From No God to God

The Believing Skeptic is back!  For the last few months I've been rather preoccupied with personal issues, and also been working hard to draft a Book Proposal (to send to a publisher) for my (hopefully forthcoming) work, Mormonism for Skeptics.  But at least for the forseeable future I'm hopeful that I will be able to post to the blog at least once every few weeks.  Let me remind readers to subscribe with their email address in the box at the top of this page, if you haven't already done so, so that you will receive a notification when I post.  A few people have reported difficulties with the "submit" button when trying to subscribe.  If you have had this difficulty, please leave a comment so that I can find out if this is a widespread problem.

Herewith, my latest musings:

We often hear accounts of believers in God (theists) who lose their faith.  The loss of faith is a common theme in fiction, in movies, and real-life news.  On the other hand, when was the last time you heard a story of an atheist who lost his or her faith in atheism and became a believer?

Probably the most famous example is C.S. Lewis, who was raised as a Christian but declared himself an atheist at age 15.  Later in life he (re-) converted to Christianity and became the most famous Christian apologist in the 20^th century, penning such classics as Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters.  Another more recent example is Peter Hitchens, the brother of the notorious atheist Christopher Hitchens, who told his story in the recent book The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith (2011). 

Another very striking example is Anthony Flew.  Flew was the world’s most notorious and well-published atheist philosopher in the latter half of the 20^th century.  Unlike the current lightweights like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, Flew was a legitimate philosopher who wrote many formal works in which he defending atheism for 50 years.  Then, in 2004, at the age of 81, he announced that he had changed his mind.  He certainly had not become a born-again evangelical Christian, but he did reach the conclusion that rationally, based on the evidence, God does indeed exist. 

In There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind (2007), he relates his intellectual journey to belief in God.  Like C.S. Lewis, Flew declared himself an atheist at age 15.  His father was an Anglican minister, and he did not tell his parents about his “conversion” for years.  He describes his recent “pilgrimage” back to belief in God as one of reason, not faith.

As a philosopher, he always believed in going wherever the evidence and the argument led him.  And he was not embarrassed to change his mind, which he did several times in his life about various philosophical issues.  He identifies three areas of scientific inquiry as key to his change of thinking:

-                              How did the laws of nature come to be?

-                              How did life originate from nonlife?

-                              How did the universe, by which we mean all that is physical, come into existence?

The existence of the laws of nature – not merely regularities in nature, but regularities that are universal and directly linked to mathematical reasoning (mathematics being, of course, an invention of the human mind) – have been cited by many as direct evidence of a mind behind nature.    Einstein once wrote, "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible."  He later went on to explain: 

You find it strange that I consider the comprehensibility of the world (to the extent that we are authorized to speak of such a comprehensibility) as a miracle or as an eternal mystery.  Well, a priori, one should expect a chaotic world, which cannot be grasped by the mind in any way … The kind of order created by Newton's theory of gravitation, for example, is wholly different. Even if a man proposes the axioms of the theory, the success of such a project presupposes a high degree of ordering of the objective world, and this could not be expected a priori. That is the 'miracle' which is constantly reinforced as our knowledge expands.

Einstein, like Flew now, was a deist.  He did not believe in a God that spoke to mankind and interacted directly with them, but a great Divine Mind and Creator that could best be worshipped through the study of his handiwork.  Paul Davies is another outstanding proponent of such a view.  Davies is a physics professor at the University of Arizona and a prolific author of some of the best books on the “new physics” for non-scientists.  And John D. Barrow, a physicist and mathematician at the University of Cambridge, has remarked on how, remarkably, the universe is so orderly that “we find that there are mathematical equations, little squiggles on pieces of paper, that tell us how whole Universes behave.” 

Flew’s second question was, where did life come from?  How did it emerge in the midst of non-living matter?  This is a mystery that has in no way been solved by science. 

You will sometimes hear the argument that the origin of life from non-life, though it may be extraordinarily unlikely, is not impossible given enough time.  It is even possible, they say, that a group of monkeys by hammering at a keyboard for a long time could eventually write a sonnet – by purely random chance.  This proposal was actually put to the test.  An experiment was conducted with six monkeys in a cage with a computer.  After one month, they produced 50 typed pages, but not a single actual word.  Not even the word “a” (with a space on either side of it) could be identified!  What is the probability that a sonnet (with, say, 450 words) could be reproduced by random banging on a keyboard?  According to one calculation, it would amount to10⁶⁹⁰ – 1 with 690 zeroes following it!

But it is not merely a matter of probabilities.  Flew notes that there is a fundamental problem (he calls it a “deep conceptual challenge”) with the very idea of obtaining life from non-life, given what we know today about DNA.  This problem, he says, “relates to the origin of the coding and information processing that is central to all life-forms.”  He quotes Paul Davies, among several other scientists, who notes that life is more than simply a series of chemical reactions, though that is how it is frequently addressed.  The cell is also a complex system of information storing, processing and replicating.”   The presence of “information” strongly suggest the presence of intelligence or mind.   He quotes the Nobel Prize-winning physiologist George Wald:

How is it that, with so many other apparent options, we are in a universe that possesses just that peculiar nexus of properties that breeds life?  It has occurred to me lately – I must confess with some shock at first to my scientific sensibilities – that both questions might be brought into some degree of congruence.  This is with the assumption that mind, rather than emerging as a late outgrowth in the evolution of life, has existed always as the matrix, the source and condition of physical reality – that the stuff of which physical reality is constructed is mind-stuff.  It is mind that has composed a physical universe that breeds life, and so eventually evolves creatures that know and create: science-, art-, and technology-making creatures.

Flew’s discussion of his third question, how did the universe come into existence, is a little too subtle and too complex, philosophically speaking, to summarize here.  One point he mentions is the discovery of the “big bang,” which he acknowledged (while still an atheist) made it much easier to believe in God.  If there was indeed a beginning of the cosmos, scientifically speaking, that provided support for the claim in the first chapter of Genesis, that “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”  Prior to the Big Bang theory, the ruling theory was the “steady-state theory,” which claimed that the universe had no beginning and will have no end. 

This is an interesting little book about the views of an honest man.  Most of us become so committed to a certain viewpoint that it becomes difficult to admit that we were wrong.  Flew defends his change of view on the grounds that he always adhered to the belief in going wherever the evidence led.  This is an admirable and a healthy attitude, one that many of us would do good to emulate. 

At the same time, it’s important to keep in mind that while “evidence” is important, it is never controlling over our minds.  As far as any of the really big questions are concerned (e.g., the existence of God, the purpose of life), we will never have enough evidence to prove things one way or another.  It would be nice if we could – then we could abdicate the responsibility for making our own decisions and put all the responsibility on the external evidence.  The famous atheist Bertrand Russell, was once asked what he would say if he found himself before God after his death and God asked why Russell hadn’t believed in Him.  Russell replied that he would say, “Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence!”

When it comes to questions like God, it is good to study the evidence, but I’m quite certain that saying the evidence is inconclusive will not get us out of hot water.  Faith in God (which begins, but does not end, with mere belief in God’s existence) ultimately comes down to a matter of personal choice.  In other words, there will never be enough evidence for God to get us out of the responsibility of choosing.  If we choose to exercise faith and commit to a particular lifestyle, we will have to do it in spite of the absence of absolute proof.

Delusions and Divisions

I just finished reading Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. (Houghton Mifflin, 2006).  Dawkins is an Oxford don who specializes in evolutionary biology.  He is also perhaps the world’s most outspoken and notorious atheist. 

Dawkins has authored many popular books championing Darwinian evolution.  Probably his best known are The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker.  The God Delusion, however, is something quite different.  Instead of merely arguing the scientific evidence in favor of Darwinian evolution, as he does in his other books, Dawkins makes a frontal, take-no-prisoners assault on religion.  Not just extreme forms of religion, not just on simplistic, literalistic fundamentalist forms of religion, not even just on Christianity, but on all forms of religion.

Dawkins is, so to speak, one of the founders of the so-called “new atheism.”  There is of course nothing new at all about atheism; it has been around for centuries.  But it has mostly been the subject of rather austere philosophical discussions unknown to most people.  In contrast, the “new atheists” are known primarily for an absolutist, no-holds-barred, in-your-face approach to atheism.  And their books have been best sellers.

Dawkins’ minimum goal with this book is to make the world safe for atheists; his maximum goal is to convert as many people away from belief in God and ideally to do away with religion altogether.  It’s a rather odd goal, don’t you think, “to make the world safe for atheism.”  He seems to have a kind of persecution complex.  In his world, the deck is stacked against atheists.  This might make many religious believers laugh ironically, because they are likely to feel that the deck is stacked against them in this highly secular modern world of ours.  Which is it? 

Is modern culture pro-God or pro-atheist?  I think the answer depends on where you look.  If you look primarily at the private lives of people living in the heartland of the United States, it may seem reasonable to view the world as anti-atheist.  Dawkins points to several anecdotes where children were denounced and rejected by their parents for declaring their conversion to atheism.  On the other hand, if you look at the dual coasts of the United States, and particularly at the ruling intellectual classes in this country (e.g., academia, and especially the main media organs), you are likely to find the direct opposite:  secularism reigns supreme and religion is looked upon with distaste and suspicion.

I have nothing against atheists.  As a skeptic by nature and a former agnostic myself, I view certain types of atheism as a perfectly reasonable approach intellectually in trying to make sense of the world.  I honestly do not understand the antipathy that many people feel toward anyone who declares himself an atheist (as opposed to, say, merely non-religious).  I certainly cannot and do not expect others to have the same experiences that I have had that have convinced me of the reality of God.  And if I had not had those experiences, it’s quite possible that I might have embraced atheism myself by this point in my life.

What I find intolerable in the Dawkins approach to “militant atheism,” however, is the arrogant mockery of all forms of belief.  For example, he quotes approvingly from Robert M. Pirsig, (author of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”):  “When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity.  When many people suffer from a delusion is it is called Religion.”  Dawkins then goes on:

If this books works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down. . . . Of course, dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads are immune to argument, their resistance built up over years of childhood indoctrination using methods that took centuries to mature. . . .  Among the more effective immunological devices is a dire warning to avoid even opening a book like this, which is surely a work of Satan.

This is pure mockery, and throughout the book Dawkins demonstrates an absolute unwillingness to seriously engage any religious ideas.  It’s not entirely clear whom he would identify as “dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads.”  Presumably they are people with little education or critical intelligence.  Doubtless there are many such people in the world, but he seems to suppose that all or most believers would fit into that category.  Dawkins is known for making such statements as:  "It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid, or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that)."

He has even called for fellow atheists to mock and ridicule believers in public – presumably to shame them into abandoning their faith.  It seems like a rather counterproductive way of trying to persuade people of your views.

It is worth noting that Dawkins et al. have been criticized sharply even by fellow atheists for this approach, which seems designed to alienate anyone who doesn’t already agree with them.  Michael Ruse, a philosopher of science, has written [here], that the new atheists have done great harm even to their own causes of science and atheism:

The new atheists do the side of science a grave disservice. . . .  These people do a disservice to scholarship. . . .  Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion would fail any introductory philosophy or religion course.  Proudly he criticizes that whereof he knows nothing. . . .  I am indignant at the poor quality of the argumentation in Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, and all of the others in that group. . . .  The new atheists are doing terrible political damage to the cause of Creationism fighting.   Americans are religious people. . . .  They want to be science-friendly, although it is certainly true that many have been seduced by the Creationists.  We evolutionists have got to speak to these people.  We have got to show them that Darwinism is their friend not their enemy.  We have got to get them onside when it comes to science in the classroom.  And criticizing good men like Francis Collins, accusing them of fanaticism, is just not going to do the job. Nor is criticizing everyone, like me, who wants to build a bridge to believers – not accepting the beliefs, but willing to respect someone who does have them. . . .  The God Delusion makes me ashamed to be an atheist. . . .  They are a bloody disaster. . . .

In line with his utter lack of respect for anything that remotely resembles religious faith, Dawkins focuses nearly all his attention on the most extreme forms of Christian (and Muslim) fundamentalism and biblical literalism.  The examples he provides of the evils of religion are the most attackable aspects of religion:  the former televangelist Oral Roberts, for example, who once persuaded his audience to give him $8 million to prevent God from striking him dead!  Or the violent extremism of modern Islamist terrorists.  These are hardly representative of the wide range of religious beliefs in today’s world.  Yet he insists that he is opposed not only to extremism and fundamentalism, but to all forms of religion, no matter how moderate.

He is completely dismissive of (and for the most part completely ignores) all intellectually sophisticated analyses of the Bible or religion.  One exception to this is his superficial analysis of the traditional philosophical arguments on the existence of God, which he dismisses with such descriptions as “vacuous,” “infantile,” and “perniciously misleading.”  His own argument  against the existence of God, on the other hand, he describes as “unanswerable.”  Really?

In sum, The God Delusion is a remarkably poor book.  I am certainly not alone in this viewpoint.

Even his reviewer in the New York Review of Books [here], no bastion of conservative Christianity, concluded that “despite my admiration for much of Dawkins’s work,” The God Delusion is “badly flawed.”  “Though I once labeled Dawkins as a professional atheist,” he writes, “I’m forced, after reading his new book, to concede he’s actually more an amateur.” 

One of the reasons I have discussed this rather poorly argued book at such length is that I believe it should give believers a certain degree of comfort to know that a very intelligent man who was intent on disabusing them of their faith could not do a better job.  (I daresay I might have done a better job myself if I chose to write as a pure skeptic!)  Are there other books on this topic that compare favorably to The God Delusion? Not that I’m aware, if one is considering only direct, polemical attacks on religion.  Christopher Hitchens, in God is not Great, and Sam Harris, in The End of Faith, attempted to launch similar direct attacks, but their efforts are equally superficial as Dawkins’s.  To be sure, there are many other types of more respectable books that attempt to undermine religious faith more indirectly, arguing, for example, that religions are simply human cultural inventions.  A well-known example of this approach is Daniel C. Dennett’s  Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.  (Dennett is often linked to the other New Atheists, but his is a much more moderate approach.)

However, there is another reason why I consider Dawkins and others of his ilk to be particularly pernicious and therefore worth discussing.  Not in their atheism per se, which as a philosophical position is fairly harmless.  No, what is most disturbing about this absolutist approach is how they create unnecessary divisions in society. 

As is becoming increasingly apparent (particularly from the current political cycle!) is that the U.S. is becoming a highly polarized environment – not only politically, but also culturally.  I believe that the political and cultural aspects are closely related to each other, and that they both flow in great part from the modern tendency to view science incorrectly as anti-religion and anti-God.  The common wisdom is that the supposed “war” over science and religion began with the publication of Darwin’s The Origin of Species.  Supposedly the majority of Christians blindly refused to accept the truth of Darwinism because it contradicted the Bible, and that since then they have become even more blind and more adamant in their obscurantist views, while the scientists have bravely and nobly maintained the truth of evolution and science.  But that is a gross oversimplification – i.e., bad history.

In fact, the divisions between scientists and religionists in the 19^th century were by no means clear cut.  There were many Christian leaders and thinkers in the Victorian Age who not only accepted but endorsed Darwinism, and there were many scientists who rejected it.  More importantly, it was in great part the pro-evolutionists who began to portray themselves as being in a war with Christianity rather than the other way around.  (I hope to discuss this period in a future blog – stay tuned!)

Unfortunately, the myth of the noble fight of science against the religious forces of obfuscation has become so prevalent since the middle of the 20^th century that everyone takes it for an absolute truth, and as a result the battle lines have become hardened on both sides.  As a result, there are too many scientists who assume, uncritically, that there is no way for them to validate any form of belief in God.  (This is beginning to change, but only barely).  Likewise, there are too many believers today who accept the false assumption that there is no way for them to accept both the Bible and science.  Because (they suppose) they cannot be religious and accept the conclusions of science, they prefer to hold on to their religion, which gives meaning to their lives, and reject science. 

Dawkins tells the story of a young man who obtained a degree in geology from the University of  Chicago and then a doctorate in the same subject from Harvard.  He was a promising student who dreamed of teaching and doing research in his chosen field.  Then, as Dawkins tells the story, “tragedy struck.”

It came, not from the outside but from within his own mind, a mind fatally subverted and weakened by a fundamentalist religious upbringing that required him to believe that the Earth . . . was less than ten thousand years old.  He was too intelligent not to recognize the head-on collision between his religion and his science, and the conflict in his mind made him increasingly uneasy.  One day, he could bear the strain no more, and he clinched the matter with a pair of scissors.  He took a bible and went right through it, literally cutting out every verse that would have to go if the scientific world-view were true.  At the end of this ruthlessly honest . . . exercise, there was so little left of his bible that [as he realized]  “I had to make a decision between evolution and Scripture.  Either the Scripture was true and evolution was wrong or evolution was true and I must toss out the Bible . . .  It was there that night that I accepted the Word of God and rejected all that would ever counter it, including evolution.  With that, in great sorrow, I tossed into the fire all my dreams and hopes in science.”

Like Dawkins, I too consider this outcome a tragedy for the young man – but not for the same reason as Dawkins.  Dawkins, of course, saw the tragedy in the fact that he had been indoctrinated as a youth as a Christian, which led him to abandon his science (and all rationality!) for the Bible.  For me the tragedy lies in the fact that he ever felt it necessary to choose between science and religion – that he had to abandon science for religion or vice versa.  Thousands of other people in the midst of a faith crisis have come to the conclusion that both science and religion can, at least to some extent, be brought together, and that the inherent tension between the two is actually valuable.  Unfortunately, this young man had the view that there was an unbridgeable gulf between the two.  Doubtless he had been brought up to have that view by religious parents, but he may also have been essentially indoctrinated in similar fashion by his science teachers.

We might wonder if he was aware of the many scientists in the world who have been and are believers in God and religion.  If we suppose that his parents indoctrinated him into an absolutist, no-compromise view of the bible, we must realize that that attitude on the part of many fundamentalists developed in great part as a result of the polarization that began in the 19^th century and subsequently took off in even more extreme form in the 20^th century.  There are countless examples from history of growing polarization between groups on intellectual grounds, as one side argues against the other, then has to exaggerate its own ideas in order to strengthen its own arguments against its opponents.  The opponents then must do likewise, of course, and the first group must then counter with even more extreme arguments, until they have completely talked themselves into positions of total and absolute opposition.  This unnecessary enmity has resulted in a strong streak of anti-intellectualism in our society, which is quite harmful, both to the individuals involved and to society as a whole. 

“The God Delusion” was published by a major publishing house and was a best seller.  Books by the other new atheist writers have likewise sold very well, while serious critiques of their books have received much less attention.  To the extent that people are at all aware of attempts to present opposing views, it usually comes in the unproductive context of confrontational televised debates.   Our modern commercial media love confrontation, but such debates (including the countless political debates foisted on us!) are rarely informative and rarely result in anyone changing his or her views.  What they do do is to heighten the sense of opposition, enmity, and polarization in our society.  This is a pernicious influence.  As one of our better-known presidents once said, “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Are Science and Religion Incompatible?

The relationship of science and religion has been the subject of countless books, articles, debates, which show no signs of diminishing in quantity.  The relationship between the two fields is often presented, by champions of both sides, as one of enmity and opposition.  War, in fact, is often the most common metaphor.  But this need not be the case. 

Many (though far from all) scientists suppose that science has replaced – or should replace! – religion as the source of understanding of the world.  Many religious believers take this view of certain well-known scientists at face value and suppose that they, in turn, should reject science in the name of religion.  The truth is that science and religion are so different that it is difficult to say that they conflict.  Does it make any sense to say, for example, that apples and oranges conflict?  Or (to take an absurd example) oranges and submarines?  No, they are simply different objects, with more differences than similarities.  Similarly, religion and science are very distinct ways of trying to understand the world. 

Whence then arises the conflict?  There is a centuries-long history behind this clash, which I don’t have space to go into here (though doubtless I will get into it in a future blog).  For the moment, though, it’s enough to say that science deliberately excludes God from its parameters.  This is not because science is inherently atheistic – science per se is neither atheistic nor theistic – but simply because God has no place in the scientific method.  Science focuses laser-like on the sensible world – the world of our five senses, the things we can touch, taste, see, hear, and smell – and it takes a purely objective approach, excluding (to the extent possible) all subjective experience.

Edwin Schroedinger, the physicist of “Schroedinger’s cat” fame (a well-known thought experiment relating to quantum physics), understood this distinction when he stated, “No personal god can form part of a world-model that has only become accessible at the cost of removing everything personal from it.”  In other words, the scientific method, developed over many centuries, focuses single-mindedly on the physical world and excludes – or rather, attempts to exclude – all subjectivity from its parameters, so as to focus on specific aspects of the world.  Subjectivity – one’s personal experiences and feelings, including such things as love, hate, duty, obligation, and friendship – have no significance in the physics or chemistry lab.  Is this because they don’t exist?  Not at all – it’s simply because science has chosen to ignore them in order to focus on the material, objective aspects of the universe.

It’s a little bit like Cleopatra.  Most people assume that the famous Egyptian queen must have looked like Elizabeth Taylor or Sophia Loren.  But she didn’t.  We know from historical sources that she was quite lacking in physical beauty.  Yet she was nevertheless a highly charismatic and captivating woman, and highly desired by men.  (It reminds me of the classic opening line of the novel “Gone With the Wind”:  “Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.”  In other words, Scarlett did not look like Vivien Leigh!)  Of course Cleopatra’s riches and queenly status were part of the equation, but more importantly it seems as though she had a seductive charm that men found irresistible, despite her superficial plainness.  Scientists have studied physical attractiveness (in men and women) and determined that certain facial proportions and symmetries are considered the most beautiful.   Suppose we decided to draw up a top-ten list of the most beautiful women of all time, focusing on those particular measurements and ignoring everything else – Cleopatra would never make it on to our list.  Would that mean that she was not attractive – in real-world terms?  Obviously not, because we know that men were attracted to her.  All it would mean is that she was lacking in one measurement of overall attractiveness.

How then could we attempt to grasp the nature of her appeal to men – in objective terms?  We could go on and measure other aspects of her outer appearance.  We could even attempt to measure her actions and how she interacted with men – such things as how many times a minute she touched her companions on the arm or looked into their eyes or smiled at them.  We could then sum up all these objective measurements and analyze them and then draw our conclusions about why men were attracted to her.  The question is, would the results of our analysis be very satisfying?  Probably not.  Why not? 

Because charisma and charm are, in great part, subjective characteristics.  We know them when we see them, we can sense them – often subconsciously – but they’re nearly impossible to measure.  But does the fact that something is subjective or difficult to measure mean that it doesn’t exist? 

The point is that science by its very nature, focuses narrowly on certain aspects of our world which are easily measured, and excludes those things which are not.  Love and friendship, by their highly subjective nature, are difficult to measure and therefore difficult to study scientifically.  Does that mean love and friendship don’t exist?  Let us hope not.  If by its very nature science excludes subjective personality from its purview, does that mean personality doesn’t exist?  God, also, by his very nature, is not scientifically measurable.  Does that mean he doesn’t exist? 

There are many well-known authors, many of them scientists, who insist that God cannot exist because he is not detectable by the scientific method.  Perhaps the best known of these is Richard Dawkins, the author of “The God Delusion.”  He mocks the idea that there could be any knowledge of philosophy or religion that is outside the competence of science.  Therefore, he suggests, anyone who believes in realities outside the realm of science – in particular, God – is a deluded fool. 

In contrast to the Dawkinses of the world, many reputable top scientists – even eminent scientists – have not only been open to the possibility of God but even highly religious.  The best known of these today is Francis Collins, one of the world’s most distinguished geneticists.  Collins was formerly the head of the Human Genome Project, which completed the sequencing of the human genome in 2003.  Since 2009 he has been the director of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland – one of the most prestigious scientific research institutions in the world.  He has also been elected to the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences, and has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Science.

Francis Collins is also a devout evangelical Christian. 

In 2007 he founded the BioLogos Foundation, which invites the church and the world to see the harmony between science and biblical faith as we present an evolutional understanding of God’s creation.”  [See their website here.]  He has written two books on the relationship of science and religion.  In The Language of God: A ScientistPresents Evidence for Belief (2006), he relates his own conversion to Christianity.  His parents were nominal Christians and freethinkers.  In college, as he became interested in science, he drifted into agnosticism and then atheism.  He “became convinced that everything in the universe could be explained on the basis of equations and physical principles” and that “no thinking scientist could seriously entertain the possibility of God without committing some sort of intellectual suicide.”  Eventually he decided to go to medical school, and as he began to interact with patients – with real people, as it were – he began noticing how many of them had

a strong reassurance of ultimate peace, be it in this world or the next, despite terrible suffering that in most instances they had done nothing to bring on themselves.  If faith was a psychological crutch, I concluded, it must be a very powerful one.

One patient challenged him to reconsider his lack of faith and belief, and he quickly realized how he had never seriously considered (as a good scientist should) the evidence for and against the existence of God. 

There I found myself, with a combination of willful blindness and something that could only properly be described as arrogance, having avoided any serious consideration that God might be a real possibility.  Suddenly all my arguments seemed very thin, and I had the sensation that the ice under my feet was cracking.  The realization was a thoroughly terrifying experience.  After all, if I could no longer rely on the robustness of my atheistic position, would I have to take responsibility for actions that I would prefer to keep unscrutinized?  Was I answerable to someone other than myself?  The question was now too pressing to avoid.

On the advice of a Methodist minister, he began reading C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity.  He was impressed by the fact that Lewis himself, an Oxford scholar, had begun as an atheist and had made an attempt to disprove faith on the basis of logical argument, only to end up the most well-known defender of Christianity in the 20^th century.

I don’t have room to give justice to Collin’s discussion of how he changed his mind.  But one of the bases for his decision to convert was his realization of the reality of the foundation of morality in human society.  Morality, like friendship, like love, like God, is a subjective reality.  It has no place in the laboratory (though one hopes that scientists, especially biologists, take it into account in their actions!  There is a entire field known as bioethics).  Collins began to realize (to collapse a rather complex discussion in his book) just how basic the concepts of morality, justice, and fairness are to human society.  This realization became the basis for his growing conviction about the existence of God.

Why is it that Dawkins and others of his ilk insist that science has superseded religion?  In essence, it’s because they refuse to distinguish between science and philosophy.  Science as a method of studying the world, as we’ve already said, simply ignores God and focuses on the physical world.  And because it ignores God, (along with many other beliefs that cannot be proven in the laboratory), it is an easy (but false) leap to suppose that it opposes the very concept of God.  And because science and its sibling field of technology (applied science) have been so successful in the last two centuries in transforming civilization, it is easy to conclude – if one is not careful – that science is all that we need, that its view of the world is superior to all others.

In other words, it is important for us to distinguish between science, which is a method of studying the world, and the philosophy of naturalism or materialism, which is a way of viewing the world.  Materialism posits that there is nothing outside the material world – i.e., the world which science studies.  It is opposed not only to Christianity and other religions, but also Platonism and many other philosophies.  (Plato believed that there was a world of being, apart from the material world, which was accessible only with the mind.)

But it is important to stress that materialism is a philosophy, not a science.  In other words, it does not rest on scientific evidence.  Instead, it rests on a supposition that there is nothing outside the physical, material world which science studies.  There is no scientific evidence for this conclusion, apart from science’s inability to detect any other reality apart from the material world.  But how could science be expected to detect subjective realities that it has deliberately excluded from its purview?

I intend in future posts to look more closely at arguments made by materialist / atheist thinkers to show how weak they are.  I will not attempt to disprove them per se, but merely to show that they are far, far, from certain.  Stay tuned!

Seeking the Truth in a World of Disinformation

This blog is dedicated to the proposition that the world is a complex and confusing place, and that if we have any hope of comprehending it – and understanding our place in it – we need to use every resource at our disposal and not limit ourselves to one mode of comprehension only.  Because of the almost infinite complexity of our world, it is easy for us to misunderstand things, to be misinformed, to get things wrong.  All of us – no matter how diligent we are in seeking the truth – are bound to misunderstand and make mistakes.  One unfortunate phenomenon of our modern society that complicates this effort is the deliberate spreading of disinformation. 

Traditionally, the spreading of disinformation – deliberately false information – was mostly associated with governments.  The more common term for such deliberate falsehoods was propaganda.  Today, however, the phenomenon has taken on a new and much more pervasive guise in the private sphere, in the form of trolling.

The eminent journalist Fareed Zakaria has written [here] recently about his personal experience as a victim of trolling.   You should read the entire piece for yourself, but I will summarize what happened.  Zakaria describes how it began:

It started when an obscure website published a post titled “CNN host Fareed Zakaria calls for jihad rape of white women.” The story claimed that in my “private blog” I had urged the use of American women as “sex slaves” to depopulate the white race. The post further claimed that on my Twitter account, I had written the following line: “Every death of a white person brings tears of joy to my eyes.”

The article was posted [here] on a fake news site, one that publishes satire portrayed as actual news, which anyone could have easily figured out if they bothered to check the original site.  Furthermore, anyone who has watched Zakaria on his TV program (entitled “Fareed Zakaria GPS” on Sundays at 10am) can testify that he is perhaps the most modest, decent and thoughtful journalist around these days, and the accusations published in this article were so outrageous that any sensible person should have immediately questioned them.  Even more importantly, they were so vicious and potentially harmful to his reputation that one would assume that any decent person would have avoided spreading such rumors, at least without further and substantial verification.  That did not happen.

Instead,

Hundreds of people began linking to [the article], tweeting and retweeting it, and adding their comments, which are too vulgar or racist to repeat. A few ultra-right-wing websites reprinted the story as fact. With each new cycle, the levels of hysteria rose, and people started demanding that I be fired, deported or killed. For a few days, the digital intimidation veered out into the real world. Some people called my house late one night and woke up and threatened my daughters, who are 7 and 12.

One wonders how many people actually believed the accusations and spread them because they thought they were valid news, and how many knew they were probably made up but retweeted them anyway, out of maliciousness, or maybe just for fun. 

There are many levels on which one can decry this phenomenon of trolling.  It is clearly an abuse of a very precious right, the freedom of speech.  Trolling is based on the anonymity of the troller, and some have called for websites to require commenters to use their real name.  [see here] 

But I am less concerned with the trollers than with those who “believed” the claims and repeated them without trying to confirm them.  Why would people not make the slightest effort to verify such outrageous accusations before spreading them?  My guess is that laziness is only one reason.  Another reason may be because they simply don’t care.  But the third and most significant reason is because people today are only too ready to believe any accusation, no matter how ridiculous, about someone whose political views they disagree with. 

By far the greatest part of the problem is peoples’ willingness to accept as true whatever they hear that confirms their own biases.  We are becoming a highly polarized society, and many people – even at times the highly educated – are so eager to find fault with those they disagree with that they are willing to throw caution to the wind and accept as true without making the slightest effort to find out if the information is correct, incorrect, mistaken, or deliberately false.    That failure is compounded when the person gleefully finds his or her own biases confirmed by the information. 

My plea is for us all to make a concerted effort to seek out the truth rather than mere opinion, even when we happen to agree with the opinion.  As I said at the beginning, the world we live in is highly complex, and misunderstanding and confusion abound in all areas of life.  Let’s not add to the confusion by spreading unfounded rumors, especially when the internet and a bit of common sense often makes it very easy to check on them.  Even more importantly, let’s strive to give people the benefit of the doubt and not assume that evil rumors are true simply because the person in question belongs to a different political party or has different political or religious views from ours.

We live in a highly cynical age in which people are too ready to believe the worst of other people.  Again, I think this is true even of many educated people, who should know better.  Even worse is the intense political polarization we see increasing at every turn, in every election,  which could eventually lead to the kind of balkanization we see today in Iraq and the Muslim world generally, the hatred between Shiites and Sunni.  Although that division has been around for many centuries, it has recently become so pronounced that the two groups may, in some instances, no longer be able to live together in the same country.

My Mormon readers will also recognize this phenomenon from the Book of Mormon, where two centuries of remarkable peace and harmony were followed by a growing polarization of the people as they separated themselves into various factions and classes and began to see members of the opposing groups as evil – and as enemies.  This tearing of the social fabric led ultimately to a fracturing of the polity and to a vicious civil war, the complete disintegration of society, and finally the annihilation of one of the two major factions. 

Many commentators have pointed out that today’s media is so diverse that people can rely entirely on sources of information that agree with their own biases.  Liberals listen only to MSNBC and conservatives watch only Fox News.  This practice simply reinforces one’s own limited view of the world.  It amounts to deliberately putting blinders on oneself and leads to a very narrow – and narrow-minded – view of the world.  One of the great values of education is to expand one’s awareness of different points of view, so as to enrich the learner.

I encourage you to actively seek out opinions of people who disagree with you – who see the world differently than you.  I am currently reading a number of books by so the so-called Four Horsemen of Atheism (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel C. Dennett, and Sam Harris), even though I disagree profoundly with their worldview.  Admittedly, these works are themselves rather vicious screeds against religion, rather than serious attempts to understand reality, and I am reading them primarily in order to disagree with them (in future blog postings – stay tuned!).  But nevertheless, as I read them I push myself to try to see the world, at least temporarily, through their eyes.  (Even a defense lawyer in court must make a serious effort to understand the viewpoint of the other side.  If he simply relies on false assumptions, based on his own biases, of what the other party probably thinks, rather than trying to understand how they actually see things, he will not be able to build a very strong case and will not be able to persuade the jury.)  As we attempt to understand the views of those we disagree with, we may come to the realization that there is room for more than one reasonable interpretation of the facts.  We may still believe that our view is superior, but we can at least partially empathize with the other side.  (The lawyer, of course, is fully aware that there are other legitimate points of view, but is specifically being paid not to sympathize with the other side!)

Augustine defined a people as “a multitudinous assemblage of rational beings united by concord regarding loved things held in common.”  Of course, it is not necessary for everyone to agree on everything.  But without such concord based on commonly-held fundamental beliefs, a country is at best a shell, like modern-day Iraq, which merely houses three separate peoples (Sunni, Shi’a, and Kurds) who have no common sympathies.  Indeed, they have literally become the fiercest of enemies.

(Interestingly, when I just now googled the word “Shi’a,” on the search page I got a brief excerpt from Wikipedia, but right next to it was an ad comprising a picture of three Shiite clerics with the legend:  “Shias are NOT Muslims!”  Below the pictures it read, “Shias do not represent Islam.  Shias are the enemies of Islam and Muslims!”   Need I say more?)

As Lincoln said (quoting Jesus), “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”  The United States today is not as divided as Iraq, nor even as divided as in the 1850s, in the lead-up to the Civil   War.  Nonetheless, I can’t see how our nation can survive in any meaningful sense unless and until people abandon this tendency to see those with whom they disagree in the worst possible light and to spread vicious rumors to try to destroy them. 

Vigorous argument on behalf of differing political viewpoints is normal and healthy in a democracy.  But closed-minded adherence to inflexible ideologies is unhealthy and leads to enmity and social and political disintegration.  Members of Congress should be able to discuss, debate, and argue over policy and legislation, but still be willing to talk (and even be friends!) with members of the other party.  So should we.

None of us is so intelligent or wise as to be able to claim infallibility in our views, and we ought not to act as if we are.  As I pointed out in my first blog (on January 2), Socrates preached intellectual humility because he understood that none of us (particularly himself!) really possesses much in the way of wisdom.  We all have much to learn from each other.  And, in the end of the analysis, the only true wisdom is that which comes from God.

Questioning Everything

Questioning Everything

I am a natural-born skeptic.  My deep-seated instinct is to challenge and question just about everything that anyone says.  Just how deep-seated is this tendency?  Well, I can remember a little “game” I used to play with my mother when I was very young – oh, say five years old.  At least for me it was a fun game – probably less so for my mother.  My mother believed deeply in the wisdom of Thumper’s mother:  “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” (This is probably why I have always been a quiet person.)  So anyway, she would often make innocuous, positive statements, which seemed to me to be eminently challengeable.  A common exchange between us went like this:

My mother (to me):  Isn’t it a gorgeous day today?  Look at the beautiful blue sky! (we lived in San Diego so this was a common occurrence)

            Me:  (to the sky) Sky…are you beautiful?  (to my mother)  No – so see?

Fortunately, my mother loved me enough to prevent her from throttling me every time I had my little fun.  Also, fortunately, I have learned over the years that if I want to have any friends at all I need to restrain that urge to challenge and question everything that people say no matter how innocuous.  But the urge has not gone away.  In general, I am still a compulsive questioner:  Is that proposition (on any given subject) true?  Is it plausible?  What is the evidence in favor of it?  What is the evidence against it?  Which of alternative propositions is the more plausible?  Does a given opinion fit with everything else I know (or think I know) about the world?  Is there a third scenario that should be considered?  Is there any real proof?

Yet in spite of my ingrown skepticism and contrarianism, I still somehow ended up a believer in God.  Are religious belief and skepticism compatible? 

Actually, let me restate my prior assertion:  I am a believer in God at least in part because of my ingrown skepticism.  I am not a natural believer, nor was I raised as one.  But I am naturally curious, and I am also by nature self-analytical.  I have always been aware that other people seem to see the world differently from me.  So one of the main drivers of my curiosity is the question, What am I missing?  What is it that others see (e.g., believers) that I don’t?  Is my view of the world correct or is there something I can learn from them?  If so, how can I learn to see what they see?

I won’t go here into the story of my religious conversion (but I may in a later blog).  My main point here is to stress that intellectual curiosity and rigorous analysis are not antithetical to belief in God and religion.  Skepticism and religious belief are by no means incompatible.  But it depends on how we define the word “skeptic.”

What exactly is skepticism?  What is a skeptic? 

Nowadays we commonly equate the term skeptic with “non-believer” – i.e., someone who rejects belief in everything that smacks of the supernatural, including God.  We almost equate skepticism with atheism.  But this is not the original meaning, nor the most accurate. 

The term skeptic (or sceptic, if you’re a Brit), comes from the ancient philosophical school known as skepticism.  The original meaning of the Greek verb skeptomai was to observe or look about oneself carefully, but later, when applied to activity of the mind, it meant to examine or consider.  Thus, skeptikos meant thoughtful or reflective, and a “skeptic” was simply an inquirer or investigator.  The term, however, came to be associated with the intellectual position of questioning or doubting all truth claims.  Skeptics clashed in particular with the Stoics, who had very detailed set of firm dogmas regarding the nature of reality.

Contrary to the common belief that Skeptics dogmatically denied all possibility of knowledge (which is a self-contradictory claim), for the most part they simply held that dogmatic certainty should be avoided.  Later Skeptics looked back to Socrates as the original model of questioning and doubting the statements of others, but the actual founder of the tradition was Pyrrho, who was a contemporary of Alexander the Great.  The only ancient skeptic whose writings are well preserved is Sextus Empiricus, who lived around AD 200.   Skepticism as a modern philosophy began with the rediscovery and translation of Sextus’ writings in the 15^th century.  Some of the most famous modern skeptical philosophers were Montaigne, Hume, and Wittgenstein.  Montaigne and Hume, in particular, overwhelmingly influenced modern thought, the rise of science, and the modern tendency to question and doubt everything – particularly religious beliefs.

The Oxford English dictionary defines a skeptic thus:

One who doubts the validity of what claims to be knowledge in some particular department of inquiry; one who maintains a doubting attitude with reference to some particular question or statement.

Skepticism is a useful tool to help us avoid being deceived by all the ridiculous stuff out in the world today – financial frauds, nonsensical claims of all types, whether about politics, religion, or the latest commercial product.  But it should not become so ingrained a habit in us that we come to insist that there is no truth to be found anywhere.  In other words, we should indeed question everything, including our own questioning.  Skepticism should not be a goal in itself.  We should be skeptical even about our own skepticism.  Sigmund Freud once said, “If one regards oneself as a skeptic, it is a good plan to have occasional doubts about one’s skepticism.” 

The modern-day Skeptics Society (see here) is “a nonprofit 501(c)(3) scientific and educational organization whose mission is to engage leading experts in investigating the paranormal, fringe science, pseudoscience, and extraordinary claims of all kinds, promote critical thinking, and serve as an educational tool for those seeking a sound scientific viewpoint.”

Michael Shermer, the Skeptics Society’s executive director and the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, says here: “Being a skeptic just means being rational and empirical: thinking and seeing before believing.”  In response to critics who suppose that he does not “believe anything,” he states that he believes many things – so long as there is sufficient evidence to show that it is true.  Skeptics, he says, are not closed-minded, and not cynics.  “We are curious but cautious,”  he says.  Skepticism, he says, is about keeping an open mind.  It is about finding “the essential balance between orthodoxy and heresy, between a total commitment to the status quo and the blind pursuit of new ideas, between being open-minded enough to accept radical new ideas and so open-minded that your brains fall out. Skepticism is about finding that balance.”

All of this sounds quite admirable, eminently reasonable.  Who can object to keeping an open mind?  But if we look a little more carefully it soon becomes clear that the only type of “compelling evidence” they will accept is testing according to the “scientific method,” which “involves gathering data to formulate and test naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena.”  Shermer later says:

“Skepticism is the rigorous application of science and reason to test the validity of any and all claims.”

I have no quibbles with any of this except the idea that the only explanations that one should accept are “naturalistic” ones.  If you are referring to claims about UFOs or the Loch Ness monster or the Yeti, that’s fine.   But if you also exclude all religious claims on the grounds that they cannot be proven scientifically, then we have a problem.

Such an approach by definition excludes all possibility of a reality that transcends, or that is beyond the physical world we are all familiar with.  An intellectual position that requires scientific proof before accepting any contention is not itself a scientific position but a philosophical one.  It is called naturalism or materialism.  It is the same as saying that all reality is reducible to pure material substances. 

Rupert Sheldrake is a very accomplished biologist who nonetheless is very publicly committed to the view that science should not limit itself to the study of the material world.  In Science Set Free: Ten Paths to New Discovery (see here )he argues powerfully that science is limiting its own progress (and that of human civilization) by ignoring the clear evidence that there are realities beyond the physical world.  Admittedly, the objective evidence for these other realities is still limited, in part because scientists as a whole refuse to take them seriously.  After all, if you begin with the assumption that the only reality that exists is the material world, you will naturally see no value in pursuing evidence of non-material realities.  In other words, if you don’t look for God, you will never find Him.

Sheldrake considers a number of different indicators that suggest there is something to human beings besides mere atoms and chemicals.  Materialists typically argue, for example, that all human consciousness is reducible to physics and chemistry.  In other words, we are little more than machines, and the idea that we have a mind or soul or spirit that is separable from or independent of our physical bodies is merely an illusion somehow manufactured by our brains.  Humans (and all living things), in this view, are just complex conglomerations of atoms, and all of our thoughts, beliefs, and aspirations can be entirely explained by chemical reactions in our brains. 

If this is so, Sheldrake asks, why is the so-called “placebo effect” so real?  A placebo, of course, is an inert substance administered to a certain percentage of the subjects in clinical trials of new drugs, as a control, in order to better be able to contrast the effect of the drug being tested.  A new drug can be licensed and marketed only if it works better than the placebo.  What is striking is that placebos actually do work!  Even though they do not contain any drug or active substance, patients who receive the placebo often show a significant degree of improvement in their condition.  Why is this?   If it were simply a matter of the chemical effect of the drug on the chemistry of the patient, an inert pill should have no effect at all.  Yet it is clear that the patients experience some positive effect merely as a result of their hope and expectation that the medicine will work.  (This assumes that the study is blind – i.e., that the subjects do not know whether they are receiving the actual drug or a placebo.) 

The placebo effect is well documented and is frequently utilized by physicians.  (See The Placebo Effect and Health: Combining Science and Compassionate Care by W. Grant Thompson here.)  The whole bedside manner of a doctor (the reassuring manner, the framed degrees on the wall, the white coat) is designed to give the patient confidence in the ability of the doctor to heal him.  There are even accounts of patients who benefitted from sham surgeries –the surgical equivalent of placebo pills.  One patient, for example, who could barely walk before his arthroscopic knee surgery, was completely free of pain in his knee several years afterwards.  Yet he ultimately learned that he had never received any surgery at all!  He had been in the control group and had his knee cut open but then sewed up without any actual treatment.

The fact that the placebo effect exists at all suggests that our physical state – health vs. sickness – is not just a matter of physics and chemistry.  Our  health depends in part on our hopes, expectations, and beliefs, and in some way that is scarcely understood, our minds can affect our physical bodies to a surprising degree.

I believe deeply in the importance and significance of intellectual research, including scientific research.  I believe that by careful study we can come to understand many things about the world we live in, and we ought not to neglect our ability to understand and even improve the world.  Nor should we discount the discoveries of science merely because it is less than perfect.  But I also believe that there is much more to reality than what we can appreciate through our five senses.  I am convinced, both by study and by personal experience, that there is a transcendent reality – essentially another dimension or dimensions – existing alongside of the natural world of common experience.

And I am certainly far from alone in this belief.  In my next blog I will discuss some of the fascinating views of eminent scientists with regard to religion.  Did you know, for example, that nearly all the leading physicists who pioneered quantum mechanics were believers in mysticism?  Or did you happen to know that one of the most eminent geneticists in the world today is a devout evangelical Christian?   Stay tuned.

Three blind men, an elephant, and Socrates

Is there a God?  If, so what is his nature?  Chances are, if you were to ask fifty people that question, you’d get fifty different responses – well, maybe not fifty, but pretty close.  Get them all together in one room and you’d have quite a battle on your hands.  A Christian might say that God is our Father and is three beings in one.  A Jew might say that God is indeed our Father, but is one, not three.  A Muslim might assert that God is neither Father nor three, he is simply God.  A feminist Christian might contend that God is definitely not a He – indeed, he might even be a She.  An atheist might reject all these views as mere figments of their proponent’s opinions since God does not exist.  And finally, an agnostic might declare that the others were all wrong, since it is impossible to know whether God exists or not.

If there were a neutral listener in the room, once everyone else had had their say, he might respond, how can you be so sure you are right?  What evidence do you have showing that your view is the correct one and all the others are wrong?  The Christian would say that the Bible says so.  The Jew would say that, in fact, the original Bible (i.e., minus the New Testament) actually declares that God is One.  The Muslim would show that the Quran superseded both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament as God’s word.  The feminist would insist that since the Bible and the Quran were both written by men, their views of God are clearly biased.  The atheist would simply wave his hand and say, “Look at the world around you.  See?  No sign of God.”

Oh, and the agnostic?  Well, the agnostic would probably say that he agreed with the atheist that there was no sign of God in the world, but he wasn’t willing to conclude from that one fact that God could not possibly exist.  “Besides,” he would add, “just look around this room.  Here we have six intelligent adults, all of them disagreeing vehemently about God’s existence and his nature.  There’s the proof that it’s impossible to know who’s right.  People have been arguing about God since the dawn of time, and no one has ever come up with an objective way of deciding which view is correct.  So the sensible thing is simply to throw up your hands and say, we’ll never know.”

The interesting thing is that, in all likelihood, the agnostic would be just as adamant in his views as the other five.  He would be just as certain that it is impossible to have any certain knowledge of God as the other five were that their ideas about God were correct.

The question is, how can any of these people – the agnostic included – be so certain of their opinions?  Countless wars and rumors of wars have arisen throughout human history because of adamant, inflexible religious beliefs – and, of course, not only religious beliefs, but political ideologies and many other things.  Why is it that so many people are so certain that their views are the only right ones and that everyone else who disagrees with them is obviously wrong?  If we stop and think about it for a minute, the world is a pretty huge place – not only huge, but complex and often confusing.  What makes us so certain that we understand it better than anyone else? 

The famous parable about the blind men and the elephant demonstrates just how little we all know.  For those that aren’t familiar with it, it tells of three blind men who came across an elephant for the first time and were curious to know what it looked like – but of course they couldn’t see it.  So one felt of the trunk, another of one of the legs, and the third felt of one of the ears.  They were each so overjoyed that they now they knew what an elephant was, and they began to discuss it.  An elephant, said the first man, is like a huge, strong snake.  No, no! said the second.  An elephant is like a huge tree trunk without any branches.  You’re both ridiculous, said the third.  An elephant is like a huge fan that waves back and forth.  I felt it myself!

The moral, of course, is that they were all equally right – and all equally wrong.  Why?  Because they each were familiar with only a tiny part of the whole animal, yet they immediately jumped to the conclusion that they because they understood a part, they understood the whole, and so the others must be wrong. 

We are all very much like these blind men.  How much do we actually know of the totality of existence?  Practically nothing – no matter how learned and how smart we are, the totality of our ignorance – what we don’t know – massively outweighs the little bit that we do.  Even if we happen to be right about certain things – like each of the blind men – if we listen to others, recognizing our own ignorance and acknowledging that we might be wrong and that others, indeed, might just happen to be right, we might actually learn something.  But if we remain closed-minded to everyone else’s ideas, we will remain just as ignorant as we are now.

In other words, we need to learn to cultivate intellectual humility.

One of my heroes is Socrates.  Socrates is commonly known for the statement that “the only thing I know is that I know nothing.”  That is the ultimate paradox.  If you can’t know anything, how can you know that you know nothing?  The only problem is that Socrates never actually said it.  What he in fact said was that he was not wise – because no human being is wise.  For Socrates, true wisdom is an attribute of the gods, not men. 

In Plato’s Apology, Socrates says (referring to a conversation he had with a certain well-known Athenian politician), “I reasoned to myself, ‘I am wiser than that man, for it is not likely that either of us knows anything that is fine and good; but while he supposes that he knows something, when he knows nothing, I, as I do not know anything [i.e., anything fine and good, which equates with wisdom], do not suppose that I do. In this one small way, then, I appear to be wiser than he, that I do not suppose that I know what I do not know.”  What Socrates is saying here is simply that he is fully aware of his massive ignorance and does not pretend to know more than he knows.  It is a statement of intellectual humility (as well as a top-notch put-down of arrogant politicians!), not a statement of a philosophical paradox.  But as the quotation in the text makes clear, the basis of his humility was his awareness of the massive gap between the knowledge and wisdom of humans and that of God.

I don’t think Socrates was saying that it is impossible for us to know anything worthwhile at all.  What he meant was twofold:  1) we have to recognize that, no matter how strongly we hold to an opinion, we might be wrong; and 2) that we need to recognize that humans are weak things compared to divinity, particularly with respect to wisdom and goodness.

By all means, let us have our strongly held opinions and let us argue them with confidence.  But at the same time, let us not suppose that we are inevitably right and that anyone who disagrees with us is obviously wrong.  A strong dose of intellectual humility is absolutely essential for the smooth working of society – we must be willing to express our opinions, but we must be open to the opinions of others, particularly those who disagree with us.  This is particularly true in the areas of – you guessed it! – politics and religion.  If we honestly acknowledge that our views are based on very limited knowledge and understanding, we have to realize that other people, with different backgrounds and a different understanding of the world, might just be a little bit right. 

In this New Year’s season of new beginnings, let us resolve to be a little more humble – intellectually humble.  Let us listen to those who disagree with us and see what we can learn from them.  Not only will the world run more smoothly, but we just might – just possibly – end up a little bit wiser in 2016 than we were in 2015.