In Which An Atheist Becomes Sputteringly Angry Over Theist’s Argument
Correctly
Jerry Coyne took time from stroking his cat, I imagine, to spew bile (like those lizards) at The Atlantic for taking religion seriously. Old Jer (if I may call him Old Jer) called it “god-touting”:
I was surprised that The Atlantic, a publication I respect, would resort to publishing such ridiculous arguments for the existence of a god. Brooks’s argument comes down to this syllogism (examples come from both me and Brooks):
a.) Science accepts a lot of things we can’t see directly, like quantum phenomenon, electrons, or the use of infrared radiation and electricity as ways animals use to detect their environment. Those phenomena have subsequently been verified, though science still is studying things we can’t yet verify, like dark matter and energy
b.) Similarly, humans accept a lot of things we can’t see—most notably God
c.) Therefore, just as we shouldn’t dismiss the non-seeable phenomena of science, we shouldn’t dismiss the existence of gods.
Old Jer was so upset we don’t even learn the full name of his nemesis, but I can reveal it as one Arthur C. Brooks. Old Jer lumps him with authors like “Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Charles Murray, Ross Douthat”. That last one was meant to sting.
Our point today is that Old Jer is largely right to be incensed. And that we, dear reader, ought not to jump to support bad arguments just because they are on our side.
Brooks’s article is “Why You Should Keep an Open Mind on the Divine“. He opens by quoting some commie who didn’t see God lingering in low earth orbit. This non-sighting was, and I ask you to believe this, a convincing argument for atheism to many academics.
It is not irrational to believe in the unseen, says Brooks, because quarks can’t be seen, but scientists believe in them. Later Brooks says multivariate calculus is hard to graph (there is no lisp here, it’s graph and not grasp).
This makes scientific sense, too, because neuroscientists have shown that we can think in dimensions higher than those we can actually see. That itself constitutes a belief in an unseen—indeed, unseeable—reality.
Later still, we learn “Sharks have specialized sensory organs called the ampullae of Lorenzini”, which he meant as a kind of “Aha” moment. Then:
Similarly, we have no reason to believe that the world of science has exhausted the fields of material reality that are beyond our sensory perception. On the contrary, the most logical and rational assumption we can make is that we are surrounded by forces and entities of which we are completely unaware—and which are as yet undiscovered.
All true, but to a scientist it’s like hearing “There is an object hidden in this haystack, and nobody knows where it is, thus one ought to believe in God.” That’s how Old Jer heard it, anyway. Brooks does not help himself by next saying this:
All of this scientific knowledge would have been dismissed in the past as crazy fiction, primitive superstition, possibly even a sign of demonic possession. This fact should instill in us some humility about ideas outside current scientific understanding that concern things we can’t see but that others perceive as real and claim indirect evidence for.
God bless Brooks, I’m sure, but it’s easy to see how this sent Old Jer soaring. Scientific knowledge would have been seen by whom as crazy fiction? And why does that matter? I’m prepared to believe that those who preach multiverses are oppressed by demons, but Brook’s example leads to the strange inference that those who believe in (unseen) God are seen by some as possessed by demons. Which makes no sense.
Yet “Robert J. Marks, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Baylor University, suggests that God (the Christian God, in this case) exists in higher dimensions than we can see”. A string theory of God? We can’t see all the dimensions of strings, scientists tell us, because they’re so tight, nor can see God because we aren’t equipped with the ampullae of Lorenzini.
Brooks only mentioned in passing Aristotle’s argument for the First Mover, which starts with what we can see and measure, and ends with proof God exists. The bones of that argument should have been dressed with some flesh, because that one can convince empiricists.
The best was saved for last: “A brilliant mathematician and statistician” (these things happen) told Brooks, apropos the space commie not seeing God, “It’s like saying Picasso doesn’t exist because he can’t be found inside Picasso’s paintings.” He ended there, but that should have been his beginning.
Old Jer does not treat Brooks gently. He was really unhappy to be dragged away from his cat. Which is why he committed his own Brooks-like blunder by saying “the lack of evidence for God compared to the evidence for scientific phenomena that we can’t see directly should start making Brooks doubt the existence of God.” And “When the existence of God likewise starts yielding to empirical study, then we can start thinking about Brooks’s claims.”
Well, see Old Jer, there was this man, maybe you heard of him, who a long time ago did the most remarkable thing, he—maybe you best put down the cat before I tell you the rest of the empirical truth.
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This little spat reminds me of so many modern pseudo-intellectual arguments. The sainted Richard Dawkins' empiricist-faith-based fulminations against the existence of God leaps to mind. The most excruciatingly annoying thing I recall about Dawkins is that he's happy to deploy freshman / sophomore arguments (legitimately) to shoot down some of the early ontological and/or cosmological arguments, but seems completely oblivious to his own subsequent perpetration of most of the same fallacies he criticizes in others. I remember thinking "surely no philosophy undergrad would make such howling mistakes". Still, I suppose "consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds". ;)
I question the intelligence of anyone who “respects” The Atlantic.