The Week’s Hit-and-Run on Richard Dawkins

 Richard Dawkins is the Author of the Week (article for subscribers; cached version) in this week’s issue of The Week (dated October 2, 2009).  Like many of the articles in The Week, this was a summary of an original article, an interview of Dawkins by Stephanie Marsh that appeared in the August 22, 2009 issue of The Times. Dawkins' new book, The Greatest Show On Earth, is about the evidence for the theory of evolution.

The summary article in The Week begins like this:

Outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins is currently offering America a remedial education on the subject of evolution, said Stefanie Marsh in the London Times. [my italics]

First of all, why is the author of a book on evolution described as an "outspoken atheist"? Dawkins is a professional zoologist and a professor at the University of Oxford. Why aren't his academic credentials cited? The article could have been written to say "Oxford University zoologist Richard Dawkins...", but the author didn't do that. Marsh's original article certainly doesn't begin that way, and her first description of Dawkins is as  Britain's leading intellectual.

When the subject of atheism is broached,  instead of mentioning what Dawkins himself has to say (apparently too much, by The Week’s standards), Marsh describes what others say about him:

...when the day came, Britain’s "angriest", most "vituperative" atheist -- as his many critics like to call him, along with "belligerent", and even "mad" -- greeted me in a cheerful if rather delicate mood...

Here she's poking fun at these descriptions of Dawkins, because he’s nothing like that.  As it turns out, Dawkins is somewhat of a shy man, and on the occasion of the interview, he was a bit sad over the death of a favorite pet.  Without reading the source article, the reader of The Week’s summary would assume that Dawkins was some kind of atheist fire-brand, instead of what he really is: a passionate advocate for the public understanding of science.  If Dawkins rubs people the wrong way, it’s simply because he has little tolerance for the kind of obfuscation favored by religious advocates.

Second of all, if they’re going to immediately refer to Dawkins as an atheist, then why as an outspoken atheist?  It’s not enough for The Week to simply mention that Dawkins is an atheist (although atheist itself could be considered a pejorative) – they have to say something bad about him too.  So outspoken atheist it is.  (Usually atheist-bashers say that you’re militant.  Perhaps outspoken is progress of a sort.)  What is Dawkins’ crime, exactly – that he wrote a book about atheism?  (Gasp!)  So what: I have a shelf full of books about atheism, by a bunch of different authors.  Does that make those authors outspoken too?  How would the editors at The Week know that Dawkins is an atheist, unless he, um, spoke about it?

The summary article goes on to describe Dawkins’ motivation for writing the book:

Alarmed that 40 percent of Americans now believe that the world is less than 6,000 years old—and that a rising share of his British compatriots are also creationists—Dawkins decided to present the "evidence" that makes evolution undeniable.

I see that the word “evidence” is put in scare-quotes.  Why?  Are the editors at The Week skeptical of the theory of evolution?  (If so, they don’t deign to give reasons why.)  Maybe they were just trying to be funny.  I could understand if evolution-denier Wendy Wright tried to gainsay the evidence for evolution (video interview with Dawkins here); she is cited in the original article as an example of someone who holds steadfast to her creationist beliefs in spite of the evidence for evolution.  Marsh’s point is that Dawkins new book won’t help people like Wright.  But if you only read the summary article, then you wouldn’t get the joke, and you would conclude that it’s The Week itself that is denying the evidence.

By some dubious logic, the summary article makes the claim that Dawkins himself isn’t a “strict rationalist”, saying that:

He readily admits that human beings may simply never be capable of explaining everything about our universe. "I think we all think that there’s something else out there. I do, certainly. It’s just not supernatural."

But there is nothing here that buttresses the claim of him being an anti-rationalist. He's simply saying that science doesn't have all the questions answered yet.  Solving outstanding problems is what makes science interesting.  (It’s what we pay scientists to do.)  The full quote from the original article is:

As to the big unanswered questions: “I think we all think that there’s something else out there. I do, certainly. But it’s not supernatural. It’s ... I think there’s a lot that science doesn’t know and indeed may never know, and that’s exciting.”

There is no controversy about any this, and these statements are exactly what I’d expect a public advocate for science to say. There’s nothing anti-rationalist about it.  The summary article goes on to say:

For instance, Dawkins says, somewhere beings may exist that are "superhuman to a level that our imaginations cannot grasp".

But they pulled that quote from a completely different article about God and evolution that appeared in the Wall Street Journal:

To midwife such emergence is the singular achievement of Darwinian evolution. It starts with primeval simplicity and fosters, by slow, explicable degrees, the emergence of complexity: seemingly limitless complexity—certainly up to our human level of complexity and very probably way beyond. There may be worlds on which superhuman life thrives, superhuman to a level that our imaginations cannot grasp. But superhuman does not mean supernatural. Darwinian evolution is the only process we know that is ultimately capable of generating anything as complicated as creative intelligences.

This is a factual, succinct explanation of how evolution works.  Again: there’s nothing here that would lead one to claim that Dawkins himself isn’t completely rationale. In fact, that bit about superhuman life isn't even original to Dawkins. Arthur C. Clarke famously said that:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

My recommendation to readers of this blog is to go read Marsh’s original source article instead of The Week’s confused summary.  There’s also a link to a video interview with Dawkins on that page, about the evidence for evolution, the subject of his new book.  Reviews of the book from The Times are here and here.

Weight Loss Progress: 162.5 / 166

My weight this week was 162.5 lbs (73.7 kg).  My original target was 166 lbs (75.3 kg), but I’ve been losing weight faster than I had originally planned.

 

Last week I weighed 165 lbs (74.8 kg), so my unofficial goal for this week was really 164 lbs (74.4 kg).  I’m happy, since I am meeting my weight loss targets, but I think losing 2.5 lbs (1.1 kg) in a single week is a little too much.

I had weighed myself last Sunday morning, and the reading was 164.5 lbs (74.6 kg).  My wife and I went out for dinner that night, and it’s possible I ate something that had salt, so I retained water and that threw off the measurement last Monday.  Water weighs 8.3 lbs per gallon (about 1 kg per liter), so just a single cup (8 oz) of water would account for the 0.5 lb (0.2 kg).  (This kind of fluctuation is the reason why you should only weigh yourself once a week.)  So maybe I really only lost only 2 lbs (0.9 kg) this week.  But still, that’s too fast.

I estimated that meeting my ultimate weight loss goal would take about 4 months, and planned to give up non-essential food items for that time.  But maybe I don’t have to be so abstemious.  Tonight, I’ll have a bowl of ice cream or something…

My BMI is 22.  That’s considered normal.

I have been going to the gym most days of the week, but this week I only had time for cardio.  In order to pump iron too, I’ll have to manage my time better, budgeting at least 1 hour at the gym.

The Logic of God’s Sovereignty

Calvinist theologian Robert Charles Sproul defines God's sovereignty this way:

God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass;

David Heddle helpfully explains what Sproul means:

What ever happens either a) God decreed it (Let there be…) or b) God permitted it to happen, with no implied endorsement or divine sanction. God could have prevented it.

Heddle divides the set of all events into two equivalence classes:

• A: Events that occur because of direct intervention by God.
• B: Events that are permitted to occur. (Direct intervention would happen only if God did not permit the event to occur.)

We can now write Sproul's original definition of God's sovereignty as an implication statement:

God is sovereign => A or B

Sproul asks his seminary students whether they agree with that definition.  Those who agree with it (“affirm” the statement) he labels as theists, and those that disagree with it (“deny” the statement) he labels atheists.

It's not quite clear what Sproul means by a "denial" of the statement. Is the implication false, or just the consequent?  But Heddle does give us a clue:

Sproul argues that if there is something, anything that happened outside of God’s decree and his permissive will—then God is not sovereign.

If we parse that, we realize that that there's a third equivalence class:

• C: Events that happen that are neither directly caused by God, nor given his permission to occur.

Equivalence class C is simply the set complement of the union of the equivalence classes A and B. This allows us to write it in the form of an implication:

C => God is not sovereign

This is simply the contrapositive of the original implication. They are logically equivalent, so affirming one is the same as affirming the other.

If subset C is empty, the implication tells us nothing interesting about God's sovereignty, so we can ignore that case.  So Heddle is saying that if subset C is non-empty, then God is not sovereign. Yes, that is indeed true; that's what Sproul's implication meant. There is no room for belief here, so it's not clear what Sproul is asking his students. If the implication is true (and that's what Sproul is asserting), then the contrapositive is true, and so if C is non-empty, then God is not sovereign. QED. But Sproul is making a distinction between theists and atheists: what is the distinction?

I think the distinction Sproul is making is this. If you're a theist, then you believe that:

God is sovereign => A or B

If you're an atheist, then you believe that:

God is sovereign => A or B or C

In his model, you're an atheist if you believe that some events can occur that God hasn't permitted. What this means is easier to see when the implication is written in its contrapositive form:

not (A or B or C) => God is not sovereign

The antecedent is false (the union of A, B, and C is the entire set, so its complement is empty), which means that whatever happens in the universe has no bearing on God's sovereignty.

One issue is that it's not clear whether Sproul believes subset C is empty. He says that if it's non-empty, then God would not be sovereign. But if subset C is empty, then he's not saying much of anything, since the issue of God's sovereignty doesn't come up. (It's like warning me that if I drink a bottle of dish soap, I'll get sick. Yes, that might be true, but since I have no desire to drink dish soap, the status of my health as a consequence is never an issue.)

The real problem with Sproul's schema, however, is that it's impossible to identify to which equivalence class an event belongs. There's no way for us, as non-privileged observers, to identify the set membership of an event.

Suppose I toss a ball into the air. The ball rises, slows down, and then falls back into my hand. Does this event happen because God made it so (it's an A event)? Or did this event happen because God permitted it to happen (it's a B event)?  We don’t know, nor can we know (because it’s a metaphysical question).  Why an event "really" happens is opaque to us, so the distinction between classes A and B is not meaningful. All we can do is construct models that allow us to make reliable predictions.

Finally, there is the matter of Sproul's idiosyncratic labels. He labels as atheists people we would normally consider theists, but who don't happen to believe that God is some kind of micro-manager, involving himself with every detail of the universe. (Once I put the battery in my watch, then my watch doesn't require much maintenance. Isn't that a good thing?)

Calling them atheists reminds of the quote ascribed to Abraham Lincoln:

If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? Five? No, calling a tail a leg don't make it a leg.

Most theists wouldn't call themselves atheists simply because they do not affirm Sproul's definition of God's sovereignty. All their denial means is that they're not Calvinists.

What Does “Jesus Loves Me” Mean?

David Heddle doesn't like philosophy. About proofs of theistic claims, he says:

I don't even like the proofs of God from Aquinas and Anselm. I prefer: Jesus loves me this I know, for the bible tells me so. [italics in original - MJH]

Christians often say "I know Jesus loves me." They say it as if it were perfectly obvious, but I don't what it means.

The statement is identical in form to the statement that "I know my wife loves me." But I do know what that means: my wife is here with me, right now, in our home. She's a living person, and she actually tells me she loves me. If I am in doubt, I can simply ask her.

Heddle's statement is also identical in form to "I know Julius Caesar loves me." What meaning should one assign to this sentence? Caesar lived in Rome, around 2000 years ago. I live in Albany, in the present. He didn't know me then (because I wasn't born yet), nor does he know me now (because he's not living anymore). Why speak of him in the present tense? If the statement "Julius Caesar loves me" is read literally, then the statement is either false or meaningless.

So in one case, we have a statement that is meaningful and true, and in another case we have a statement that is either meaningless or false. Which is it for the statement "Jesus loves me"?  Is it meant in the same sense as saying that my wife loves me?  My wife is a living person, with whom I have actual social intercourse.  But Jesus of Nazareth died 2000 years ago, so "Jesus loves me" cannot mean the same thing as "My wife loves me”.

So maybe it means something else.  The statement "Jesus loves me" seems more analogous to the statement that "Julius Caesar loves me," but there's no sense in which that statement could be considered true.

I don't want to commit a fallacy here, so I will assume that the statement "Jesus loves me" must mean something else. But what is it? I don't know.

There is also the matter of epistemology. Heddle says he knows that Jesus loves him, because the bible says so. Is this a deductive claim? It sure looks like one, but we seem to missing a premise. (Perhaps it has been omitted, because it's obvious among Christians.)

Or is it an empirical claim? If so, it would be odd to use the bible to justify the claim, since empirical claims are usually verified by actual measurement (that's how we know the claim is meaningful). For example, I could justify my claim that Boston is east of Albany by reading a map of New England, but that's because the map is a simplified model of the terrain, and I can verify the claim easily enough (and I do!) by actually driving east from Albany. But one cannot do this to justify claims about whom Jesus of Nazareth loves, so there's something else going on here. What is it?

Weight Loss Progress: 165/167

Just had my Monday-morning weigh-in, so I can now officially report that I’m 165 lbs (74.8 kg).  That’s 1 lb (0.45 kg) less than I weighed last week, and 2 lbs (0.9 kg) less than my goal for this week, 167 lbs (75.7 kg).

My plan is to lose 1 lb (0.45 kg) per week, through a combination of diet and exercise.  I don’t really want to lose weight faster than that, since that would mean I’m probably not eating enough, and not maintaining a healthy diet.  So this past week, I did well.

I’ve also started some strength-training, mostly concentrating on chest and triceps, in order to try to boost how many push-ups I’m able to do.

As a side note, I wrote this post using Windows Live Writer. It supports both WYSIWYG editing and direct HTML editing. I like it so far (although the built-in editor at Blogger is pretty good too).

The Rhetoric of Albert Mohler

Some time ago here in the US, there was a television commercial for Jif peanut butter, featuring a mother making some peanut butter sandwiches for her children. The advertisement ends with a voice-over that says, "Choosy moms choose Jif."

This is a classic example of prejudicial language (more here), suggesting that any woman who doesn’t buy Jif peanut butter is an unfit mother.  It’s never explained why Jif is better than other brands, nor admitted that a mother might have good reasons for choosing something else besides Jif.

I was reminded of this by when I read the final paragraph of Albert Mohler's post about an essay in the WSJ on the subject of God and evolution. Mohler ends by saying that:

Dawkins knows a fellow atheist when he sees one. Careful readers of The Wall Street Journal will come to the same conclusion.

(my italics)

Mohler would lead us to believe that only careless readers would consider Armstrong’s theistic views legitimate. The savvy readers of the Wall Street Journal (and presumably, Mohler’s blog) obviously know better. 

He attempts to undermine her credibility right away, introducing her by saying:

She is a critic of "fundamentalism" on whom the media can depend for comment.

Here Mohler is suggesting that the reason the media can depend on her is because she's a critic of fundamentalism, as if she were a mere talking head.  Mohler doesn’t mention that Armstrong’s criticism of religious fundamentalism is taken seriously by the media because she’s a respected scholar of religious history and philosophy.

Notice also that Mohler puts the word “fundamentalism” in scare-quotes, as if there were no such thing, and only an unserious person would describe religion as such.  But on we must go.

Armstrong is advocating a form of theistic instrumentalism, which has a long pedigree (as she herself explains). Models are judged by their utility, instead of by their correspondence to objective reality (which is what theistic realists advocate).  It is a position that has been famously articulated by British theologian Don Cupitt. (More info here.  I learned about Don Cupitt and theistic instrumentalism by reading the book reviewed here.)

Note that Dawkins is saying what theists will say about you if you tell them that God's existence is not important:

Tell the congregation of a church or mosque that existence is too vulgar an attribute to fasten onto their God, and they will brand you an atheist. They'll be right.

Mohler responds by doing exactly what Dawkins predicted he would do: call Armstrong an atheist.  He doesn't attempt to refute Armstrong's argument (well, not directly); he simply calls it "superficial" and "theologically reckless" (whatever that means). Nor does he bother justifying his own theistic philosophy - its rightness is simply assumed. You would think that Mohler would use this opportunity show how his own religious philosophy resolves certain theological problems that Armstrong’s does not, but he doesn't do that. Instead all he does is accuse her of being an atheist, just like Richard Dawkins!

Mohler's argument is that if you accept Armstrong's theistic views, then this bad thing will happen to you (you'll be an atheist, because Richard Dawkins says so). Therefore Armstrong's theistic views are false (and, by extension, Mohler's own theistic views must be true). But this is a logical fallacy, known as the appeal to consequences (more here and here).

On God and Evolution

Commenting on Albert Mohler's reaction to an essay in the WSJ about God and evolution, Andrew Sullivan says:

It's telling that both Mohler and Dawkins are both dedicated to the maintenance of a certain brand of doubt-free, doctrinally absolutist, fundamentalist versions of faith. There are other kinds. And fighting for that center is an important task in a world being torn apart by politicized religion.

The problem here is that Sullivan hasn't actually addressed Dawkins' argument. All he has done is to accuse Dawkins of being a fundamentalist. (I don't know what it means for an atheist to have a "doctrinally absolutist, fundamentalist version of faith," since atheists have neither doctrines nor faith, but never mind that.)

Dawkins is as much against religious fundamentalism is as Sullivan (more here from Dawkins), so it's not clear what Sullivan's argument against Dawkins is, since on that matter they are in agreement.

I suspect that Sullivan's actual reason for fulminating against Dawkins was that he had the temerity to suggest that we should just get rid of theistic belief (because it's superfluous). I don't see why that argument should be taken off of the table. If you're going to make an argument against religious fundamentalism, then Dawkins position is simply the logical terminus of the argument. Sullivan doesn't say why his own centrist position is superior. (Except that it's "not atheism" -- ironically the same argument Mohler makes).