Ruminations on Denigrations

An alert reader, Zetetic Chick, has put me onto an interesting discussion concerning the tactics of debate being used in the recent dialog between Plantinga and Dennett. (Thanks ZC). The subject of the exchange was, “Are religion and science compatible?”. The dialog was recorded by an admittedly biased Christian philosopher (more about those in a bit) who chose to remain anonymous. Regardless of what one might think about anonymous reporting, the account is fairly well substantiated by further comments of readers of the blog.

What occurred there is endemic of what occurs in many, even most, exchanges between what I will term "logicians of physics and metaphysics", and "Philosophical Materialists". I will say right up front that Philosophical Materialists have no logical defense and tend to go straight for character assassination, derision, ridicule, and in general, mental bullying through sarcasm that is not based on any grounded logic. It appears to be a case of wishing to generate the appearance of a "win" rather than attempting to generate a rational case for a position.

Common themes seem to be that if you disagree, you are not educated or intelligent enough to understand; you are pursuing a hidden agenda; you are an outsider; your sources are all fools; your positions are delusions; your ideas are not worthy of even being considered, and so on. There are enough variations on these themes of denigration that an entire debate can be filled with them.

It is interesting that these tactics generate so many followers, eager to guffaw at the fools being degraded. It is also interesting that these tactics come almost totally from the Left, and from the revered Atheisti. (A commonly noted exception is Ann Coulter who uses these exact tactics and is roundly condemned by the Left using exactly the same tactics).

The Atheist defense for using the tactics of denigration is the same as the tactic itself: the opposition is too stupid to consider responding to with anything less than ridicule. Therefore, ridicule is justified.

My take is different. I think that reasonable intellects would choose a response based in logic, if that were available. If that were the case, then there are two possibilities. First that these are not reasonable intellects. Second that there is no logical basis available to them to argue from.

Now intellect and intelligence are two separate things. Intellect is what one does with one’s intelligence. I do not doubt the intelligence of Dennett or Dawkins or Hitchens. I do doubt their intellectual powers however, and I doubt it based on two things. I doubt that the lack of logic in their argumentation provides a productive intellectual output. And I doubt that there is any more to their outputs than materialist agenda, rather than dispassionate, objective, true intellectual contemplation.

Examination of the Atheist rubric generally reveals the same stuff, repeated incessantly. Religions are the cause of all evil. Religions are magical thinking because they are metaphysical. Religions want to burn everyone at the stake. Only the stupid are involved in religion; the Brights are not. Religions are an offense to the [Philosophical Materialist] intellect.

As for Christian philosophers, it seems to me that there is no greater pursuit in futility than to try to prove God to a Philosophical Materialist. Plantinga uses some sort of probabilistic argument, possibly because that is all that is available to evolution and is therefore considered a valid scientific tactic. This is doomed. Here is why: the use of probability in proving evolution is different than using probability in physics. In physics probability is determined from experiment. In evolution probabilities are generated based on inference and are themselves inferred, making them suspect to say the least.

Unfortunately, the inferred probability is also the type that is used by Christian philosophers such as Plantinga. Plantinga infers that a deity can be given a higher probability in certain arguments than can a deity-free material solution. It is an exercise in the parsimony of opinion, not in fact. Now such exercises are suitable for philosophers of course, but I think not for logicians, who depend on validity of premises in order to evaluate the validity of a conclusion. If a premise is inferred, it is an opinion, not a fact; any probability assigned to it is also opinion and not fact.

So it is easy for the intellectual goons to bully with this derision: “Har, har, har, you can’t prove that, it is magical thinking, har, har, har.” This is intended to embarrass the competition, provide a “win”, and in no way is intended to convict onlookers of any logical, rational content. It is a war-like tactic of aggression and character assassination, not a rational tactic.

The fact that Atheists can’t prove the validity of Philosophical Materialism is totally lost in the melee’.

For this reason, the lack of responsible, rational interchange from Atheists, I don’t engage in theodicies or any such arguments with Atheists(*). The intellectual rot at the foundations of Atheism itself is a more serious issue and one that cannot be defeated by Atheists, either by using logic or by using derision and denigration. And the same goes for evolution. Further, I do not try to convince Atheists of anything; I try to point out the illogic of their Atheistic opinions and let the other readers decide. Bearers of agendas such as Atheism and evolution cannot be persuaded by mere logic. So when the character assassination begins, the conversation is done.

And finally back to the dialog, “Are science and religion compatible?” The position Dennett and the Atheisti take is not that of science. Their position is not that of conditional, voluntary, temporary materialism which characterizes science, it is rigid, dogmatic Philosophical Materialism. So the dialog was improperly manned in the first place. Plantinga might be considered a suitable champion for religion, but science deserves a better champion, one who understands the contingent materialism that characterizes science. Dennett is far, far from that person.

So I suspect that this dialog failed before it began... but I wasn't there to see it.

(*) The single exception to this is to stress the necessity of logical continuity in these two issues: first, if cause and effect are natural axioms upon which science is based, then the Big Bang must have had a cause, that cause must have existed in nothingness and been bigger and more powerful than the effect, and that cause must have produced an intelligible set of physical laws for the universe to abide within. And second, if materialism is a criterion for science and is used to exclude metaphysical causes from evolution, then abiogenesis must logically be considered the origin of all the species, and cannot be excluded from evolutionary theory of origins. This one really irritates evolutionists who try to use indeterminate inferential probabilities to prove their case, because the probability of evolution including abiogenesis dives deep, deep into the dirt. This single issue provides an insight into the agenda-drivenness of evolution.