Comedian Adam Carolla once said “I know everything because I know nothing.” By this he meant that his lack of parental involvement and disinterest in school led to a kind of philosophical blank slate which allows him to assess reality on reality’s terms. He claims the opposite of indoctrination in which every opinion is fully his own, made from scratch. I’m sure this is hyperbole, but I believe that he is more like he describes than the average Joe. In the same way, I came into blogging about atheism with little to no knowledge about theology, philosophy or, well, atheism.
I didn’t think this lack of knowledge was a good thing, mind you. Once I realized secular thought was a real option, my first instinct was to quickly build a knowledge base. I listened to the audio version of God Is Not Great and The God Delusion. Here’s an atheist confession for you: I didn’t like either. I’m probably not supposed to say this, but I’m not a Hitchens fan in general. I’ve since given Dawkins a second and third shot and enjoy his books on biology and evolution immensely. The Selfish Gene may be my favorite science book, but I’m still not interested in his editorializing. I generally desired the data and the consensus interpretation--the science, not opinion. For this reason, I discounted philosophy for a long while, which I saw as a field of speculation.
When I started debating religious apologists I really didn’t know what apologetics meant. I've since found this to be a cliched joke, but I actually thought they were going to tell me how sorry they were about their church’s policies. When they presented their arguments for God, I never needed to look up how to refute them. The flaws were usually glaring when looking outside of their indoctrinated box. When in doubt, I only needed to turn their own reasoning back on itself which made any defense of my retorts a delegitimization of their original premise. Many of these theists go through “apologetics training” because almost every argument for God is the establishment of a carefully worded and memorized rule, for which their deity is the sole exception. To back up the argument they have what feels like a series of call-tree-like responses to common atheist rebuttals. The responses are seen as valid not because they came to them via their own reasoning, but because the training says they are valid. Understandably, years of Sunday School trumps any one conversation, no matter how clear the points made.
I’ve written about counter-apologetics before, but not because I want to train my readers to debunk arguments for God in a certain way. Most of my posts are the process of me working out my own thoughts. By committing them to the blog, I am forced to analyze my growing philosophy which sometimes results in editing or reinforcing my beliefs. And since apologetics is, for the most part, the aforementioned call-tree of responses, I feel like I can only cover it for so long. I don’t want to repeat myself and I don’t want to preach. If you are new to atheism, to some degree I don’t even want you to read--at least until you hash out all this for yourself.
Any single-topic world-view with as much on-line coverage as atheism is bound to create an echo chamber. It is important to not get lost in it as a consumer of words. My advice is to think for yourself. Decide on your own if the God hypothesis is consistent with your philosophy, morality, and the consensus reality of our world. Then, if you’re so inclined, blog your journey and supplement your knowledge with the material available from everyone point of view. It has helped me immensely and I’m thankful for all the fellow bloggers and commenters I’ve met along the way.
Hitchens is definitely not everyone's cup of tea of that I am sure, he was very brash. I however loved his work from the get go. Maybe it relates to my personality.
ReplyDeleteDawkins took a while to grow on me, but like you say its the science and his way of conveying it that makes him so brilliant.
I like a little Hitchens, but he sometimes doesn't look at the big picture.
DeleteThat is true, I think that outlook really only works though when debating apologists as you really have to focus on one thing. If you don't apologists wriggle free from anything.
DeleteDawkins?! Ever since the "elevator gate" he's lost all my respect.
DeleteWhy? Because he expressed his opinion on something.
DeleteAfter "elevator gate" and the creation of Atheism +, I lost all respect for the FTB crowd. ;)
DeleteWhen I write about apologetics, I also don't like to look up rebuttals. I think it is a good exercise to try to do it on your own. After I have thought about it I don't mind reading someone else's take on it. If they attack it a different way it will be much more impactful to me because I will have already tackled the ideas on my own. Writing about them myself is the best way I can think of to try to learn the topic and really take it in. Same goes for when I write about evolution.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny that you mention the "call-tree" of apologetics and counter-apologetics. I've been thinking it would be a good project to map out the tree. Try to find every objection to apologetics I can and then try to hunt down the apologetic responses. I'm not sure how to organize it on a blog post, but I was envisioning some kind of flow chart. It's something I'd love to do when I have some free time (probably never).
After writing this, posting a call-tree to combat a call-tree is a little hypocritical. That said, I made one once in the past, but it became unmanageable due to the ways these things can branch out. Maybe you can do a simpler one. It would be cool to make a bot that could follow the responses and do counter-apologetics for me. :-)
DeleteA bot? Maybe I don't know what a call tree is :) I was really just thinking of doing it so I can better see the typical back and forth all laid out.
DeleteActually, the reason I was considering something like this is I often see apologetics and counter-apologetics, but I rarely see a further reply. What I usually see is people repeating their original argument or changing the subject, but I rarely see them actually address the counter-apologetic. Occasionally though I'll find a good back and forth, seems worth-while to map it out for future reference.
Call tree, y'know like telemarketers use. If the person says that then say this. Something similar could be programmed into a messenger bot. When it is prompted with certain keywords, it outputs the appropriate counter argument.
DeleteOh I see, I wasn't thinking of any kind of automation thing or anything, really just something for my own reference. One of the reasons I wanted to do it is the branching nature of the whole thing. I'm sure there are certain avenues that I tend to go down as I feel more comfortable there. Filling out the tree would force me to explore new areas.
Delete"Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics." -- Stephen Hawking, The Grand Design, page 5
ReplyDeleteHe's right, and it's relevant to the kinds of issues you're considering here. Philosophy doesn't seem to have moved beyond a 19th-century pre-quantum concept of reality. We've actually answered such questions as "why does the universe exist, rather than nothingness", but the answer doesn't make the kind of intuitive sense philosophy expects, so philosophy ignores the answer and keeps going round and round in the same old path which modern science has rendered out-of-date. Its concepts of self and identity and "soul" similarly haven't kept up with modern understanding of the brain, and will have even more trouble with soon-to-be-developed technologies such as mind uploading.
The time which the study of all this dead-end thinking could absorb would be more profitably spent on studying science. The philosophical implications will take care of themselves.
I focus on defenses for fundamentalist Christianity myself.
ReplyDeleteMost of those can be defeated with simple facts and logic, the only major problem you run into is with the rare Catholic fundamentalists, and the occasional well educated fundamentalist (they do exist, my ex's father was a well accomplished engineer).
Catholic fundies are interesting, because they'll try to get you stuck in a quagmire of debating church history, ancient theology and philosophy, all things I'm not familiar with. Paul Schlenker, the notorious Google + apologist, (I know you have dealt with him before), would try this all the time.
I would try to redirect to more simpler arguments, and I knew I had him on the run when he would try to change the subject, or respond to everything but that point. Keep it simple with them.
As far as the advanced arguments go, reading Atheism and the City helps a lot for a basic primer of what more educated/philosophical fundies will throw at you. Sometimes, it's not even fundies using them, a good online friend of mine was using the ontological argument for god, which Atheism and the City has debunked, but I didn't bother bringing up his counter points, she's an extremely liberal Christian (universalist), who hates it when atheists argue with her.
What's the point.... Call me an accomdationist if you will, but I don't see the point in trying to make an argument against them if they aren't in a highly toxic form of Christianity.