Friendly Atheist poses this question:

There are plenty of examples of science proving a religious claim wrong.

There are no examples of religion proving a scientific claim wrong.

Are there any responses a theist can give to it? Are there any examples of religion proving science wrong?

A Religious Liberal Blog notes that this is not a good opposition and I tend to agree, but perhaps for different reasons.  I think that this is not a very scientific way to proceed.

First, the question is an absurdity.  In order for religion to prove science wrong, a scientific means of proof would have to be employed to substantiate said proof in order to answer the question affirmatively with any degree of satisfaction to the interrogator.  By proving science wrong, science would have to be used and so, it is an absurd recursion that cannot be answered.

Second, the problem with the quote is that it forces religious claims to be scientifically justified which they are not.  Granted, the problem with many religious people is that they want their claims of faith to be scientific which gives this kind of atheist argument the fodder it needs to exist.  The problem here is the assumption which has its starting point in a poorly constructed hypothesis.

Think of it this way.  A room of 300 people all claim to have seen an apparition of some sort floating in air and then disappear.  All have different ideas about it, and all would have seen it from a different perspective, but all claim to have seen something strange and unusual floating in the air that disappeared from view.  The atheist argument quoted here might say, well rather than accept that anyone saw an object that apparently defied basic laws of physics like gravity and the conservation of matter, it must have been something else like a mass hallucination.  This is not all that scientific.  The goal is that after this experience has been recorded, you have to disprove that said object has much of a probability of being “real” and thus prove that all 300 people were wrong and did not see anything real at all.  The null hypothesis is that no one in the room had an experience with anything authentic.  The hypothesis is to assume that everyone did have an authentic experience. The argument quoted above has got it the wrong way around.

Something like the end of a Scooby-Doo episode where the mask is pulled off the warehouse clerk who “Would have gotten away with it too” would be acceptable.  After all, Scooby-Doo is the show that basically tells us that what ever seems to be magic or ghosts is really just a ruse.  However, “those meddling kids” prove this at the end of every show by pulling the mask off, finding the hidden projection unit, tape of chain sounds, etc.  Would that atheists who make these claims could do the same thing even with the same indubitable rigor as Velma and Fred.

The fact is that atheists in general fail to produce proof that all experiences of God in the history of humankind have been false.  They make that claim as an assumption and go from there.  Doesn’t it seem more reasonable that all of the people in history who have claimed some kind of phenomenal religious experience may have actually experienced something that current scientific knowledge cannot substantiate?

In the final analysis, atheists demand evidence from religions folk who have experienced what they call God that this God is “real”.  Said religious folk claim they have the evidence that satisfies them to the degree that this God was real and the experience authentic.  However, this kind of evidence will never be satisfying to the whims of the atheist.

If the experience of “God” is an anomaly in human history, then the atheist desire and demand for scientifically substantiated evidence would be very sensible.  The fact is that such experience of God is not a mere anomaly or blip, but a fairly predictable and consistent variable of the human condition.  To say that every single instance of this is a delusion seems to be as absurd as arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin - especially when the claim that God does not exist is not a falsifiable claim.  It is more reasonable, therefore, to reject the null hypothesis stated above for now.

Chris Tilling has a good thought on Dawkins et. al. here. This started as a comment, then it got too long.

The problem (a problem?) with Dawkins, Hitchens, etc. (I like Eagleton’s name for the two - “Ditchkins“) is that they argue it’s perfectly rational to assume that all religious belief is the same regardless of its social consequences. Overlaying that with a scientism that itself does not have evidentiary bases for belief adds to the absurdity.

I was engaged in an argument on Atheism v. Christianity (one of many of the same which is why I stopped participating) with some atheists regarding the diagnosis of delusion. Delusion is not a belief but a behavior. Psychologists do not evaluate beliefs alone, they evaluate behaviors and (should) triangulate their diagnosis with a few different variables and with a few different opinions - especially in cases where the behavior is more ambiguous. This is called differential diagnosis. Belief in God is not itself a behavior. Hearing an audible voice or seeing an apparition are both behaviors that one can measure. Believing that Nicole Kidman is in love with you can be assessed. Those last can be qualified as delusional. There are of course other types.

In those debates I actually had someone tell me at the end that it is “all subjective” and that it is based on what is normative in society. The latter is indeed true - in part. You cannot separate one’s psychological state from their prevailing environment. But this is not “subjectivity” at work. Saying this discredits the entire scientific basis for the field of abnormal psychology. This is a clear sign that this person is one of many who confuses Dr. Phil with the social scientific discipline of psychology of which studies in abnormal patterns of behavior is a part!

Delusion is classified as a psychotic disorder that is usually associated with a confused sensory apparatus whereby you are experiencing something that is not there with your sensory inputs. Sensing ease, wholeness, a presence of power, etc. or other heightened emotional states are not delusional by definition. Be as it may, this is the place to engage the debate, if there is any. However Ditchkins does not do this. They would rather assume they know how to give a credible differential diagnosis of delusion, and then simply say that the psychological community gives “favoritism” to religion. What is clear is that while religion can be a direct cause for delusional disorders, religion by itself is not a disorder.

However, Ditchkins want to overload criteria for existence with empirical validity. That is to say, the argument that such an overwhelming number of homo sapiens and indeed other primates have not only believed in a “something more” to scientifically substantiated experience, but have often associated this with God of some kind is rejected outright because there is no evidence to Ditchkins that such a reality even exists that satisfies their sense of curiosity. It seems that the history of religions and of religious experience raises the probability that a God of some kind does indeed exist - that there indeed might be this “something more”. But for Ditchkins, this is simply not an interesting curiosity. This is however, not the argument they are making and this is the problem. They are not saying that God is not interesting, they are saying that God is a sign of delusion, of sickness, and the greatest source of human wickedness - and all for something that is not there!

Here’s the funny part about the argument from Ditchkins - they then go on to say “Well psychologists give religion a free pass” as if they have mis-diagnosed “delusion” in the DSM IV! They want delusional behavior to be what it is not, rely on the psychological analyses where convenient, and then disregard them also where convenient. So here’s delusion which is a category of psychological diagnosis, but psychologists are discredited since they give religions a free pass?! What utter tripe.

Yet when I say that God as they understand God is not how many Christians, Jews and Muslims understand God (not to mention other religions with very different views of God like Hindus) I am then at fault for changing the terms! What a crock!

If atheists want to be helpful, try lending a hand with various Christians who are tired of the highjacking of religious belief by vitriolic and dangerous absolutism and fundamentalism that is rampant in a globalized world that favors tribalism. Stop making these absurd arguments that all religious belief is the same when all religious belief clearly does not render the same social consequences. Let’s stop this blind acceptance that Ditchkins’ rather ignorant points about religion are true, when their criticisms of fundamentalism (if they would choose to make that important and obvious distinction) are quite spot on. The problem is that they fail to make that distinction, fail to demonstrate any care of the social aspects of religious behaviors and beliefs, create fallacious conspiracy-laden hypotheses that are not demonstrable with respect to the study of religion or social science, and smile as millions in the world chew on their wake like blind dogs.

Here is a proposition in the much over-emphatic debates and volleys of logical fallacies between atheists and Christians these days. Any Christian claim to the divinity of Jesus will never be satisfactory to an atheists’ conditions for what constitutes truth and reality. I think this little passage from Mark’s Gospel explains it well enough:

‘Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe.’ Those who were crucified with him also taunted him.

So again, this is nothing new under the sun.

Why is naturalism the mode of operation that is most satisfying to you? Can you justify that belief on the same grounds that you would ask me to justify belief in God? Or are we all delusional because we practice certain ideations to order our existence that are not empirically provable?

Post inspired by comment here.

James has been having a discussion with Larry Moran over the issue of God as a “supernatural being”. (And from Larry’s post I have not the foggiest clue what “If this is the best they can do then theism is in big trouble” means in the slightest.)

Atheists largely appear to have criteria for existence that anything religious or metaphysical simply cannot provide - empirical evidence for the existence of something “living” or “sentient” or any other category we may apply to being.

However, if God exists, God must somehow have an existence that is outside of the set of empirical experience via the five senses or God is just one more cause among every other object without any significant differentiation. Certainly to suggest that God is irreducibly an equal partner in the set of all objects in cause/effect conditions is considered idolatry in the Judaeo/Christian traditions. Since, in such a case, we cannot control for the kind of physical evidence required for something to exist like God, God must not therefore exist or what we call “God” is some amalgamation of physical events and objects in whatever form we desire.

The problem is that we have many experiences in life that transcend the process of observation with the synthetic apparatus of the mind. Love, justice, peace, civility, equality, etc. are all such factors that move civilizations and direct human behavior far more than anything that can be controlled in a petri dish or can be observed through any scientific apparatus. We can scientifically observe the effects of these beliefs, but we cannot observe the beliefs themselves. True, our beliefs are structured according to our experience, but the structure of those beliefs is not empirical. Note: This is not to differentiate between subjective and objective, but between empirical and non-empirical. The difference is not all that subtle.

Objection 1: Even if you say you had an experience with God or a god of some sort, there can be many other naturalistic explanations such as delusion, hallucination, social determinism, etc. So why do you hold to the belief that what you experienced is God especially since the evidence for God’s existence is not forthcoming? The assumption here is that since there is no physical evidence of God, God must not exist therefore you must have experienced something else. The possibility that the experience occurred with a real existent is jettisoned before we can even offer this as a possibility.

Objection 2:  Why this God?  It is just an arbitrary decision!  To ask the question why this God as opposed to Zeus, Mithras, Allah, or Ganesha would be like asking me why I do not like fried cockroaches, speak English, eat pork, believe in the equality of women, and the civil right for gays to marry. Experience is always irreducibly informed and conditioned by our psycho-social development. Even if God has an existence outside of the physical set of possible objects in terms of cause and effect, we must experience God within these conditions. Field theory, game theory, various forms of evolutionary fitness, etc. are used to argue for the rationality of a belief, but that is quite after the fact of the reasons why people believe in certain things. In fact, if this is true, then belief in God is quite good for our evolutionary fitness. But this does not mean therefore, that God is part of the set of cause and effect, or that for God to exist this must be the case. Such would be a post hoc fallacy that is quite obvious.

To ask for a naturalistic explanation for God that meets certain scientific criteria is therefore a categorical error. It is like trying to argue for the existence of chairs by examining the flight patterns of bees.

Therefore the issue comes to what is compelling evidence and what is interesting evidence for the observer. Arguments that James is encountering are of this ilk. Why continue to beat the notion of supernatural like a dead horse? The alternative is simply not interesting. So I would ask atheists why they hold to their criteria for belief in the first place? What motivates the way you believe is perhaps a more important question than the content of the belief itself. Brow-beating the issue of super-naturalism might perhaps be more honest if atheists would faithfully acknowledge the impact of desire on their preference for a physicalism clothed in the oft indubitable acceptance of a neo-liberalism for which they do not argue the veracity on the same grounds they require for God.

I ran across an interesting quote in William James’ third lecture on Pragmatism in which he discusses a few metaphysical issues. He places the idea of an intelligent designer of the cosmos in the context of abstract rationalism - as a metaphysical claim. While is has pragmatic value, it clearly bears no scientific or empirical value from James’ view.

Pragmatically, then, the abstract word “design” is a blank cartridge. It carries no consequences, it does not execution. What design? And what designer? Are the only serious questions, and the study of facts is the only way of getting approximate answers. Meanwhile, pending the slow answer from facts, any one who insists that there is a designer and who is sure he is a divine one, gets a certain pragmatic benefit from the term - the same, in fact, which we saw that the terms God, Spirit, or the Absolute, yield us. “Design,” worthless tho [sic] it be as a mere rationalistic principle set above or behind things for our admiration, becomes, if our faith concretes it into something theistic, a term of promise. Returning with it into experience, we gain a more confiding outlook on the future (p. 50).

Intelligent design is therefore a faith claim that satisfies the compunction of the human spirit to discern an order to things even if there is not scientific fact that such an order requires a designer. This discernment comes as a result of a desire for order. Keep in mind that James was quite active in terms of the effects of Darwinism on education and also had strong views on the task of research as well. For him, intelligent design has practical value which makes it different from pure rationalism. It seeks facts even it it has none to confirm it empirically which makes it different from empiricism. He goes on to say:

If not a blind force but a seeing force runs things, we may reasonably expect better issues. This vague confidence in the future is the sole pragmatic meaning at present discernible in the terms design and designer. But if cosmic confidence is right not wrong, better not worse, that is a most important meaning. That much at least of possible “truth” the terms will then have in them (p. 51).

He delivered these lectures in 1907.  This is more evidence that the ID/Creationism versus evolution debate as well as the atheist versus theist debates both in terms of the conflict between empirical and non-empirical ways of knowing is an old one with new vigor. The issue is not God, religion, science, materialism, etc. These are but symptoms. The issue is this question as it was then: What is a legitimate basis for knowledge?

I always have far too many blogs on my radar than I can truly absorb, digest, and comment. No doubt that is true of many folks out there who have glutted themselves with news, information, and conversation. Which leads me to a lead-off question.

I posted a piece that at least I thought was interesting on theodicy yesterday. Kind of an old question from a slightly different angle. If I post something like that I notice that no one comments. Yet if I post something pithy about movies I hate or enjoy, it’s like flies to sugar [not that my readers are flies, it's a relational metaphor ]. This further raises a question that Chris Brady has been exploring here and here about the nature of blogging. I wonder if I am too much a generalist for much of the blog world that would be interested in the topics on which I post? I would ask the additional question of readers why do you read blogs and what are you looking for? What grabs your attention and holds it?

Jan Edmiston reflects on the plight of the dying church. Regardless of how you understand the statistical significance of old mainline churches fading away as the “greatest generation” sadly leaves us, it is an immensely painful situation for a lot of good pastors.

As many of you know Chris Tilling has had a few posts on his own grappling with science and theology here, here, and here. Worth a read for anyone, and especially anyone who is absolutely sure about their current understanding of the compatibility between evolution and creation.

There was an interesting study at the University of Houston which gives a far more scientific result as to the effectiveness of a hybrid course model versus a traditional course model. Rather than come to the standard conclusion of “no significant difference” the result was a better performance in the hybrid course. This is a risky kind of study that faculty with whom I have worked have always balked because of the nature of the control versus the experimental group in the model. I would like to see more faculty take this risk with the same kind of study to get some external validity data. That would do more in the filed of educational technology than the vast majority of other “studies” that have been done in the past. In other Higher education news, encouraging interfaith experiences is discussed at Inside Higher Education.

The Evangelical Philosophical Society posts an interview with Paul Copan, chair of philosophy and ethics at Palm Beach Atlantic University, entitled, “Is Yahweh a Moral Monster?“. The subject matter engages one of the arguments among new atheists along the lines of God is Not Great (HT to FQI for this one). While this piece is more or less descriptive of the foundations and character of the arguments, Copan’s piece here is a little more nuanced.

Ryan at Rumblings discusses faith and doubt in the midst of religious tradition.

Identitymixed has the post title of the week: All Things Urine. If you don’t have kids yet, this is the kind of stuff the books don’t tell you!

Julie gives all husbands some rather sound advice on what the best things in life are for a wife, especially after being together for a while.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State includes news about a resolution that passed recently declaring Easter Week to be “Christian Heritage Week” in Alabama. Looks like they did not get the memo in civics class that Sally Kern missed as well.