What's With all the Whining about Truth?
My book, The Dark Side has an in-your-face subtitle: “How Evangelical Teachings Corrupt Love and Truth.” It’s in your face and so, not surprisingly it triggers push-back. One of the questions I get is a wearisome post-modern “What is truth, anyways? What is all this whining about Christian dogmas violating truth like you have some higher standard? (Implied: As if any perspective could lay any more valid claim to truth than any other.)”
Whenever this question comes up, I have to fight the urge to say: Go put your left ankle on a train track and come ask me again after a long freighter goes by.
Why do I have this urge? Because at one level, it’s a dumb dope-smoking question. People who are being tortured or dying of cancer or, I would assume, getting their feet crushed by locomotives don’t spend a whole lot of time speculating about whether the experience is real.
Why do I resist? Because at another level the question is valid. And so I try to answer it –for the questioner, but mostly for me.
Being a psychologist and citizen rather than a philosopher or theologian, my interest in truth is practical–even utilitarian. I don’t really care whether the world that I (or my clients or elected representatives) live in real in some absolute sense. I don’t care if it is “merely” phenomenology or a dream or an ancestor simulation. Those questions are fascinating, but not important. If it’s a dream, I’m in it till I wake up. If it’s a simulation, I have no way of knowing what’s on the outside.
Whether my self-conscious existence is the product of a god or a big computer, I’m inside the game. And inside the game, some kinds of phenomenology are different than others. No matter how well a Buddhist monk has transcended hunger, if he doesn’t eat, he dies. If someone puts a gun to his head while he’s meditating and pulls the trigger, he doesn’t meditate any more. To insist that it is “all in our heads” denies the reliable, predictable and useful distinction between a monk meditating and a monk without a brain. That’s how it is, inside the game. And to date everybody who claims to know what is on the outside makes those claims using faulty inside-the-game evidence.
So, the definition of truth I care about is this: Within the game, what are the rules? What are the cause and effect contingencies that affect the things I value – like my left foot. As soon as we acknowledge that we care about anything, even something so basic as preferring existence to non-existence, then a whole set of outcomes (and by implication, cause-effect relationships) become important. This is where the freight train response is actually on target. It brings into sharp relief the fact that few dope smokers or philosophers if dragged to the track would consider the ankle and locomotive in the same category as their dreams or academic speculations. Being human means, by definition, we have some things we care about, because people who don’t aren’t around long.
My insult to the fields of philosophy and theology is conscious. Both fields have sneered down their elegant noses at empiricism for literally thousands of years. In consequence, neither ultimately has been more generative than masturbation. This is not to say that masturbation, or philosophy, is useless. But let’s do say what’s real. Neither produces new life. Introspection, unencumbered by data, failed to generate a coherent understanding of human mental processes, let alone a vaccine or a solar panel. So did theology, that vast web of semi-logic that brilliant humans built on top of ancient ritual and oral tradition. Theology utterly failed to heal disease (despite millennia of prayers, exorcisms, and sacrifices) and never even considered a green revolution or a sky scraper. By claiming knowledge of what lay outside of the game, theology failed to discern what lay within.
The rules of the game itself began emerging only when a few early monks and philosophers stuck their soft clean fingertips in the dirt. That’s when knowledge began to accumulate. It’s when we humans started gaining shared power to predict and control the contingencies we care about. The scientific method of inquiry has been called, quite simply, “What we know about how not to fool ourselves.” That’s all it is. Very basic. To make things worse, it’s not perfect, and in fact, has been subject to continuous refinement for hundreds of years. But accountable, empirical—in other words, scientific-- inquiry has made the difference between horse carts and space travel.
This is what I’m talking about when I accuse Christianity of violating its own proclaimed value on truth. It puts forward a set of ideals that have to do with health, prosperity, freedom and social harmony as well as love and joy. What does Yahweh give his people? A land flowing with milk and honey. How does Jesus minister? He heals. What does Paul promise? Love, joy and peace. What is heaven? Riches, health, and eternal bliss.
Christianity espouses these values and then it gets the in-the-game contingencies wrong. It articulates a psychology, a biology, a physiology, a geography, a physics, a political science, and a moral contract each of which is –should this surprise us?—as primitive as our bronze age ancestors who plagiarized the Torah, and our iron age ancestor who laid down that hallucinatory classic, the book of Revelation. In addition, it violates the most elementary principles of “what we know about how not to fool ourselves.” This means that it is inevitably procedurally prone to stagnant self-deception.
So, truth. My truth.
We can spend our time taking philosophy and theology courses, either refraining from any assertion of truth, or asserting absolute Truth and then dying in tangential superiority. Or we can roll up our sleeves and ask ourselves, What do I care about and what power do I have to make it happen? And not just what do I care about but what do we care about together? What are the core shared dreams of my people, and what truths do we need to discover to make them real?
I’m a woman with a life mission that focuses on the well-being of the web of life that gave me birth and my fellow human beings within that web. Within the priorities set by this mission, there are enough real-world contingencies to be explored that I suspect they’ll keep me busy for the rest of my life. And if I’m wrong, if I run out, I imagine I can figure out where to get some good dope.
This article is reprinted from ExChristian.net, where it stimulated interesting dialogue.
26 comments:
Very refreshing compared to the usual we're-more-moral-than-you "atheism" that is usually posted.
I found this approach to be the only correct one. As Epicurus said before, what use is philosophy or theology if it does not improve our life? That is where ideological philosophies fail, as exemplified by the Stoics and Neoplatonics of old.
A lovely rant, Valerie. I fully share your disdain for philosophy and theology, when they become merely words chasing their own tails, untethered to reality. The only thing I would have put differently is where you said:
The rules of the game itself began emerging only when a few early monks and philosophers stuck their soft clean fingertips in the dirt. That’s when knowledge began to accumulate.
That's perhaps when the knowledge of those early monks and philosophers began to accumulate, but "the rules of the game" began emerging, arguably, long before there were monks or philosophers. Indeed, depending of course on what you mean exactly by "knowledge of the rules of the game", one could say that it began to accumulate with the beginning of life. First in the form of genetic knowledge, and later cultural, oral, written knowledge.
If "science" is "practical knowledge of how things are in the real world", then humans are not the first scientists.
Valerie, your point is that any theory of truth that does not touch down into the empirical world of material cause and effect life experience doesn't make any difference with how you live your life, even if such questions are valid ones. Everyone must still put their boots on before going out on a hike.
Believe this or not, such a viewpoint is indeed a philosophical one, loosely called Common Sense Philosophy.
I will probably comment about specifics in this piece later, but I have one problem with it. Like many pieces on DC, it is purely theoretical. That's good, very good, but sometimes we forget that theory has real consequences to real people.
And so I'm gping to start an occasional feature in my comments, the Bridget Cleary Awards. These will be 'awarded' to people who are 'martyrs' to their own or someone else's idea of 'religious truth.'
An obvious example would have been the Yates children, but they are old hat by now. And since the award is given only people who died and not merely suffered, I can't give it to the victims of the 'theophostic practitioners' who created the myth of 'Satanic ritual abuse,' because the victims of that myth had their lives destroyed, but not ended. (Similarly with most victims of 'Bible-based baby beating,' though there would have been a few children who 'paid the ultimate sacrifice' for their parents beliefs and would have qualified.)
My first award-winner is Emma Gough, a Jehovah's Witness who died in childbirth because of her refusal to accept a blood transfusion to stop her post-partum hemorrhaging.
The story is at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/06/nblood106.xml
but I first learned of it on Orac's RESPECTFUL INSOLENCE
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/11/religion_and_healthcare_would_you_die_fo.php#more
If anyone else wishes to make nominations, feel free. And if any believer can point to a similar case of someone dying for their atheism, also feel free, if the person meets the qualifications, which include the following:
The person must have died not just suffered,
and the action must be personal, not 'societal,' (no gays hung in Iran, no victims of the Inquisition, no victims of Stalinist or Maoist persecution).
If you are wondering about the name of the award, you can find the story here:
http://www.digitalmedievalist.com/news/2007/10/bridget-cleary-fairy-intrusion-in.html
(hat tip to Martin Rundqvist for including it in this month's History Carnival 58
http://scienceblogs.com/aardvarchaeology/2007/11/history_carnival_58.php#more
which has a few other interesting stories worth checking out.)
Most of the people here probably know this quote, from Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, but it's worth repeating:
After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it -- "I refute it thus."
Yes Zilch and that may be the only way to refute Berkeley. So we must all consider the obvious.
Zilch -
If "science" is "practical knowledge of how things are in the real world", then humans are not the first scientists.
I agree. Thanks for making this point.
"I Pee, therefore I am"
It is not the case that all philosophers rseide in the stratosphere. You may be interested in the pragmatic, experimentalist philosophy of John Dewey. Although he was an idealist early in his career, he abandoned that framework and spent most of his life articulating a very practical philosophy grounded in real life conditions. The heart of his philosophy is contained in Experience and Nature. You may also be interested in The Quest for Certainty, in which he discusses scientific method, and Human Nature and Conduct, in which he discusses social psychology. This list is but a minuscule selection from his massive output (his collected works fill something like 37 volumes).
Dewey was not a head-in-the-clouds philosopher. He was interested in applying philosophical methods to resolving real life social, political and educational issues. Please don't fall for the grossly simplistic idea that Dewey's philosophy is capsulized in the phrase, "learning by doing." His ideas are much more powerful than that trite verbiage suggests. Check him out sometime.
Valerie said:
"And to date everybody who claims to know what is on the outside makes those claims using faulty inside-the-game evidence."
I can't resist pointing out that Christianity claims to do otherwise than this. Paul said:
"My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power," (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians%202:4;&version=31;)
He's not producing evidence from the world around him to support his doctrine - Rather, Paul's doctrine is a result of his contact with the power of God. To use the inside/outside metaphor: Christianity does not make claims about the 'outside' on the basis of 'inside-the-game' evidence, but rather claims to have had personal contact with the architect and referee of 'the game'. Our word for 'outside-the-game' is 'supernatural', and all Christian doctrine rests on such supernatural contact.
Hmm im not sure John that the kicking the stone example refutes Berkeley. Although I disagree immensely with idealism as propogated by Berkeley I really dont think there is any way to prove that it isnt the case. With that said however Samuel Johnson was certainly a very clever man and I certainly understand what he was saying. Valerie although I myself wouldnt subscribe to the viewpoint I am about to suggest, I do think it is a ratioanl way for a non-religious person to view things. What does one say to the atheist who simply says "What do I care if people suffer? Theyre just clumps of atoms in costume anyhow." Again, I myself think that to be terribly callous, but it seems to me a purely rational position to hold.
Oh Prup I would probly reward it to that family somewhere in the Southern US who started trying to exorcise their daughter by beating her and then having the mother run naked in the house screaming... Though in fairness thats not so much belief in religious truth as really really creepy people doing really creepy things and dressing it in religious curtains.
I have to raise my voice in protest, unfortunately, to the claim that philosophy hasn't produced anything. For one thing, early (Western?) philosophers were scientists, psychologists, and so on - so actually all of those fields have their (Western?) roots in philosophy. Aside from that, though, philosophy is another way of discovering ways not to fool ourselves - by engaging in structured discourse. For example, since it was brought up already, Berkeley's argument surely seems to be a very effective self-tricking device, but I believe it *can* be argued against on a purely theoretical level (e.g., http://rustbeltphilosophy.blogspot.com/2007/07/round-mound-ofempiricism.html). And, after science has its say, there will always be infinitely many extra layers of self-tricking interpretation we can pile on, so I think it serves us quite well indeed to have some means by which to regulate them. And if you don't think philosophy or theology created any new lives, just think of how many people don't use birth control because of philosophical/theological arguments...but don't think about it for too long, cause it's depressing.
larryniven, well there is some debate about this, but a professor friend of mine said George Berkeley cannot be refuted. We can show it contains too many complicated explanations such that based upon Ockham's razor it's not probable. But that doesn't mean God couldn't have created a universe of perceivers with sense perceptions even if it does require so many explanatory hypotheses.
Alas Evie --
It's so hard to say anything punchy without overgeneralizing ;). I know what you're saying is true. In fact, I suspect that the real power is where philosophy (the world of values and ideas) is empirically accountable, not where empiricism happens in a void.
Logismous --
Exactly.
As Christian philosopher and mathematician Occam pointed out, when naturalistic contingencies are sufficient to explain an event, it is prudent not to add supernatural explanations on top. Christians don't suggest that cars run by internal combustion and divine intervention because the internal combustion process, once understood, sufficiently explains automobile locomotion. Yet in the absence of such understanding, magic or supernaturalism serves quite well as a placeholder. Paul and his contemporaries had no way to explain a temperal lobe siezure other than as a supernatural event. By the time of Karen Armstrong, naturalistic explanations were available.
So then, in the field of aesthetics where we intuit, apprehend and even appreciate aspects of beauty and wonder,(on the affective level as one of the many phonomenolgies you were speaking of) we must sacrifice those values because they are not empirically accountable?
Or is there a kind of "truth criterion" (I was a student of Arthur F. Holmes also) for a functioning view of aesthetical values beyond the beloved "practical knowledge of how things are in the world."
You live in the Northwest, right? When you look across Eliott Bay and see the Olympics cast in purple due to a late winter sunset, do you say -- there are mountains or do you say -- those are beautiful montains.
You don't need the meta-epistemological tail-spin to see the mountains.
You do need a justified criterion for assesing the mountains in terms of aesthetical value. That responsibilty, it seems to me, is nearly as weighty as justifying belief in just about every other experience, including spiritual ones.
I mean, yeah, you could use the razor, but I didn't (you could, like, read it...). That's somewhat beside my main point though, which was that philosophy does the same self-fooling-prevention thing that science does, just with a different domain.
I did read it, and I saw no refutation of Berkeley there. You assume what needs to be shown, and I don't have the time nor inclination to argue with you about this.
Cheers.
logismous said: He's not producing evidence from the world around him to support his doctrine - Rather, Paul's doctrine is a result of his contact with the power of God. To use the inside/outside metaphor: Christianity does not make claims about the 'outside' on the basis of 'inside-the-game' evidence, but rather claims to have had personal contact with the architect and referee of 'the game'. Our word for 'outside-the-game' is 'supernatural', and all Christian doctrine rests on such supernatural contact.
Okay, but this only works if the supernatural exists. If someone says that god is talking to them, the inside explanation is that he is crazy. Your outside explanation is that he's really hearing god.
Unless, he hears something that cannot possibly have come from the inside, there is no evidence to suggest that the outside is involved at all, or that there is an outside.
Christianity thus uses the "faulty inside-the-game evidence" Valerie mentions that "claims to know what is on the outside."
Your saying that god talked to Paul is no different than the muslim's assurance that Allah spoke to Mohammed or that I am currently listening to a giant rabbit named Harvey.
'larryniven, well there is some debate about this, but a professor friend of mine said George Berkeley cannot be refuted. We can show it contains too many complicated explanations such that based upon Ockham's razor it's not probable. But that doesn't mean God couldn't have created a universe of perceivers with sense perceptions even if it does require so many explanatory hypotheses.'
That would be a rather baroque hypothesis.
Almost as baroque as Plantinga's defense against the logical problem of evil, which probably Samuel Johnson would refute by kicking a large stone, so producing pointless suffering.
Refuting Berkeley and Plantinga in one action! That is what I call philosophy for real men.
As I told larryniven on his Blog.
Empirical evidence does not refute Berkeley, silly, and this is my last comment. I'd suggest you do some more reading up on the topic. I'm not saying Berkeley is correct, because I think he's fundamentally mistaken. I just think you have not touched on what it is that makes his argument wrong, and you certainly did not refute him.
Karl -
Statements of valuing are different than statements which make truth claims.
If I claim thatPuget Sound is beautiful, my claim is self-validating. All it means is that I derive pleasure from looking at it--and yes, I do.:) By saying that it is beautiful(implicity, to me)I am saying that I value it in a specific sort of way and have a specific kind of body/mind reaction to the perceptual experience.
This morning, I asked my daughter what kind of music she liked, and she said that she likes music that sounds good and she doesn't like music that sounds bad. I laughed, because of course, she wasn't telling me anything other than that she likes the music she likes.
It is empirically possibly to explore the kinds of experiences that humans find esthetically pleasing -- the range, norms etc. It is also possible, if one cares to, to correlate self-reported beauty, delight, or joy with neurochemical activity visible through magnetic resonance imaging.
So. Hmm. I guess I'm confused about what the aesthetic responsibility is that you equate with providing a basis for belief.
If, however, I say that we should protect Puget Sound because it is beautiful, then it seems to me that we have an empirical responsibility to show that in fact this experience of beauty is one that is common to many people--to weigh the common cost against the common good.
To some extent, valuing can be equated with pleasure very broadly construed: love, joy, pleace, delight, wonder, happiness, comfort, satisfaction. In this sense, valuing would appear to be hard-wired, partly species specific, and partly overlapping with other species.
In regard to what causes pleasure, I am reminded of the old saying: In some ways I am like every other human being, in some ways I am like some human beings, and in some ways like no other human being. In addition, to individual variability in what causes the pleasure experience. Individuals and religions vary tremendously in terms of the ego boundaries that get constructed around pleasure: Is it only my pleasure that counts? My tribe's pleasure? The pleasure of my species? Of all sentient beings?
But the reality is, that there is a tremendous amount of agreement among humans about what constitutes pleasure (ie. what we value): a certain level of warmth, orgasms, a full stomach, certain aesthetic experiences. Contrast, for example, the number of people who hang pictures of garbage dumps on their living room walls with the number of people who hang pictures of snowcapped peaks. One doesn't have to do a controlled study to suggest that there are species-specific, hard wired, patterns at work.
Valarie:
I can accept that answer in so far as we have scientific ways of measuring responses that can be correlated with aesthetical experiences, intuitions.
I am, however, wondering how you move from the hard-scientific measurements of those expereinces and the assertion that, indeed, the truth claims to non-hard science values are themselves valid.
However, I recognize the difference between justifying pnumenological assertions i.e. "there is a ghost in my house on Queen Anne" and values, i.e., The Olympics are beautiful this time of year."
Thanks for your insights on that distinction!
(I appreciate your website and story, BTW).
--Karl
(Liberal Theology Dude)
What does one say to the atheist who simply says "What do I care if people suffer? Theyre just clumps of atoms in costume anyhow." Again, I myself think that to be terribly callous, but it seems to me a purely rational position to hold.
[...]that family somewhere in the Southern US who started trying to exorcise their daughter by beating her and then having the mother run naked in the house screaming... Though in fairness thats not so much belief in religious truth as really really creepy people doing really creepy things and dressing it in religious curtains.
gordonblood: so when atheists believe or do bad stuff, that's rational, but when religious people believe or do bad stuff, that's really creepy and not really religious? How about not judging people on their belief systems, but on their actions?
We're all in this together: believers and nonbelievers of every stripe and shade. If I kick a rock, my foot will hurt, no matter what learned philosophers say; and if I don't care about suffering, then the world will be a worse place to live in, no matter what I think about God.
Valerie said it well: being human, we have a lot in common with other humans. We have evolved for over three billion years here on our Earth. The desire to live, to love, and to learn is stamped into our very cells. We are gifted with reason, which allows us to build wonderful cultures and amazing machines, so that we can argue about God across half the globe.
Of course, it's not all a bed of roses. We are now in the process of extinguishing life on a scale not seen since the KT extinction. But I am still hopeful.
What must we do, when trying to decide what is right and wrong? In my humble opinion, something like this:
First, we should ask ourselves: what do we desire, and why do we desire that which we desire? Our primary desires are those of all social animals: freedom from hunger, pain, and fear; sexual satisfaction; and fellowship in a society. Secondarily, we seek beauty and the comfort and excitement culture can offer us. And much more, of course.
The primary desires grade insensibly into the secondary ones: starting with more or less hard-wired routines, shifting gradually to learned and rationalized concepts. In order to successfully build and maintain the kind of societies that keep us happy, as far as is possible, we must listen to the whole spectrum of our selves, from the ancient hungers to the most refined science.
Of course, this is not original thinking on my part: it's more or less what everyone does anyway, when making choices. But I feel that it helps me to sometimes try to look at the big picture.
Philosophy, or theology, alone, is meaningless, just playing with words, without recognition of our animal selves. But simply giving in to our instincts, ignoring the reasoned morals we must devise to build trust and cooperation, won't get us farther than survivalists hunkering down in their redoubts. We must rejoice in both our animal and our rational selves, if we're to enjoy our brief lives to their fullest.
Beautifully said, Zilch. Thank you.
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