identity of Britain's Commissioner (admittedly, Baroness Ashton richly deserves her obscurity). Even UKIP supporters are not as obsessed by Europe as you'd expect. And we know what happens in referenda about little known subjects on which the voters care little. Just ask the Liberal Democrats.
Until recently, to be a Liberal Democrat activist was to be fixated by voting reform. When she was out walking the dog, the Lib Dem member was musing on the importance of multi-member constituencies. When his kid was home from school, burbling about what he'd done that day, the Liberal Democrat was miles away, balancing the merits of the single transferable vote over cloneproof Schwartz sequential dropping. They thought that the case for PR was obvious. Surely the British people would vote for it given a chance. After all, opinion polls showed big majorities in favour of reform. Well, in May 2011 we got that chance. The result must have been a huge shock to the liberal system. Despite a lead at the start of the campaign and the support of every bien pensant in Islington, voters rejected change by a margin of two to one.
As the Liberal Democrats had discovered, there is a huge inbuilt bias towards the status quo in almost any referendum. On matters that are not everyday concerns to voters, this bias is even greater. The first time many voters will have thought seriously about the subject at hand will be immediately before they vote. They have no time to weigh up the pros and cons, or to decide whether they want to take a leap in the dark. By their nature, referenda are over big issues. Voters simply won't want to take the risk.
It will be the same in a referendum on Europe. True, voters find the EU mildly irritating and they certainly don't want to join the Euro. But faced with the voices of the establishment whispering about three million jobs being dependent on the single market, they'll decide they prefer the devil they know. Life outside is a risk. We could be isolated and lonely. A few Eurosceptics are building an attractive case for a glorious future in the Anglosphere, but it won't make any difference.
There isn't going to be a referendum in the autumn but there will probably be one in 2017. If Eurosceptics want to win that vote, we have to stop fighting with David Cameron and start campaigning now. When the vote comes, people must have already reached a settled decision to vote "out". They need to have conquered their fears about making a big change. Most importantly, they need to have thought about something that they don't usual bother to consider. Otherwise, it's already all over. The Eurosceptic cause will be lost.
Reposted from Huffington Post
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Sunday, June 09, 2013
Some Old Articles Back Online
A while back, I took down some of the articles at Bede's Library and jameshannam.com because I was worried it was so long since I wrote them, they'd need serious updating. I've now accepted that I'll probably never have the time to rewrite them properly. So, I've given them a read through, corrected some typos and obvious mistakes, and put them back on line. Therefore, after a gap of a couple of years the following articles and series are now available again.
Emperor Justinian's Closure of the School of Athens
Christianity and Pagan Literature
The Decline and End of Witch Trials in Europe
A Dialogue on Natural Religion
A Seekers' Guide to the Bible
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Emperor Justinian's Closure of the School of Athens
Christianity and Pagan Literature
The Decline and End of Witch Trials in Europe
A Dialogue on Natural Religion
A Seekers' Guide to the Bible
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Saturday, June 08, 2013
A Plea from a Grassroots Conservative
Lately, I've been blogging about UK politics at Huffington Post. Although it is a bit insular, I'll repost here in case anyone is interested.
In common with many Conservative Party members, I want an in/out referendum and expect I'll be campaigning hard for an 'out' vote if we get one. Even more than that, I want a Conservative majority after the next election. Just the thought of Ed Miliband smirking outside 10 Downing Street on 8 May 2015 turns my stomach. Besides, only a Tory majority gets us that referendum. We know now that Miliband is dead against giving the people a say. And Nick Clegg will do anything to protect his Brussels pension fund. We can argue about whether "renegotiate then a referendum" is the right policy.
But never mind that. "Renegotiate then a referendum" is the policy. Whatever the virtues of mandate votes or getting Labour and the Liberal Democrats to vote down a bill in this Parliament, Tories should go out and sell the policy we've got. It's true that David Cameron badly damaged his credibility by breaking his cast-iron guarantee for a vote on the constitutional Treaty of Lisbon (and with hindsight, he must be cursing the day he took that fateful decision). But surely we can all agree he'll never be able to pull a stunt like that again.
So, however much I admire their principles, and conceding that it was backbench pressure that forced Mr Cameron to offer a referendum in the first place, I am beginning to get a tiny bit impatient with the honourable ladies and gentlemen on the backbenches. Admittedly, unlike many Tories, I think that replacing the enormous corporatist quango and public sector retirement scheme, otherwise known as the House of Lords, with just about any alternative is a good idea. I can't see what the fuss is about gay marriage (if it makes a few people very happy and shouldn't bother anyone else, what's the problem?). And just looking at the talented colleagues I work with makes me grateful that some of them are here because of an enlightened immigration policy. I suppose I'm not really UKIP material.
But before my fellow Eurosceptics dismiss me as a pseudo-pinko and the last remaining member of Ken Clarke's fan club, let me say this. My libertarian views are hardly a million miles from those of luminaries of the right such as Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Daniel Hannan. I admire the radicalism of the government in education and welfare, areas that Mrs Thatcher hardly dared to touch. I applaud this administration's determination to stick to Plan A and get a grip on public spending. I fear desperately that Miliband's cronies will wreak the country just at the moment the Conservatives have been able to transfer the economy out of intensive care.
Elections really are won by the party standing closest to the common ground. This was the case in the 1980s when Mrs Thatcher could offer a robustly rightwing programme because her opponents were marching towards a hallucination of the New Jerusalem. With Miliband leading his troops off stage left while singing the Internationale, we have a similar opportunity. UKIP might hit 5% in 2015, but most of their votes will be in true-blue heartlands where they can't cause much damage. In seats where Labour and the Conservatives are going toe-to-toe, UKIP will be not so much squeezed as squashed between the heavyweights. Their current level of support is unnerving (and they will win the European Elections next year). But listening to some Tory backbenchers, you'd have thought they were blushing debutantes who'd never seen a mid-term protest before.
There are only two factors against the Conservatives. The electoral arithmetic still favours Labour (so thanks guys, for stopping House of Lords reform, even if it wasn't just to spite Clegg). That's water under the bridge. Our other problem is party unity. Voters don't like parties that they perceive to be split. The media, of course, will do everything it can to foster just such a perception. But it's no use blaming journalists - they are just doing their job. Instead, it is up to Tories to starve the story of oxygen. Backbenchers should take a vow of silence on all matters not directly and explicitly linked to their own constituencies. The only exception should be telling anyone who'll listen what wonderful job the Conservative members of the Government are doing. When a local party chairman receives a survey from a mischievous newspaper asking how many members have left in protest of gay marriage, he should steer the relevant email straight towards the recycle bin.
Speaking as a Conservative, the next election is ours to lose. If it means holding our noses, if it means putting some principles into abeyance for a couple of years, even if it means MPs not humouring media starlets who'd be so grateful for a story, then so be it. Every Conservative has a duty to knuckle down and follow our leader. If we do that, there is every chance that come 2020, the United Kingdom (and it will still be united) will be prosperous and free. But if we lose our nerve and give the impression we are an undignified rabble, by the end of the decade we live in a bankrupt country shackled to the European Union's economic corpse.
Reposted from Huffington Post.
Discuss this post at the Quodlibeta Forum
In common with many Conservative Party members, I want an in/out referendum and expect I'll be campaigning hard for an 'out' vote if we get one. Even more than that, I want a Conservative majority after the next election. Just the thought of Ed Miliband smirking outside 10 Downing Street on 8 May 2015 turns my stomach. Besides, only a Tory majority gets us that referendum. We know now that Miliband is dead against giving the people a say. And Nick Clegg will do anything to protect his Brussels pension fund. We can argue about whether "renegotiate then a referendum" is the right policy.
But never mind that. "Renegotiate then a referendum" is the policy. Whatever the virtues of mandate votes or getting Labour and the Liberal Democrats to vote down a bill in this Parliament, Tories should go out and sell the policy we've got. It's true that David Cameron badly damaged his credibility by breaking his cast-iron guarantee for a vote on the constitutional Treaty of Lisbon (and with hindsight, he must be cursing the day he took that fateful decision). But surely we can all agree he'll never be able to pull a stunt like that again.
So, however much I admire their principles, and conceding that it was backbench pressure that forced Mr Cameron to offer a referendum in the first place, I am beginning to get a tiny bit impatient with the honourable ladies and gentlemen on the backbenches. Admittedly, unlike many Tories, I think that replacing the enormous corporatist quango and public sector retirement scheme, otherwise known as the House of Lords, with just about any alternative is a good idea. I can't see what the fuss is about gay marriage (if it makes a few people very happy and shouldn't bother anyone else, what's the problem?). And just looking at the talented colleagues I work with makes me grateful that some of them are here because of an enlightened immigration policy. I suppose I'm not really UKIP material.
But before my fellow Eurosceptics dismiss me as a pseudo-pinko and the last remaining member of Ken Clarke's fan club, let me say this. My libertarian views are hardly a million miles from those of luminaries of the right such as Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Daniel Hannan. I admire the radicalism of the government in education and welfare, areas that Mrs Thatcher hardly dared to touch. I applaud this administration's determination to stick to Plan A and get a grip on public spending. I fear desperately that Miliband's cronies will wreak the country just at the moment the Conservatives have been able to transfer the economy out of intensive care.
Elections really are won by the party standing closest to the common ground. This was the case in the 1980s when Mrs Thatcher could offer a robustly rightwing programme because her opponents were marching towards a hallucination of the New Jerusalem. With Miliband leading his troops off stage left while singing the Internationale, we have a similar opportunity. UKIP might hit 5% in 2015, but most of their votes will be in true-blue heartlands where they can't cause much damage. In seats where Labour and the Conservatives are going toe-to-toe, UKIP will be not so much squeezed as squashed between the heavyweights. Their current level of support is unnerving (and they will win the European Elections next year). But listening to some Tory backbenchers, you'd have thought they were blushing debutantes who'd never seen a mid-term protest before.
There are only two factors against the Conservatives. The electoral arithmetic still favours Labour (so thanks guys, for stopping House of Lords reform, even if it wasn't just to spite Clegg). That's water under the bridge. Our other problem is party unity. Voters don't like parties that they perceive to be split. The media, of course, will do everything it can to foster just such a perception. But it's no use blaming journalists - they are just doing their job. Instead, it is up to Tories to starve the story of oxygen. Backbenchers should take a vow of silence on all matters not directly and explicitly linked to their own constituencies. The only exception should be telling anyone who'll listen what wonderful job the Conservative members of the Government are doing. When a local party chairman receives a survey from a mischievous newspaper asking how many members have left in protest of gay marriage, he should steer the relevant email straight towards the recycle bin.
Speaking as a Conservative, the next election is ours to lose. If it means holding our noses, if it means putting some principles into abeyance for a couple of years, even if it means MPs not humouring media starlets who'd be so grateful for a story, then so be it. Every Conservative has a duty to knuckle down and follow our leader. If we do that, there is every chance that come 2020, the United Kingdom (and it will still be united) will be prosperous and free. But if we lose our nerve and give the impression we are an undignified rabble, by the end of the decade we live in a bankrupt country shackled to the European Union's economic corpse.
Reposted from Huffington Post.
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Thursday, May 30, 2013
Quote of the Day
Our glittering age of technologism is also a glittering age of scientism. Scientism is not the same thing as science. Science is a blessing, but scientism is a curse. Science, I mean what practicing scientists actually do, is acutely and admirably aware of its limits, and humbly admits to the provisional character of its conclusions; but scientism is dogmatic, and peddles certainties. It is always at the ready with the solution to every problem, because it believes that the solution to every problem is a scientific one, and so it gives scientific answers to non-scientific questions. But even the question of the place of science in human existence is not a scientific question. It is a philosophical, which is to say, a humanistic, one.
Owing to its preference for totalistic explanation, scientism transforms science into an ideology, which is of course a betrayal of the experimental and empirical spirit. There is no perplexity of human emotion or human behavior that these days is not accounted for genetically or in the cocksure terms of evolutionary biology. It is true that the selfish gene has lately been replaced by the altruistic gene, which is lovelier, but it is still the gene that tyrannically rules. Liberal scientism should be no more philosophically attractive to us than conservative scientism, insofar as it, too, arrogantly reduces all the realms that we inhabit to a single realm, and tempts us into the belief that the epistemological eschaton has finally arrived, and at last we know what we need to know to manipulate human affairs wisely. This belief is invariably false and occasionally disastrous. We are becoming ignorant of ignorance.
Leon Wieseltier
"Perhaps Culture is Now the Counterculture: A Defense of the Humanities"
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Owing to its preference for totalistic explanation, scientism transforms science into an ideology, which is of course a betrayal of the experimental and empirical spirit. There is no perplexity of human emotion or human behavior that these days is not accounted for genetically or in the cocksure terms of evolutionary biology. It is true that the selfish gene has lately been replaced by the altruistic gene, which is lovelier, but it is still the gene that tyrannically rules. Liberal scientism should be no more philosophically attractive to us than conservative scientism, insofar as it, too, arrogantly reduces all the realms that we inhabit to a single realm, and tempts us into the belief that the epistemological eschaton has finally arrived, and at last we know what we need to know to manipulate human affairs wisely. This belief is invariably false and occasionally disastrous. We are becoming ignorant of ignorance.
Leon Wieseltier
"Perhaps Culture is Now the Counterculture: A Defense of the Humanities"
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Saturday, May 25, 2013
General Revelation and Science
One of the most frequent and consistent themes throughout the Bible is that creation and its elements reveal God's existence and nature. Numerous passages say that some of God's characteristics, such as his righteousness and faithfulness, are expressed in creation. Some say that virtually everyone has some knowledge of God, because nature overwhelmingly testifies to his existence and action. Long passages on this include Job 38-40, Psalm 104, and Acts 17:23-31. Shorter examples include Job 12:7-10; Psalm 19:1-4; Psalm 85:10-11; Psalm 97:4-6; Habakkuk 3:3; Acts 14:16-17; Romans 1:18-20; and many others. According to the entry for "Creation" in The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery:
Or as the Belgic Confession, one of the first Protestant confessions written (in 1561), puts it:
This is one aspect of what is called "general revelation", that is, revelation that is available to all people in all times (another aspect being the human conscience). This contrasts with "special revelation" which is only revealed to some people in specific times (this would include the Bible and the life of Jesus). While a handful of theologians have tried to deny the doctrine of general revelation, such as Barth and some Dutch Reformed theologians, they did not do so because of the biblical evidence, but rather because their theological systems did not allow for any knowledge of God that does not come through special revelation. Their attempts to get around the numerous biblical statements that creation does reveal the truth about God to everyone who has ever lived are extremely forced, and represent a primary weakness of their otherwise brilliant theologies.
Here are the logical steps by which creation reveals God:
1. Creation reliably testifies about itself.
2. Therefore, creation reliably testifies about itself when it shows itself to be created and ordered.
3. Therefore, we can know from creation that there is a Creator and Orderer.
Point 1 must be true in order for point 2 to be true; or conversely, if point 1 were false, then point 2 would be false as well. Creation could not reliably testify about itself when it shows itself to be created if it didn't reliably testify about itself. The former (point 2) is a sub-category of the latter (point 1). Similarly, point 2 must be true in order for point 3 to be true. If creation did not reliably show itself to be created and ordered, then our belief derived from our experience with creation that there must be a Creator and Orderer would not be valid, since it would be based on unreliable grounds.
Now, Scripture only explicitly states point 3. But point 3 presupposes point 2, and point 2 presupposes point 1. Therefore, the idea that the interaction of everything in the universe points to God presupposes that every individual element of creation can be trusted to display the truth about itself. This extends to every level of creation, and thus is true of recent scientific discoveries unknown in previous times. For example, the incredible degree of fine-tuning that the universe must have in order for life to be possible was unknown for most of human history; the space-time density, for example, must be fine-tuned to within one part in 10120 in order for any kind of physical life to exist. But the fact that this property wasn't even discovered until the 20th century doesn't mean that it doesn't show itself to come from God's hand and display his glory. In fact, the degree of complexity necessary for the occurrence of life is one of the most commonly cited evidences that the universe was made by an intelligent agent.
I should point out that this doesn't necessarily mean that we infer the existence of a Creator and Orderer from the order we find in nature. It can mean that, but it can also refer to the fact, as Alvin Plantinga points out in Warranted Christian Belief, that when we see a beautiful landscape we immediately and spontaneously form beliefs about God. Nature, then, doesn't have to function as a premise for an inference, but merely as the grounds for a belief, where "grounds" is understood simply to refer to the experience that produces the belief. In a similar way, when I see a tree in front of me, I spontaneously (i.e., non-inferentially) form the belief "There's a tree in front of me". The experience of the tree is the ground for the belief, but it does not function as the premise of an argument -- I don't infer the existence of the tree from the fact that I am experiencing it.
Part of the reason the doctrine of general revelation is interesting is because it seems to sanction physical science. Physics, chemistry, biology, and similar sciences are the systematic analysis of nature. Since nature is a revelation from God, these sciences are the systematic analysis of God's general revelation; in a similar way, theology is the systematic analysis of God's special revelation. Of course, the analyses may be flawed for any number of reasons, for both the scientist and the theologian. But this doesn't give us room to just reject them out of hand. It seems that the Christian is obligated, from the Bible itself, to accept the findings of science -- although not uncritically, of course. That's an important point: there is space for the believer to disagree with the prevailing interpretation of God's revelation, whether the interpreters are theologians or scientists. But this is an exceptional situation; it can't be appealed to in order to reject a source of revelation in its entirety.
One issue that general revelation raises is whether general revelation functions as an independent source of revelation, or whether it must be interpreted or filtered through the lens of special revelation before its testimony can be trusted. Some Christians, such as young-earth creationists, claim that the testimony of general revelation only holds when it is understood from within a biblical perspective. This is an attempt to avoid having to take contemporary science seriously by claiming that it is misinterpreting the testimony of nature.
I'll go over one of the primary texts for general revelation in order to respond to this charge: Romans 1:18-20. This passage begins with the following statement: "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness..." Some understand this last phrase to essentially overturn the doctrine of general revelation. While creation testifies to God, this knowledge is suppressed; and so whatever witness creation displays is ignored.
But what exactly is being suppressed here? Go back to the three steps by which creation bears witness: 1, it reliably testifies about itself; 2, therefore it reliably testifies about itself when it reveals itself to be created and ordered; 3, we believe in the existence and action of God because of this order. Do those who deny God's existence deny that the universe reliably presents itself to us (point 1)? Well, apart from a few philosophers and some insane people -- and yes, there is some overlap between those categories -- the answer is obviously no. Do they deny that the universe is ordered (point 2)? Well, again, apart from lunatics, philosophers, and lunatic philosophers, the answer is of course not. What they deny is that we can validly know God's existence from this order (point 3). In other words, the suppression that Romans 1:18 speaks of is not a suppression of the facts of nature, it is a suppression of the move from the facts of nature to the existence of a Creator: it is a suppression of the recognition that there must be a God. There is nothing in this passage, or any other passage in the Bible, to suggest that our observations of the universe can't be trusted to reveal the truth about the universe. Nor is there anything to suggest that most of our inferences from these observations can't be trusted. It's only when it points to God that it becomes suppressed.
The passage continues in verses 19 and 20 by stating "...since what may be known about God is plain to them [men], because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities -- his eternal power and divine nature -- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse."
This passage makes several claims. Since I've already used numbers, here I'll use letters:
a. The testimony of creation is available to all people at all periods of human history. This is evident from the statement that this testimony has been present “since the creation of the world.” Therefore, this witness was available to people who lived in times prior to the Bible's composition, and who had no special revelation from God; as such, it was and is available to those in post-biblical times who lived in places where they did not have access to special revelation, as well as those who live in such places today.
b. The testimony of creation is a reliable revelation of God; or, in other words, creation reveals the truth about God. This is evident from the statements that creation's testimony reveals "what may be known about God", and that it reveals "God's invisible qualities -- his eternal power and divine nature".
c. The testimony of creation is clear and understandable. This is evident from the statements that it has "been clearly seen", "understood", and "is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them".
d. God holds people responsible for their response to the testimony of creation. This is evident from the statement that they "are without excuse".
Thus, people who have never heard the gospel message and never read a Bible verse (point a) still have some true knowledge of God through his creation (point b) which communicates to them clearly and understandably (point c), and they are held accountable for their response to it (point d).
So, if people who have never received any special revelation from God are still given clear and true communication of who God is from creation and are held accountable for their response to this communication, what does it mean? It means that creation is an autonomous witness to God, and its testimony is valid independently of the Bible. It does not have to be interpreted through the lens of the Bible before it can be considered to be a valid and reliable revelation from God. The only alternative to this is simply unsound: if we deny this it could be claimed that, by not having access to special revelation, those who have not heard the gospel simply didn't have access to the right filter or lens or interpretative framework from which they could accurately interpret creation's testimony. But this contradicts the claim that creation's testimony is understandable (point c) to those who do not have special revelation (point a). Moreover, even if we ignore this for the moment, we have to remember that God is just. He would not hold people accountable for their response to something (point d) that he never gave them access to. In order for creation to be a true and trustworthy revelation to those who don't have any other revelation -- as the Bible says it is -- its validity must hold independently of the Bible.
So I think the Bible requires the believer to accept the testimony of creation, even when that testimony is a very specific article of knowledge or something only recently discovered. Since science is the systematic analysis of God's general revelation, the believer should accept the findings of science -- again, not uncritically. The believer can't say "I accept the Bible, but not science", since the requirement to accept the testimony of creation comes from the Bible.
(cross-posted at Agent Intellect)
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The same view of creation that empties nature of divinity also makes it a revelation of God and leaves it filled with pointers to God. The fact that all things find their origin in the creative work of God means that everything, in some way, bears witness to the creation and is revelatory of the Creator. According to the Bible every rock and tree and creature can be said to testify of God, declare his glory and show forth his handiwork (Ps 8:1; 19:1; 104; 148). We might accurately speak of the creation as divine messenger (cf. Ps 104:3-4). (Italics added; cf. C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, pp. 69-71)
Or as the Belgic Confession, one of the first Protestant confessions written (in 1561), puts it:
We know him by two means: First, by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe, since that universe is before our eyes like a beautiful book in which all creatures, great and small, are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of God: his eternal power and his divinity, as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20. All these things are enough to convict men and to leave them without excuse. Second, he makes himself known to us more openly by his holy and divine Word, as much as we need in this life, for his glory and for the salvation of his own.
This is one aspect of what is called "general revelation", that is, revelation that is available to all people in all times (another aspect being the human conscience). This contrasts with "special revelation" which is only revealed to some people in specific times (this would include the Bible and the life of Jesus). While a handful of theologians have tried to deny the doctrine of general revelation, such as Barth and some Dutch Reformed theologians, they did not do so because of the biblical evidence, but rather because their theological systems did not allow for any knowledge of God that does not come through special revelation. Their attempts to get around the numerous biblical statements that creation does reveal the truth about God to everyone who has ever lived are extremely forced, and represent a primary weakness of their otherwise brilliant theologies.
Here are the logical steps by which creation reveals God:
1. Creation reliably testifies about itself.
2. Therefore, creation reliably testifies about itself when it shows itself to be created and ordered.
3. Therefore, we can know from creation that there is a Creator and Orderer.
Point 1 must be true in order for point 2 to be true; or conversely, if point 1 were false, then point 2 would be false as well. Creation could not reliably testify about itself when it shows itself to be created if it didn't reliably testify about itself. The former (point 2) is a sub-category of the latter (point 1). Similarly, point 2 must be true in order for point 3 to be true. If creation did not reliably show itself to be created and ordered, then our belief derived from our experience with creation that there must be a Creator and Orderer would not be valid, since it would be based on unreliable grounds.
Now, Scripture only explicitly states point 3. But point 3 presupposes point 2, and point 2 presupposes point 1. Therefore, the idea that the interaction of everything in the universe points to God presupposes that every individual element of creation can be trusted to display the truth about itself. This extends to every level of creation, and thus is true of recent scientific discoveries unknown in previous times. For example, the incredible degree of fine-tuning that the universe must have in order for life to be possible was unknown for most of human history; the space-time density, for example, must be fine-tuned to within one part in 10120 in order for any kind of physical life to exist. But the fact that this property wasn't even discovered until the 20th century doesn't mean that it doesn't show itself to come from God's hand and display his glory. In fact, the degree of complexity necessary for the occurrence of life is one of the most commonly cited evidences that the universe was made by an intelligent agent.
I should point out that this doesn't necessarily mean that we infer the existence of a Creator and Orderer from the order we find in nature. It can mean that, but it can also refer to the fact, as Alvin Plantinga points out in Warranted Christian Belief, that when we see a beautiful landscape we immediately and spontaneously form beliefs about God. Nature, then, doesn't have to function as a premise for an inference, but merely as the grounds for a belief, where "grounds" is understood simply to refer to the experience that produces the belief. In a similar way, when I see a tree in front of me, I spontaneously (i.e., non-inferentially) form the belief "There's a tree in front of me". The experience of the tree is the ground for the belief, but it does not function as the premise of an argument -- I don't infer the existence of the tree from the fact that I am experiencing it.
Part of the reason the doctrine of general revelation is interesting is because it seems to sanction physical science. Physics, chemistry, biology, and similar sciences are the systematic analysis of nature. Since nature is a revelation from God, these sciences are the systematic analysis of God's general revelation; in a similar way, theology is the systematic analysis of God's special revelation. Of course, the analyses may be flawed for any number of reasons, for both the scientist and the theologian. But this doesn't give us room to just reject them out of hand. It seems that the Christian is obligated, from the Bible itself, to accept the findings of science -- although not uncritically, of course. That's an important point: there is space for the believer to disagree with the prevailing interpretation of God's revelation, whether the interpreters are theologians or scientists. But this is an exceptional situation; it can't be appealed to in order to reject a source of revelation in its entirety.
One issue that general revelation raises is whether general revelation functions as an independent source of revelation, or whether it must be interpreted or filtered through the lens of special revelation before its testimony can be trusted. Some Christians, such as young-earth creationists, claim that the testimony of general revelation only holds when it is understood from within a biblical perspective. This is an attempt to avoid having to take contemporary science seriously by claiming that it is misinterpreting the testimony of nature.
I'll go over one of the primary texts for general revelation in order to respond to this charge: Romans 1:18-20. This passage begins with the following statement: "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness..." Some understand this last phrase to essentially overturn the doctrine of general revelation. While creation testifies to God, this knowledge is suppressed; and so whatever witness creation displays is ignored.
But what exactly is being suppressed here? Go back to the three steps by which creation bears witness: 1, it reliably testifies about itself; 2, therefore it reliably testifies about itself when it reveals itself to be created and ordered; 3, we believe in the existence and action of God because of this order. Do those who deny God's existence deny that the universe reliably presents itself to us (point 1)? Well, apart from a few philosophers and some insane people -- and yes, there is some overlap between those categories -- the answer is obviously no. Do they deny that the universe is ordered (point 2)? Well, again, apart from lunatics, philosophers, and lunatic philosophers, the answer is of course not. What they deny is that we can validly know God's existence from this order (point 3). In other words, the suppression that Romans 1:18 speaks of is not a suppression of the facts of nature, it is a suppression of the move from the facts of nature to the existence of a Creator: it is a suppression of the recognition that there must be a God. There is nothing in this passage, or any other passage in the Bible, to suggest that our observations of the universe can't be trusted to reveal the truth about the universe. Nor is there anything to suggest that most of our inferences from these observations can't be trusted. It's only when it points to God that it becomes suppressed.
The passage continues in verses 19 and 20 by stating "...since what may be known about God is plain to them [men], because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities -- his eternal power and divine nature -- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse."
This passage makes several claims. Since I've already used numbers, here I'll use letters:
a. The testimony of creation is available to all people at all periods of human history. This is evident from the statement that this testimony has been present “since the creation of the world.” Therefore, this witness was available to people who lived in times prior to the Bible's composition, and who had no special revelation from God; as such, it was and is available to those in post-biblical times who lived in places where they did not have access to special revelation, as well as those who live in such places today.
b. The testimony of creation is a reliable revelation of God; or, in other words, creation reveals the truth about God. This is evident from the statements that creation's testimony reveals "what may be known about God", and that it reveals "God's invisible qualities -- his eternal power and divine nature".
c. The testimony of creation is clear and understandable. This is evident from the statements that it has "been clearly seen", "understood", and "is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them".
d. God holds people responsible for their response to the testimony of creation. This is evident from the statement that they "are without excuse".
Thus, people who have never heard the gospel message and never read a Bible verse (point a) still have some true knowledge of God through his creation (point b) which communicates to them clearly and understandably (point c), and they are held accountable for their response to it (point d).
So, if people who have never received any special revelation from God are still given clear and true communication of who God is from creation and are held accountable for their response to this communication, what does it mean? It means that creation is an autonomous witness to God, and its testimony is valid independently of the Bible. It does not have to be interpreted through the lens of the Bible before it can be considered to be a valid and reliable revelation from God. The only alternative to this is simply unsound: if we deny this it could be claimed that, by not having access to special revelation, those who have not heard the gospel simply didn't have access to the right filter or lens or interpretative framework from which they could accurately interpret creation's testimony. But this contradicts the claim that creation's testimony is understandable (point c) to those who do not have special revelation (point a). Moreover, even if we ignore this for the moment, we have to remember that God is just. He would not hold people accountable for their response to something (point d) that he never gave them access to. In order for creation to be a true and trustworthy revelation to those who don't have any other revelation -- as the Bible says it is -- its validity must hold independently of the Bible.
So I think the Bible requires the believer to accept the testimony of creation, even when that testimony is a very specific article of knowledge or something only recently discovered. Since science is the systematic analysis of God's general revelation, the believer should accept the findings of science -- again, not uncritically. The believer can't say "I accept the Bible, but not science", since the requirement to accept the testimony of creation comes from the Bible.
(cross-posted at Agent Intellect)
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Saturday, April 27, 2013
Lovejoy on Behaviorism
Arthur Lovejoy was an important philosopher in the early 20th century, and he presented something like Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism, Lucas's Gödelian argument against physical determinism, and C.S. Lewis's argument from reason. Lovejoy's target was behaviorism, a view which reduces all human existence to responses to stimuli. Lovejoy presented his argument briefly in two essays, the first entitled "The Existence of Ideas" published in The Johns Hopkins University Circular 3 (1914): 42-99 (alternate pagination 178-235), which you can download here. He addresses the argument on pages 71-73 (207-209). The second was the essay "Pragmatism as Interactionism" (which you can read or download here) published for some reason in two parts in The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 17 (1920): 589-96 and 622-32 (this journal later became The Journal of Philosophy). "Interactionism" is the claim that mind and body interact -- mental events causing physical events and vice-versa. The argument comes on pages 630-32 of part 2, where Lovejoy concludes,
Lovejoy responded in "The Paradox of the Thinking Behaviorist" published in The Philosophical Review 31 (1922): 135-47, which you can read online here, although you'll have to scroll down to page 135. To summarize: the behaviorist claims that unvocalized thought is incoherent: laryngeal movements are all that occur. "Perceiving a thing, in short, is identical with the motion of the muscles involved in uttering its name." All "thoughts," therefore, can be completely explained in terms of the physical motions involved in speaking, without any reference to their contents, what the thoughts are about. And this would obviously include the behaviorist's thoughts about behaviorism. In this case, the behaviorist (along with everyone else) hasn't actually said anything, he's just made sounds with no meaning. In which case, the behaviorist thesis has not actually been put forward. We can only affirm behaviorism by tacitly presupposing that behaviorism is false, since it is only if it is false that the behaviorist thesis can have any meaning.
One objection raised against Lovejoy's argument, in that same issue of Philosophical Review is "Awareness and Behaviorism: Apropos of Professor Lovejoy's Critique" by Howard Warren (pp. 601-605). He suggests that Lovejoy begs the question by presupposing that the only way to make sense of the behaviorist's claims is if behaviorism is false. But of course, the behaviorist claims that there is another way to make sense of his thoughts, a way that is consonant with behaviorism. Again, this is very similar to one of the main objections that eliminativists give to the claim that eliminativism is self-defeating. The counter-objection is, as Nagel puts it in The Last Word,
(cross-posted at Agent Intellect)
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Pragmatism insists that, whatever philosophical propositions be true, one class of propositions must certainly be false -- all those, namely, which either assert or imply that human intelligence has no part, or no distinctive part, in the control of physical events and bodily movements, in the modification of environment, or in the actual determination, from moment to moment, of any of the content of reality. That man is a real agent -- and that the distinctive quality of his agency consists in the part played therein by the imaginative recovery and analysis of a physically non-existent past and the imaginative prevision of a physically non-existent future -- these are the first articles of any consistently pragmatic creed. Such a creed is simply a return to sanity; for these two theses are the common and constant presuppositions of the entire business of life. Never, surely, did a sillier or more self-stultifying idea enter the human mind, than the idea that thinking as such -- that is to say, remembering, planning, reasoning, forecasting -- is a vast irrelevancy, having no part in the causation of man's behavior or in the shaping of his fortunes-a mysterious redundancy in a cosmos which would follow precisely the same course without it. Nobody at a moment of reflective action, it may be suspected, ever believed this to be true; and even the composing and publishing of arguments for parallelism is a kind of reflective action.But Lovejoy finally wrote a full-length essay on his argument in response to an essay "Is Thinking Merely the Action of Language Mechanisms?" by the behaviorist John B. Watson published in The British Journal of Psychology 11 (1920): 87-104. You can read it online here. Watson's presentation is eerily similar to more recent defenses of eliminative materialism. For example, at one point (page 94) he contrasts the "introspectionist," that is, someone who believes that we can learn something about our thoughts by thinking, with the behaviorist who believes everything we can learn about our thoughts comes from the observation of the external effects -- the responses to stimuli, the external behavior.
The introspectionist hopes for a solution of the metaphysical problem through some mystic self knowledge. The behaviourist believes in no such transcendental human power. He himself is only a complex of reacting systems and must be content to carry out his analysis with the same tools which he observes his subject using. I cannot, therefore, agree with Mr Thomson that there is a mind-body problem in behaviourism. It is a serious misunderstanding of the behaviouristic position to say, as Mr Thomson does -- "And of course a behaviourist does not deny that mental states exist. He merely prefers to ignore them." He 'ignores' them in the same sense that chemistry ignores alchemy, astronomy horoscopy, and psychology telepathy and psychic manifestations. The behaviourist does not concern himself with them because as the stream of his science broadens and deepens such older concepts are sucked under, never to reappear.Eliminativists say much the same: they claim their position is just the result of taking science seriously, and any denial of their position is because people don't want to give up some sacred aspect of life. Just like Watson, they compare their position with astronomy and chemistry and the denial of their position with astrology and alchemy. For an example, see here.
Lovejoy responded in "The Paradox of the Thinking Behaviorist" published in The Philosophical Review 31 (1922): 135-47, which you can read online here, although you'll have to scroll down to page 135. To summarize: the behaviorist claims that unvocalized thought is incoherent: laryngeal movements are all that occur. "Perceiving a thing, in short, is identical with the motion of the muscles involved in uttering its name." All "thoughts," therefore, can be completely explained in terms of the physical motions involved in speaking, without any reference to their contents, what the thoughts are about. And this would obviously include the behaviorist's thoughts about behaviorism. In this case, the behaviorist (along with everyone else) hasn't actually said anything, he's just made sounds with no meaning. In which case, the behaviorist thesis has not actually been put forward. We can only affirm behaviorism by tacitly presupposing that behaviorism is false, since it is only if it is false that the behaviorist thesis can have any meaning.
One objection raised against Lovejoy's argument, in that same issue of Philosophical Review is "Awareness and Behaviorism: Apropos of Professor Lovejoy's Critique" by Howard Warren (pp. 601-605). He suggests that Lovejoy begs the question by presupposing that the only way to make sense of the behaviorist's claims is if behaviorism is false. But of course, the behaviorist claims that there is another way to make sense of his thoughts, a way that is consonant with behaviorism. Again, this is very similar to one of the main objections that eliminativists give to the claim that eliminativism is self-defeating. The counter-objection is, as Nagel puts it in The Last Word,
the appeal to reason is implicitly authorized by the challenge itself, so this is really a way of showing that the challenge is unintelligible. The charge of begging the question implies that there is an alternative -- namely, to examine the reasons for and against the claim being challenged while suspending judgment about it. For the case of reasoning itself, however, no such alternative is available, since any considerations against the objective validity of a type of reasoning are inevitably attempts to offer reasons against it, and these must be rationally assessed. The use of reason in the response is not a gratuitous importation by the defender: It is demanded by the character of the objections offered by the challenger.So I think Lovejoy's argument that behaviorism is self-defeating is sound. One can only accept behaviorism is true if one ultimately presupposes that behaviorism is false. As such, behaviorism defeats itself.
(cross-posted at Agent Intellect)
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Friday, February 22, 2013
A couple of things to listen to
Audible have brought out an audiobook version of the Genesis of Science. This is very much a personal project of the narrator Rich Germaine, so I am very grateful to him for producing it. Unfortunately, for licensing reasons, this version isn't available outside the US.
Also, I've recorded the Faith and Life Lecture that I was privileged to give at St Philip the Deacon Lutheran Church in Minneapolis last November (this was my first attempt at recording straight to tape, so I hope it sounds OK). You can listen to it and all the other Faith and Life Lectures at their website.
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Also, I've recorded the Faith and Life Lecture that I was privileged to give at St Philip the Deacon Lutheran Church in Minneapolis last November (this was my first attempt at recording straight to tape, so I hope it sounds OK). You can listen to it and all the other Faith and Life Lectures at their website.
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Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Birkbeck College, University of London
Very sorry to spam our own blog, but if any readers are graduates of Birkbeck College, please could they get in touch. For those unhappy enough not to have studied there, Birkbeck is a constituent college of the University of London and specialises in part time courses and evening classes. I took my MA in Historical Research there before moving to Cambridge for my PhD.
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Sunday, February 03, 2013
Martyred in the USSR
Like many conservatives, I get annoyed at the free pass that the Soviet Union often gets in the history of 20th century tyranny. Students think nothing of having a poster of Stalin on their walls. And as I have blogged before, Stalinist academics somehow become national treasures. A decade ago, a woman who delivered our nuclear secrets to the Kremlin was let off on the grounds she was getting on a bit.
So, it is good to note that people are still trying to put the record straight. In particular, work is ongoing on a new film about the persecution of people of faith in the USSR. The atheism of the communist system is an embarrassment for modern secularists which they deal with in various ways. But most commonly, they just ignore it. It is unlikely that atheism per se made the USSR even more murderous than it would have been anyway. But there is little doubt that it did lead the communists to persecute believers simple because they were believers in a way that is little appreciated today.
The film is called Martyred in the USSR and if you think it is a worthwhile project, you can find more details here (note the film sampler is pretty gruesome).
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