Blogosophy, Dennett, and the Heretic

Blogosophy is philosophy done via blogs or over the internet. Hence, the blogosopher takes a very difficult and slow moving subject and tries to do it over a very fast medium. The biggest difference in my opinion between blogosophy and philosophy is that in the former the focus is primarily on the conclusion of an argument with very little (or quick pieces of) justification for the premises whereas in the latter the focus is primarily on the premises of an argument and what conclusions follow from such. This is precisely why philosophy is slow, long, and arduous while blogosophy tends to be quick, sometimes informative, and of course much easier to pull off. There are plenty of professional philosophers who blogosophize quite well, but most blogosophers are those with no training in philosophy. Hence what counts as blogosophy varies greatly in terms of philosophical quality. Anyways, what follows is a little bit of blogosophy based on an interview with Daniel Dennett.

New York Times
January 22, 2006
“Questions for Daniel C. Dennett: The Nonbeliever”, interviewed by Deborah Solomon.

How could you, as a longtime professor of philosophy at Tufts University, write a book that promotes the idea that religious devotion is a function of biology? Why would you hold a scientist’s microscope to something as intangible as belief?

D: I don’t know about you, but I find St. Paul’s and St. Peter’s pretty physical.

But your new book, “Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon,” is not about cathedrals. It’s about religious belief, which cannot be dissected in a lab as if it were a disease.

D: That itself is a scientific claim, and I think it is false. Belief can be explained in much the way that cancer can. I think the time has come to shed our taboo that says, “Oh, let’s just tiptoe by this, we don’t have to study this.” People think they know a lot about religion. But they don’t know.

So what can you tell us about God?

D: Certainly the idea of a God that can answer prayers and whom you can talk to, and who intervenes in the world – that’s a hopeless idea. There is no such thing.

Yet faith, by definition, means believing in something whose existence cannot be proved scientifically. If we knew for sure that God existed, it would not require a leap of faith to believe in him.

D: Isn’t it interesting that you want to take that leap? Why do you want to take that leap? Why does our craving for God persist? It may be that we need it for something. It may be that we don’t need it, and it is left over from something that we used to be. There are lots of biological possibilities.

Didn’t religion spring up in its earliest forms in connection with the weather, the desire to make sense of rain and lightning?

D: We have a built-in, very potent hair-trigger tendency to find agency in things that are not agents, like snow falling off the roof.

There was so much infant mortality in the past, which must have played a large role in encouraging people to believe in an afterlife.

D: When a person dies, we can’t just turn that off. We go on thinking about that person as if that person were still alive. Our inability to turn off our people-seer and our people-hearer naturally turns into our hallucinations of ghosts, our sense that they are still with us.

But they are still with us, through the process of memory.

D: These aren’t just memories.

I take it you do not subscribe to the idea of an everlasting soul, which is part of almost every religion.

D: Ugh. I certainly don’t believe in the soul as an enduring entity. Our brains are made of neurons, and nothing else. Nerve cells are very complicated mechanical systems. You take enough of those, and you put them together, and you get a soul.

That strikes me as a very reductive and uninteresting approach to religious feeling.

D: Love can be studied scientifically, too.

But what’s the point of that? Wouldn’t it be more worthwhile to spend your time and research money looking for a cure for AIDS?

D: How about if we study hatred and fear? Don’t you think that would be worthwhile?

Traditionally, evolutionary biologists like Stephen Jay Gould insisted on keeping a separation between hard science and less knowable realms like religion.

D: He was the evolutionist laureate of the U.S., and everybody got their Darwin from Steve. The trouble was he gave a rather biased view of evolution. He called me a Darwinian fundamentalist.

Which I imagine was his idea of a put-down, since he thought evolutionists should not apply their theories to religion.

D: Churches make a great show about the creed, but they don’t really care. A lot of the evangelicals don’t really care what you believe as long as you say the right thing and do the right thing and put a lot of money in the collection box.

I take it you are not a churchgoer.

D: No, not really. Sometimes I go to church for the music.

Yes, the church gave us Bach, in addition to some fairly spectacular architecture and painting.

D: Churches have given us great treasures. Whether that pays for the harm they have done is another matter.

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And now to the blogosophy:

First, Dennett says that:

…the idea of a God that can answer prayers and whom you can talk to, and who intervenes in the world – that’s a hopeless idea. There is no such thing.

Ah, a very bold claim. We’ll see whether this claim amounts to something more than just a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. He also makes the claim that religious beliefs can be dissected scientifically, much like any other beliefs. Of course his claim that “religious beliefs can be dissected scientifically” is not itself a scientific claim, but a metaphysical one. So here he forays into metaphysics while claiming that it’s science. So consider the following claim P by Dennett:

P: The idea of a God that can answer prayers and whom you can talk to, and who intervenes in the world, that’s a hopeless idea. There is no such thing.

Now, since Dennett claims that “religious beliefs can be dissected scientifically” one can say that “Dennett’s belief that ‘religious beliefs can be dissected scientifically’” can also be dissected scientifically. If not, then why should Dennett’s beliefs be held to a different standard than religious beliefs? Since Dennett does hold scientific assessment in the highest light possible, he would have to concede that “Dennett’s belief that ‘religious beliefs can be dissected scientifically’” should also be assessed scientifically. So the implication here is that all beliefs ought to be assessed scientifically. So we can take this notion of scientifically assessing Dennet’s belief and arrive at P*:

P*: P is a scientific claim

Can one assess P* strictly from a scientific standpoint? If the answer is no, then Dennett is doing metaphysics and not science since now it looks like we have a belief P* that is not to be assessed from a scientific standpoint. If the answer is yes, then we’d have to use science to assess whether P* is a scientific claim. So then we get belief P**:

P**: P* is a scientific claim

And of course we can then move to P*** and then to P**** and so on, ad infinitum. Our philosophical enemy, the infinite regress, shows up. So one can’t assess whether P is a scientific claim without having some sort of standpoint outside of science from which to judge whether P* really holds. As a result the only argument one can give for the truth of P* (since we’ve eliminated the scientific option) is a metaphysical one that pertains to the ontological status of such questions. I’m not sure why Dennett makes such claims, since now he’s venturing into metaphysics while claiming that what he’s really providing is a scientific inquiry of religious belief. What puts Dennett in such a superior epistemic position from which to adjudicate such matters? I think one can make a good case that Dennett is doing pretty much the same thing that religious thinkers are doing – he’s doing metaphysics. Now, I don’t think that this shows that what Dennett is doing can be shown false but neither do I think that what religious thinkers are doing can be shown false as well – certainly not from a scientific standpoint. So it seems that Dennett is on similar (rather than superior) epistemic ground when compared to the religious thinkers since both are in the realm of metaphysics.

Second, I agree with Dennett that one needs to take a leap of faith at some point, and that some have a desire to take a leap towards faith in God. However, Dennett seems to be taking his own leap as a scientific naturalist – namely the truth of P*. If he wants to affirm P* above, he has clearly left the realm of science. Why do that? In other words, why believe that P* is true? Unless he gives some independent argument for P* within the realm of science (and clearly I think none can be given), it seems he’s also taking a leap of faith towards some metaphysics that is clearly beyond the realm of science. Perhaps he has some metaphysical argument that shows that P* is true, but that’s highly improbable. Just like the religious folk, he’s committing himself to some proposition or state of affairs without having scientific evidence for such.

Next, Dennett says that:

Churches make a great show about the creed, but they don’t really care. A lot of the evangelicals don’t really care what you believe as long as you say the right thing and do the right thing and put a lot of money in the collection box.

This I agree with 100%. Most Christians don’t care that much about creeds, mostly because we don’t know them or we’ve abandoned them altogether. Although some of us mistakenly use the word heretic quite loosely and throw it around as if it were a buy-one-get-one free burger, I think it is fair to say that a lot of Christians seem to think there is no such thing as a heretic – someone who dissents from correct Christian doctrine. To have a heretical doctrine (i.e. wrong view) means there must be an orthodox doctrine (i.e. correct view) from which to deviate from. Of course, the problem with this is that we have to have some doctrine in the first place to affirm as orthodox. So the trend seems to be to have this attitude where ‘what you believe really doesn’t matter, so long as you act a particular way’. Dennett clearly makes an astute observation. If one can criticize the average Catholic Christian as caring too much about doctrine, I think one can also fairly criticize the average American Protestant Christian as caring too little about doctrine. So it’s interesting that even an atheist like Dennett recognizes the difference between those who really care about Christian doctrine (as the New Testament writers did, heck Paul even tells some churches to kick some folks out for their heretical views) and those who do not. This is a serious issue that we Christians – ordained minister or not – need to think about.

Finally, there are plenty of scientific naturalists (or methodological naturalists) who do not venture into the realm of metaphysical naturalism. So these naturalists will openly battle things like Intelligent Design and the like, without venturing into the existence of God and whether that’s a hopeless idea or not. Let science be science, and let metaphysics be metaphysics. It seems that Dennett conflates the two when claiming that religious belief can be solely assessed from a scientific vantage point. I think we Christians can learn quite a bit from folks like Mr. Dennett.

Of course you may be wondering why I have given such a short treatment of Mr. Dennett when he writes a whole book on the subject. I say if Dennett can spew out these conclusions without arguments in a New York Times interview (i.e. meant for a pop-culture audience) then I can spew out some quick blogosophical arguments just as well that is meant for a pop-culture audience. Of course he wants as many people to buy his book which I encourage everyone to do since I’m sure there will be some excellent material in there, though I highly doubt he’ll address my first point above.

I hope you enjoyed the interview.