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Too Good to Be True, Too Obscure to Explain: Cognitive Shortcomings of Belief in God

by Thomas W. Clark - Center for Naturalism - Naturalism.Org

http://www.naturalism.org/Toogoodtobetrue.htm

For a philosophical and scientific naturalist such as myself, the traditional Christian god is ruled out simply because the existence of the supernatural in general is ruled out. If you stick with science as your guide to what’s ultimately real, and critique your assumptions in open philosophical inquiry, there are no good reasons to believe that reality is split between two categorically different realms, the natural and the supernatural. Instead, science reveals that the world is of a piece, what we call the natural world. Disbelief in God, therefore, is a corollary of the rationally defensible claim that nature is all there is, the basis for the worldview known as naturalism.

Epistemic commitments of naturalism

Naturalists are driven by the immodest desire to plumb the depths of reality, to know what objectively exists, to understand how things fundamentally work, and to have maximally transparent explanations of phenomena. In this project our primary commitment is epistemic, to a philo-scientific way of knowing that we justifiably believe gets us reliable beliefs about the world. I call this a philo-scientific epistemology because it combines openness to philosophical critique with a reliance on scientific criteria of explanatory adequacy as vetted by that critique and the actual practice of science. Naturalism holds that science and philosophy are continuous, interpenetrating and collaborative in our investigation of reality; neither is foundational to the other. The naturalist mainly wants not to be deceived, not to make errors of logic or method or assumptions when understanding the world. Science, kept presuppositionally and methodologically honest by philosophy and real-world experience, has given us increasingly reliable explanations of how things work as judged by our growing capacity to predict and control phenomena. Such is the naturalist’s pragmatic test of knowledge: we are not deceived because we successfully predict.
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Posted: Sunday, November 22, 2009 | Permalink

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1. Comment #433834 by aquilacane on November 22, 2009 at 6:10 am

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2. Comment #433835 by zengardener on November 22, 2009 at 6:12 am

Nice. That is going into my debate folder.

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3. Comment #433836 by robotaholic on November 22, 2009 at 6:34 am

This was great. I'm saving it too.

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4. Comment #433841 by Enlightenme.. on November 22, 2009 at 7:18 am

A bit dry.
I musta got outta bed the wrong side.

Love is just a bunch of chemicals then?

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5. Comment #433843 by Shiva on November 22, 2009 at 7:23 am

Excellent!

I love the 50 Voices of Disbelief book ;D

There was another essay published online by a German growing up in East-Germany that was linked to here, but I seem to not have bookmarked it. Does anyone have a link to that essay? :)

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6. Comment #433847 by DavidSJA on November 22, 2009 at 8:04 am

@Enlightenme

What's wrong with love "just" being a "bunch of chemicals"?

*YOU* are "just" a "bunch of chemicals" if you want to be reductionist about it, but I think the fact that you can use the internet to communication with other people means that you are greater than the sum of your parts.

Love is mediated at one level by chemicals, but it's also a psychological process affected by environmental and social factors. It's amazing, just like humans, regardless of whether it all boils down to a bit of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen etc...

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7. Comment #433848 by GoodbyeGodNZ on November 22, 2009 at 8:07 am

I wonder ... did Jesus have a doG?

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8. Comment #433849 by Roland_F on November 22, 2009 at 8:19 am

Comment #433843 by Shiva : There was another essay published online by a German growing up in East-Germany that was linked to here, but I seem to not have bookmarked it. Does anyone have a link to that essay£ :)

Scrolling down on ‘latest news’ there is the link to ‘more articles’ there you can find the earlier treads.
Edgar Dahl’s excellent essay for ‘50 Voices of Disbelief ‘ is here:
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/4584

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9. Comment #433850 by eautio on November 22, 2009 at 8:23 am

It is GREAT to be just a bunch of chemicals.

I have always thought it awesome that all the atoms within us were fused in the furnace of an ancient supernova.

And that some of those atoms went on to figure out where they came from.

One tragedy of religion is that by attributing the origin of existence to a figment of their imaginations, theists never get to appreciate the true miracles of existence.

Being just a bunch of chemicals is far more miraculous than the theist alternative. I propose replacing 'just' with 'what'.

Another interesting tidbit. Did you know that the majority of nitrogen atoms in your body came from Bosch? That is, from fertilisers processed in a Bosch factory.

It is Bosch who made us.

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10. Comment #433851 by GoodbyeGodNZ on November 22, 2009 at 8:38 am

Come to think of it ... did he have a taC?

Poor fucked up fellow ... maybe with no steP as a kid!

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11. Comment #433855 by anthonzi on November 22, 2009 at 9:34 am

You do not know how good it feels to see someone write such intellectual honesty and frankness.

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12. Comment #433856 by Rohart on November 22, 2009 at 9:40 am

Quote from the essay: 'Note that such naturalism isn’t a philosophical bias imposed on science by naturalists, as some anti-naturalists like to claim,[2] but rather an entailment of the cognitive commitment to science as the basis for reliable beliefs.'

I love the tag anti-naturalist. It puts a different slant on being called an atheist, anti-theist, godless and so on.

Now I can refer to god-botherers as anti-naturalists. Isn't it nice to be a positive, a naturalist, for once.

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13. Comment #433859 by Stafford Gordon on November 22, 2009 at 10:32 am

I endorse every single word and idea in this article; it explains my wordview perfectly.

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14. Comment #433864 by rugby on November 22, 2009 at 11:17 am

Too many big words for me. But jeez enlightenme, that love is "just a bunch of chemicals" has been known for decades. I'm sure if you google it you'll even be able to specifically find out exactly what happens when you "fall in love".

That this in some way makes the feeling less meaningful is a bit like saying having my arm amputated with a blunt spoon is excrutiating, but I no longer care because it's just chemicals in my brain telling me it hurts.

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15. Comment #433865 by Steve Zara on November 22, 2009 at 11:23 am

naturalism.org is a good site. I'm glad it is being quoted here.

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16. Comment #433873 by MRA on November 22, 2009 at 12:34 pm

Who were those two cartoon characters in the 70s and 80s, who always appeared under the heading "Love Is..."? They should do one which states, "Love is...just a bunch a chemicals". That would go down well in gift shops! In fact, next time your partner tells you that they love you, just say, "So what - its just a bunch a chemicals" - see what response you get!

Please don't get me wrong though, I do agree with the science.

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17. Comment #433874 by Mister Griswold on November 22, 2009 at 1:20 pm

Another big "thumbs up" for Naturalism.org
Thank you Tom Clark!

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18. Comment #433877 by cornbread_r2 on November 22, 2009 at 1:39 pm

Great article. Thanks for reproducing it here.

Is Richard Carrier one of the 50 Voices?

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19. Comment #433878 by Logicel on November 22, 2009 at 1:39 pm

Transparency. That is why as a small child when the nutty Catholics around me tried to indoctrinate me, I would just see fog, more fog, and even more fog. No transparency at all. It is disgraceful the opaqueness which they tried to shovel into my mind. And they pride themselves on honesty!

Excellent article, excellent site (very positive focus permeates the writings there).

They are modes not of investigation, but of confirmation. God is the vigorously defended projection of our deepest hopes onto the world.

_____

But even that part I don't get. This god certainly is not the projection of my deepest hopes. Isn't our deepest hope to understand reality, no matter how difficult that process is, so we can realize our potential and make the world a better place? Why would our deepest hope be only so we can meet a few dead friends and relatives and that a sky daddy is in control of us? What am I missing here? Why is this so-called 'deep' hope so common in humans? It isn't in me. It sounds more like a tiny, narrow-minded hope (not to mention just plain stupid).

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20. Comment #433879 by Friend Giskard on November 22, 2009 at 1:55 pm

This is hard to read, and therefore badly written.

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21. Comment #433880 by cornbread_r2 on November 22, 2009 at 2:29 pm

Logicel:

From what I understand of Catholic teaching, and notwithstanding the other promises of living in a mansion prepared for us, etc, our greatest hope for achieving the afterlife should be "finally seeing God face to face" -- the so called "beatific vision". Aside from the fact that Catholic theologians also claim that God has no face, that's what we're going to do for all of eternity -- look at God's face? And which non-face would that be anyway -- the father's, the son's or the bird's?

When I believed in Heaven I wanted to go there because then I would know everything -- how life began here, whether light is a particle or a wave, why buttered toast always lands buttered side down -- but noooooooo, now these same theologians say that even in Heaven many things will remain a mystery!! I presume that's so that they can continue to move goal posts from cloud to cloud.

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22. Comment #433881 by A on November 22, 2009 at 2:40 pm

Enlightenme.. on November 22, 2009 at 7:18 am

A bit dry.

I musta got outta bed the wrong side.

Love is just a bunch of chemicals then?

Yes.

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23. Comment #433885 by SaintStephen on November 22, 2009 at 3:02 pm

I have this excellent book. Na na na-na na.

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24. Comment #433890 by weavehole on November 22, 2009 at 3:35 pm

Comment #433879 by Friend Giskard at 1:55 pm
This is hard to read, and therefore badly written.

I'm sure I'd agree with every word in this article if I went through it with a dictionary, but I'm trying to learn another language atm and I don't have time to learn English again.

I know I run the risk of sounding as thick as a whale-omelette but I did wonder a couple of times if this was a Sokal style wind up. Have the writings of Asimov, Sagan and Dawkins had no effect on the intellectuals of the world?

Oh well. Diff'rent strokes and all that.

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25. Comment #433891 by God fearing Atheist on November 22, 2009 at 3:40 pm

The article confirmed ideas I have read elsewhere, thought through, and think I understand. I agree, but didn't learn anything new.

However, I agree with 20. Comment #433879 by Friend Giskard that the language was unnecessarily complex.

If this was the first time I had read these ideas I would have struggled, and maybe given up.

Finally, there may actually be new (to me) ideas in this essay which I have missed because of the language.

It reminds me of the RD joke:-

Bright young philosophy student to Prof.: "I read your latest book, but found it very difficult to understand". Prof.: "Oh, thank you!"

The counter example is from Einstein: "A theory should be as complex as necessary, but no more complex"

I think the anti-naturalists (theologians) use complex language to obfuscate their lack of substantive argument. The clearer their naturalist opponents are the more they will highlight this obfuscation.

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26. Comment #433892 by SaintStephen on November 22, 2009 at 3:50 pm

Is Richard Carrier one of the 50 Voices?

No, Richard Carrier is not one of the essayists in 50 Voices of Disbelief by Blackford and Schuklenk.

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27. Comment #433898 by j.mills on November 22, 2009 at 5:01 pm

Logicel enquires:

This god certainly is not the projection of my deepest hopes. Isn't our deepest hope to understand reality, no matter how difficult that process is, so we can realize our potential and make the world a better place?

I think many people want their life to make sense and mean something; and, particularly if they aren't educated or brainy, they may find the doings and pronouncements of experts (in the sciences, humanities or whatever) to be dauntingly difficult, excluding and thus belittling. The god delusion makes every individual matter; it levels the king, the philosopher and the peasant, and embeds even the most ordinary life (and its occasional sufferings) in a Great Cosmic Drama.

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28. Comment #433901 by TIKI AL on November 22, 2009 at 5:21 pm

I have been telling peeps for many years that I am nothing more than "comet crap".

Of course, my supercilious PF (perpetual fiance) claims to have a higher pedigree and says she is made of "star stuff".

If that is indeed true, at least I engaged upward.

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29. Comment #433902 by PaulJ on November 22, 2009 at 5:23 pm

Comment #433890 by weavehole

Comment #433879 by Friend Giskard at 1:55 pm
This is hard to read, and therefore badly written.
I'm sure I'd agree with every word in this article if I went through it with a dictionary, but I'm trying to learn another language atm and I don't have time to learn English again.

It doesn't have the immediate down-to-earth clarity of something by Richard Dawkins, but it's not that hard. The points about scientific inquiry insulating itself from wish-fulfillment are well made, and I'm glad to have been alerted to the existence of naturalism.org.

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30. Comment #433904 by NewEnglandBob on November 22, 2009 at 5:37 pm

I finished reading "50 Voices of Disbelief" by Blackford and Schuklenk the other day and I was impressed at the diverse thoughts and backgrounds of the wriiters of the essays. This book is a gem and belongs on everyone's shelf.

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31. Comment #433908 by Steve Zara on November 22, 2009 at 5:56 pm

Comment #433878 by Logicel

very positive focus permeates the writings there

Yes. It provides a counter to those who claim that we naturalist atheists should all be wandering around in a glum mood insisting that life is pointless.

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32. Comment #433918 by TreenonPoet on November 22, 2009 at 6:50 pm

I think that this article is brilliant.

To those who found it hard-going, I would recommend taking the difficult bits slowly to allow time for the meaning to sink in. Personally I think that the compactness of some of its statements adds to the beauty and reduces ambiguity. It might deter some readers, but more wordiness might deter others. Compactness is also, to some extent, a defence against malicious quote mining.

The article appears to say it all, and I momentarily fantasized about confronting my faith-head friend with it, but I can already hear her response "But it's not as simple as that".

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33. Comment #433925 by nalfeshnee on November 22, 2009 at 8:14 pm

I know I run the risk of sounding as thick as a whale-omelette

Whatever do you mean, Your Highness, Your Highness? *G

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34. Comment #433927 by BanJoIvie on November 22, 2009 at 8:24 pm

God is the vigorously defended projection of our deepest hopes onto the world.

That is awesome! Just awesome!

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35. Comment #433930 by nalfeshnee on November 22, 2009 at 8:42 pm

This whole article is magisterially compact and yet eminently lucid.

I also heartily applaud the term "philo-scientific" and the explanation that accompanies it:

I call this a philo-scientific epistemology because it combines openness to philosophical critique with a reliance on scientific criteria of explanatory adequacy as vetted by that critique and the actual practice of science. Naturalism holds that science and philosophy are continuous, interpenetrating and collaborative in our investigation of reality; neither is foundational to the other. The naturalist mainly wants not to be deceived, not to make errors of logic or method or assumptions when understanding the world. Science, kept presuppositionally and methodologically honest by philosophy and real-world experience, has given us increasingly reliable explanations of how things work as judged by our growing capacity to predict and control phenomena. Such is the naturalist’s pragmatic test of knowledge: we are not deceived because we successfully predict.

For too long, theology has laid claim to philosophy. The above argument refutes such claims well by observing the truth of the matter: science and philosophy are continuous, interpenetrating and collaborative in our investigation of reality.

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36. Comment #433936 by Hudd on November 22, 2009 at 9:04 pm

I felt Bamboozeled by this article.

Epistemic commitments of naturalism

So, could someone translate

Hopefully it says science is commited to our best efforts to know how things work... and not to some Philo-Sci mambo Jambo...

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37. Comment #433939 by chuckgoecke on November 22, 2009 at 9:11 pm

Immense! Powerful, and a little difficult for my slow mind. I need to mouth, chew, savor, and ruminate each phrase. Like Hitchens' writing, a dictionary nearby is helpful if one is vocabularily challenged like me. I love the section about the poverty of supernatural explanations.

The supernatural, after all, is just that which cannot find a place in an empirically well-supported theory. If it did, it would cease to be supernatural – it would be immediately naturalized by its observational and theoretical connections to other natural phenomena, those entities and processes that do have a place in the theory.

It occurred to me, since the Large Hadron Collider at CERN is back online, perhaps exploring into the ultra high energy, upper dimensions will someday show that there are connections, not dependent on our concepts of spacial distance, between organized systems(life, brains, intelligence, or their residual traces) in our lower dimensions. Of course, there also might be a large noodly entity out there , buddies with a jovial white bearded guy in a red suit. The point is there isn't a faint scrap of evidence in our observable space/time to support any of these things. Once there is, they are by definition, no longer supernatural.

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38. Comment #433952 by Hudd on November 22, 2009 at 9:37 pm

38. Comment #433939 by chuckgoecke

The point is there isn't a faint scrap of evidence in our observable space/time to support any of these things.

I'm sure that's not what science is about.
I like Carolyn Porco Analogy of the Cockroach. it's hard to prove that there are no cockroaches in my house. I'm sure scientists won't care about that kind of proof.

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39. Comment #433960 by chuckgoecke on November 22, 2009 at 9:48 pm

Hudd, Scientists don't waste their time trying to prove negatives, they look for positive evidence of something. Once you start seeing evidence for something(like presents under a fir tree set up in your living room), you can start creating a hypothesis and theory to explain it.

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40. Comment #433961 by Kenny18 on November 22, 2009 at 9:49 pm

my comment was for another article sorry

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41. Comment #433962 by Quine on November 22, 2009 at 9:54 pm

Comment #433961 by Kenny18:

my comment was for another article sorry

I was about to ask you about that, as it seemed out of place, for you, here.

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42. Comment #433964 by Bonzai on November 22, 2009 at 10:07 pm

Science, kept presuppositionally and methodologically honest by philosophy and real-world experience, has given us increasingly reliable explanations of how things work as judged by our growing capacity to predict and control phenomena. Such is the naturalist’s pragmatic test of knowledge: we are not deceived because we successfully predict.

Perfectly captures the delusion of grandeur of philosophers. Science doesn't need 'philosophy' to keep it honest, if by 'philosophy' he means the armchair speculative activities 'professional' philosophers make money of.

Scientists, of course, 'philosophize' about their own work and debate over how their findings should be understood, but this is a part of the broader scientific process of trying to understand the world, rather than a separate discipline. You don't need to have special training in philosophy to do that, while professional philosophers who do try to comment on science often go off some tangent, only to be confused by their own verbal diarrhea.

There seems to be a self serving misunderstanding on the part of some philosophers that scientists are just guys in lab coats who have the procedure know hows but are too dumb to understand their own work, so they must rely on the higher wisdom of the parasitic talkers to shed lights on what they do. Well, doing and thinking come in one package.

Philosophy as a separate discipline (comprising of ontology, metaphysics, epistemology and so on) has been quite irrelevant to science for a long time.

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43. Comment #433968 by hiraethog on November 22, 2009 at 10:19 pm

Personally, I've always felt uncomfortable with the label 'atheist' for myself. One of the reasons I visit this site is to explore not only atheism, but spirituality. On a practical level, I've been meditating on and off at my local ZEN centre for the past 18 months or so. Zen adopts a naturalistic view of the world which is why it appeals. In the constant search for meaning, I feel I'm slowly getting there. If I had to sum up in one word my philosophical outlook on life, it would be 'naturalist'.

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44. Comment #433989 by pipsy on November 22, 2009 at 11:27 pm

Love can only be a bunch of chemicals because the whole universe is just a bunch of chemicals. Spirituality is just a bunch of chemicals too.

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45. Comment #433993 by Hudd on November 22, 2009 at 11:36 pm

Not true. Most of the universe is made of Dark matter... not atoms. Chemistry is about electrons... dark matter isn't made of that. So, most of the universe isn't a bunch of chemicals.

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46. Comment #433996 by Hudd on November 22, 2009 at 11:38 pm

43. Comment #433968 by hiraethog

Zen is Sweet Nothings.

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47. Comment #434009 by chuckgoecke on November 23, 2009 at 12:19 am

Love is a bunch of chemicals, mainly oxytocin, and a little dopamine, and the timing and coincidence of how these are produced and released in the brain.

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48. Comment #434016 by Hudd on November 23, 2009 at 12:55 am

That's the [type behaviour here] is just a bunch of [type anything here] fallacy.

Not saying it's not natural. It is.

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49. Comment #434036 by weavehole on November 23, 2009 at 2:51 am

Comment #433902 by PaulJ

It doesn't have the immediate down-to-earth clarity of something by Richard Dawkins, but it's not that hard. The points about scientific inquiry insulating itself from wish-fulfillment are well made, and I'm glad to have been alerted to the existence of naturalism.org.

Agreed. The site is now bookmarked.

But for the love of god make sure you don't mispel 'naturalism'.

0.o

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50. Comment #434059 by Lucas on November 23, 2009 at 7:05 am

Great article. I agreed with every word, even if the author occasionally slipped into some needlessly obscure phrasing.

Bonzai - I tend to agree, but there is something to dedicating yourself to thinking in extremely complex ways.

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