The parable went like this. “Two people return to their long neglected garden and find, among the weeds, that a few of the old plants are surprisingly vigorous. One says to the other, ‘It must be that a gardener has been coming and doing something about these weeds.’ The other disagrees…They pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. The believer wonders if there is an invisible gardener, so they patrol with bloodhounds but the bloodhounds never give a cry. Yet the believer…insists that the gardener is invisible, has no scent and gives no sound. The sceptic doesn’t agree, and asks how a so-called invisible, intangible, elusive gardener differs from an imaginary gardener, or even no gardener at all.”

Gottleib does a smashing job surveying the battleground: we’ve got the “New Atheists”, e.g., Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, on one side and the “New Apologists” (my term, not his), e.g., Karen Armstrong, on the other. Where’s Wittgenstein’s philosopher of religion who relates what he sees but leaves things as they are? Or do we throw our hands up in the air and give up? Maybe Gottlieb takes up the latter as the last sentence below suggests to me anyway.

One trenchant critic of the New Atheists is Terry Eagleton, a leading literary critic (and Catholic), who defines God as “what sustains all things in being by his love, and…is the reason why there is something instead of nothing, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever.” Some find it comforting or inspiring to utter such statements. But unless they can explain what those ideas mean and how one might tell whether they are right (which Eagleton never does), this is a self-deluding comfort. A wiser response to the apparent inexpressibility of statements about God may be simply not to express them, and just get on with the gardening.

What caught my eye, of course, was the reference to Aristotle and Thomistic thought. (Disclaimer: When I first studied Aristotle it was in conjunction with Thomistic thought. I’m in no way an enemy of Thomist thought, per se.) But as I continued to read, I saw the challenge emerge: do we rest on reason and our intellect? Or do we depend on our moral inclinations? It’s my old “faith versus reason” thing.

This puts the question poorly, I admit. I can tell I’m sputtering here. Let’s just say that I mostly disagree with Justice Scalia’s decisions. But I really admire his method of reasoning. It’s the reason why I do love Thomistic thought. The brilliance of the logical arguments: clear (no really!), elegant, architectonic. One may acknowledge the validity of an argument without conceding that it is a sound argument.

If one were to argue from George’s first principles, everything seems to follow quite smoothly. But I uncomfortable with George’s conclusions. As some of you know, I’m an ardent defender of human dignity, yet I am pro-choice. I’ve acknowledged the mine field and I’m still struggling to reconcile my views with my arguments.

George draws a distinction between Aristotle and Hume: Aristotle, he says, has human reason that can see an objective moral order. For Hume, on the other hand, reason is the slave of the passions. That is, the universe has facts, not values.  (I think George misreads Aristotle here, but I understand what he’s trying to say. The Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics doesn’t strike me as an argument for the existence of an objective moral order in the way in which George proposes. But that’s for another blog.)

What follows from this divided is fascinating! George thinks if we follow the Aristotelian route we get the reason and free choice or free will. If we’re Humeans (which he thinks American liberals are), we have amorality and determinism!

Whoa! Dude!

The argument is that because there is no objective reason to do X or ~X, I’m under the command of some genetic, pre-determined causal force or inclination. I’m a slave to my passions, not my reason. My reason ought to provide me with a rational decision based not on a kind of cold, hard, unfeeling facts, but upon genuine moral principles. Those principles are rational principles. It’s very Platonic (as the article alludes): our rational minds can access the Form of the Good. We can know right from wrong. We can know the eternal Truth by properly using our minds.

But on the Humean side, since we can’t find any objective principles in nature, we’re left with whim and taste, on the one side, and a genetic predisposition or a bump on the head, on the other. It’s the latter that has me a bit stumped.

Aristotelians, like St. Thomas Aquinas, hold that there is an objective moral order. Human reason can see it. And we have the free will to follow or not. “In a well-ordered soul, reason’s got the whip hand over emotion,” George told the seminar, in a favorite formulation borrowed from Plato. Humeans — and in George’s view, modern liberals are usually Humeans — disagree. Against Aristotle, Hume argued that the universe includes facts but not values. You cannot derive moral conclusions from studying the world, an “ought” from an “is.” There is no built-in, objective reason for me to choose one goal over another — the goals of Mother Teresa over the goals of Adolf Hitler, in George’s hypothetical. Reason, then, is merely a tool of whatever desire strikes my fancy. “Reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions and may pretend to no office other than to serve and obey them,” George said, paraphrasing Hume, just as he does in seemingly every essay or lecture he writes.

In George’s view, if I have no rational basis for picking one goal over another, then I have no free choice, only predetermined “passions” — the result of genetics, a blow to the head, whatever made me prefer either curing the sick or killing the Jews. We have reason and free choice, he teaches, or we have amorality and determinism.

I can see how one might charge the moral or cultural relativist with being a Humean. You don’t have any real (Platonic) reason for being against female genital mutilation. There are no rationally obtainable principles or reasons that stand as premises for your argument against this practice. You would simply “feel in your gut” (I guess) or you’d have some other moral rules that help you reach your conclusion. But your “moral grounds” aren’t objectively rational. Since they are drawn from your likes and dislikes. And those likes and dislike have the source in our genes (?). Hence, these decisions derive from a kind of determinism.

Again, what struck me is this conflict between the moral standard of Clifford — “Give me reasons, or give me death!” sort of view, and what your personal moral conclusions are. Our options appear to be as follows: Can you be moral without God? Can you be moral without “reasons”? Can you be moral with a non-rational dependence on God? (I take it that being immoral or amoral really isn’t an option!)

George’s view seems to be that God (or religion) is intimately connected with reason. Basically, God and morality are completely compatible with and are accessible through human reason. What human reason achieves is God’s truth. A Gator may not realize this, but that’s just the way it is. I take it that George thinks that the atheists and non-theists don’t reach (or can’t reach) Truth because they don’t use reason. But where’s my third and fourth prong?  Can’t you be moral without being “religious”? Can’t you use reason and not reach what are in effect “religious first principles”, but just rational principles? George thinks the latter is nonsense. Conservative Catholic belief simple echoes those genuine first principles and is in perfect alignment with them. The truth, then, simply is “religious”. Or, the “religious” simply is the truth.

I agree with Wolin when he says that:

A genuine and fruitful dialogue between believers and nonbelievers is impossible unless one takes the standpoint of one’s interlocutor seriously.

Second, besides reading and writing well, I trust that you will come to class with the ability to have an open, flexible, and inquisitive mind. Since we are, after all, discussing religious and philosophical issues, I anticipate that there will be differences of opinion among us. I expect us all to make the class a safe place in which to discuss ideas. This means that several things will not be tolerated: no swearing or vulgar language (either written or spoken), no rude or disrespectful remarks about the texts, authors, religions, or religious or non-religious beliefs of the views we’re studying, the persons in this class or the views they make or hold.

DZ often remarked that philosophers routinely go wrong when they fail to recognize the deep, deep differences between them. Both theism and atheism are legitimate moral, philosophical and intellectual positions. Part of the difficulty is that people on each side do put more trust in “argument” or “reason” than they themselves sometimes profess. The view often is that truth is phosphorescent. It glows in the dark. Even a fool can see it and nearly a “blind man”. The “reasonableness” of your position has a phosphorescent glow. It’s luminescence cannot be denied. Or so the thinking goes. “Can’t you see it shining there?”

And if the other person can’t perceive the glow? What then? Either way, arguing about it seems fruitless. And certainly calling each other names won’t accomplish much. (Although philosophers do sometimes let it rip!) The differences are real. They often are genuine.

DZ thought that philosophers (on both sides) who failed to acknowledge the differences too often try to argue down the preposterous, erroneous position of the other side. And in doing so, they often misread and misinterpret the other side. That’s where the issue of language games and various forms of life comes in. One group is genuinely speaking another language and is engaged in a very different game. No amount of stamping one’s feet, drawing diagrams, or enunciating every syllable in an effort to make oneself “clear” will, in fact, clear up the differences.

But remember, “clearing up the differences” is not the same thing as “erasing the differences” and trying to reconcile the views into something acceptable to both. I think that for DZ, clearing up the difference means making the differences clear. And that’s a big, big “difference”.

I really do think that the project is hard to support. How can you argue someone into believing or disbelieving in God? But then the flip side rears its ugly head: Should we not try to dissuade people from holding personally, and possibly socially, damaging views?

Do we not engage people from both sides of the global warming debate? Sure, some of us do. In one sense we certainly don’t mind if someone believes that global warming is a real phenomenon. Al thinks global warming is happening. He acts and urges other people to act and vote accordingly. George doesn’t believe there’s global warming. If Al actually believes global warming is really a threat, shouldn’t he do all he can to encourage people to acknowledge it, too?

The difference here is that the hypothesis that there is (or is not) global warming ought to be verifiable scientifically. I just don’t think religious belief operates that way.

I feel sorry for Blackwell and it was refreshing to find Hitchens‘ not so belligerent or disrespectful. I say that I feel sorry for Ken Blackwell because he doesn’t seem able to hear Hitchens’ main point: the founding fathers were nothing like the evangelical Christians (mostly, although Christians of other stripes chime in) imagine them to have been.

Where Blackwell does make a point, and one which Hitchens stubbornly refuses to assent to, is that America’s moral principles are undeniably based on Judeo-Christian principles. They are not non-theistic, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, Muslim or any other religion.

Blackwell slips, though, when he doesn’t acknowledge the point Hitchens makes about one not having to be religious in order to be moral.

I offer the video clip as an example of the kind of debate that people have.

…science demeans itself when it used as a proof of the non-existence of god.  Science is not meant to provide unfalsifiable answers, nor is it intended to answer questions that can only admit of unfalsifiable answers.  To do so is to turn the scientific method on its head.  And in so doing, science demeans itself because it loses part of its very essence.

(Hat tip: The Daily Dish)

I think the temptation among aggressive atheists is to think that they are just a few converts away from the great crumble, that if they could just move a few more people closer to their position, they’d win the day. This is folly. There are more people who claim a religious devotion than not, in this world, by billions. There are more in this country by millions. You don’t argue your way out of niches by constantly thumbing your noses at the people who you’re trying to convert. The question then becomes, are they converting at all? Or are they merely asserting superiority?