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AIList Digest Volume 8 Issue 076
AIList Digest Saturday, 3 Sep 1988 Volume 8 : Issue 76
Religion:
Science, Religion, Rationality
The Ignorant assumption
Theistic Arguments
Science, Lawfulness, a (the?) god
Giordano Bruno
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Date: Thu, 01 Sep 88 11:24 EST
From: steven horst
<GKMARH%IRISHMVS.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
Subject: science, religion, rationality (long)
Much of the ongoing discussion of rationality, science and religion
has been of admirably high quality. Some things, however, just
cry out for response. William Wells has taken the lead role as
religion-bashing gadfly, so it is to his comments that I shall
address myself. (Professor Minsky's surprisingly shrill _ad hominem_
has received sufficient attention, I think.) e
Back in V8 #50 of the Digest, Mr. Wells writes:
>Whether you like it or not, the religious entails something which
>is outside of reason.
It isn't clear what he means by reason. Religion certainly requires
more than the rules for deduction in the predicate calculus, and
probably more than any empirical method one might think adequate for
the physical sciences. I.e., it requires more than reasonING.
Of course it is quite a different thing to say that religious belief
cannot be reasonABLE. Practically none of our beliefs are truths of
logic, and we believe all kinds of things that we do not subject to
double blind tests or measure with instruments. (Am I unreasonable
in believing that my parents care about me? A paranoiac could find
alternative interpretations for all of their behaviors. But ONLY
someone with grave problems would require rigorous empirical tests.)
The rationality of ANY kind of belief is a tricky thing to analyze.
(Epistemologists have an almost perverse love for bizarre scenarios
in which some belief we would normally consider to be aberrant would
turn out to be perfectly reasonable.) Yet Mr. Wells seems to treat
"reason" as some well-established and commonly-agreed-to set of
principles which have some special connection with another monolithic
entity of great prestige called "science". Having spent some deal
of time around people who spend most of their time thinking about
epistemology and the history and philosophy of science, I find
it hard to think of more than one or two of them who share his view.
(Though this sort of Enlightenment mythos is admittedly very
widespread in contemporary Western cultures.) A number of fine
philosophers of science are, however, practicing Jews (e.g. Shimony)
and Christians (e.g., van Frassen, McMullin, Quinn), and not doubt
other religious traditions are represented among them as well.
But perhaps Mr. Wells merely means to argue against proponents of
"natural theology" (the attempt to deduce God's existence and
attributes from observations of the world), and against those who
believe that religion can proceed wholly upon the deliverances of
reason. (Kant argued to this effect.) Sufis, Thomists, fundamentalis ts
and many others would agree that more than reason and observation
of the physical world are needed. Some candidates for the "more" are
(a) personal religious experience, or (b) trust in some authority
(usually grounded in someone else's especially intense religious
exprerience), or (c) some special "sense" which is attuned to
apprehending matters divine. (All of these have parallels in other
areas of human knowledge.) But Mr. Wells goes further. In
V8 # 72 he decries "revealed knowledge". Responding to post, he says
> Note the confusion in this individual: he talks about "revealed
> knowledge" as if it had some relationship to knowledge; however,
> there is *no* relationship. By what means do I distinguish this
> "revealed knowledge" from an LSD overdose? If I am to depend
> wholly on divine revalation, then I know *nothing*. If not, then
> I must reject "revealed knowledge" in favor of evidence.
I'm not sure I see a cut-and-dried distinction here. It seems to
me that people who have vivid religious experiences have good reason
to believe things on the basis of them. (They may also have reason
to reassess their mental health.) Beliefs based on hallucinations
are not necessarily unreasonable, even if they are false. It isn't
the reasoning that has gone awry but the input system. Since I don't
see any reason to rule by fiat that religious experiences MUST be
hallucinatory, it doesn't seem absurd to suppose that
beliefs based on religious experience COULD be true AND reasonably
arrived at AND arrived at through a dependable process.
There are, of course, special difficulties with evidence that is
not repeatable or public, and this would be a very real difficulty
if we had to do science by trusting someone's mystical insights.
But of course we routinely trust other people's reports of what
they have seen and heard - individual events are by nature not
repeatable - and the kinds of doubt we might have about another
person's religious experiences also arise for any experiences he
reports that are very different from our own. There can be no
question of rigorous tests of most religious claims along the lines
of the tests performed to confirm or disconfirm a scientific theory
because religious claims, unlike the most familiar paradigms of
scientific claims but like the great bulk of our beliefs, are not
about universal laws ranging over classes of physical phenomena.
This isn't evidence against the truth of religious claims. Indeed,
it is quite consonant with the way most religious traditions view
their own claims.
Now I agree that science is probably best off when not bound by
the fetters of some particular religiously inspired cosmology.
(Arguably religion is better off when it abstains from too much
cosmology as well, and arguably science is better off once one
becomes aware of dangerous basic assumptions, such as the
assumption that space MUST be Euclidean, or that theories in the
special sciences must be reducible to theories in the proprietary
vocabulary of physics, or that all theories must be expressible
as universally quantified sentences in Principia logic.) But
surely it is a bit rash for Mr. Wells to say:
>Science, though not scientists (unfortunately), rejects the
>validity of religion: it requires that reality is in some sense
>utterly lawful, and that the unlawful, i.e. God, has no place.
First, I take it that science is a practice, and hence cannot
literally accept or reject anything. (Though if one were to
reject something, one would do well to reject the attribution of
validity to anything other than a proof or argument.) But
the assumption of the lawfulness of nature is more the WORKING
ASSUMPTION of the sciences than some PRINCIPLE upon which science
is predicated. Lots of physicists DON'T believe that all physical
events can be subsumed under universal laws. (At least if I've
been listening carefully enough at conferences on cosmology and on
quantum theory.) But suppose that there is some measure of anomic
behavior in the universe - that wouldn't vitiate the success of
most scientific achievements. It would at most impose a limit upon
the scope of scientific inquiry. Similarly, a God who is not
a part of a deterministic universe would fall outside of the scope
of science. Who claimed otherwise? Certainly not orthodox Jews,
Christians or Moslems. (I suspect the whole issue is different
with Eastern religions.) The claim that an ideally completed
physics could tell us EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING is at best a
cosmological speculation. (Certainly not verifiable - lots of
events we can't test!) It is no refutation of any religious
cosmology, just an old-fashioned disagreement.
And why is it unfortunate that many scientists believe in a god
or practice some form of religion? They didn't seem to think it
was hurting them. Did it hurt their ability to perform as
scientists? Well, Aristotle, Descartes, Darwin, Leibniz, and
Einstein (to name a handful) seem to have done pretty well. (And
since this is an AI newsletter, perhaps we should add Alonzo Church
to the list as well.)
Finally, Mr. Wells describes his view as
> all elementary philosophy, to which religion seems to have
> blinded that author.
Elementary philosophy? Perhaps. But only in the sense that the
Greeks who believed that solid objects fall because the Earth in
them is seeking its own level were doing "elementary physics."
Steven Horst gkmarh@irishmvs.bitnet
Department of Philosophy
Notre Dame, IN 46556
219-239-7458
------------------------------
Date: 29 Aug 88 17:05:34 GMT
From: okstate!romed!cseg!lag@rutgers.edu (L. Adrian Griffis)
Subject: Re: The Ignorant assumption
In article <1311@garth.UUCP>, smryan@garth.UUCP (Steven Ryan) writes:
> I feel you have made the distinction between Christians and Christianity
> implicitly, and I wish to make it explicit.
>
> The ideals of Christianity, tolerance, mercy, and love, would make an
> excellent system. Western Christians, on the other hand, still tend toward
> out German (cultural) ancestors. (I don't know about Eastern Christians.)
Another "ideal" of Christianity is the notion that part of what make one
a good person is believing the right things. In other words, A great deal
of unpleasentness awaits one who does not believe in the right things.
It's not clear to me who tolerance, mercy, and love (Compassion) can ever
be meaningful when they are something that one must do to please others.
It strikes me that this is likely to lead to profound confusion over what
as individuals beliefs really are.
This is not to say that Science never indulges in this sort of intolerance
of beliefs. But at least Science as a whole does not state as part of its
fundamental platform that you must accept such and such a belief as fact,
without evidence and without question (regardless of what individual scientist
may do).
It's not clear to me at all that any system based on the notion of belief-as-
a-performance can be as the root of an "excellent" system of government.
>
> I do take issue that Christians are held in checked by the wider society. In
> this country Christians are the majority: it is eternal internal conflicts
> between the sects that holds things in checks.
>
And am I ever grateful for that.
---L. Adrian Griffis
--
UseNet: lag@cseg L. Adrian Griffis
BITNET: AG27107@UAFSYSB
------------------------------
Date: 2 Sep 88 10:59:02 GMT
From: quintus!ok@sun.com (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Subject: Re: The Ignorant assumption
In article <545@cseg.uucp> lag@cseg.uucp (L. Adrian Griffis) writes:
>This is not to say that Science never indulges in this sort of intolerance
>of beliefs. But at least Science as a whole does not state as part of its
>fundamental platform that you must accept such and such a belief as fact,
>without evidence and without question (regardless of what individual scientist
>may do).
Straw man! Straw man! Neither does Christianity state any such thing.
A major theme of the Bible is "here is the evidence". Biblical
Archaeology (which tests the historical claims to the extent that they
*can* be tested by present archaeological methods) is regarded as a
PRO-religious activity. Thomas *is* one of the Apostles, after all...
>Another "ideal" of Christianity is the notion that part of what make one
>a good person is believing the right things.
Again, not so. To quote the Bible (paraphrased, because my memory's not
that reliable): "You believe in God? So do the devils!" An analogy:
you cannot enter into an effective marriage with a particular woman as
long as you continue to believe that she is a fossilized whale.
Criticims of any religion are more effective when they are well-informed.
I'm a little bothered by this reification of "Science" as if it were an
agent capable of "indulging in" behaviours and "stating" things. Perhaps
Gilbert Cockton could clarify the ontological status of "Science" for us
(:-).
What's the relevance of all of this to AI, anyway?
Are AI people unusually sensitive to "Science" issues because
we want to be part of it, or what?
The study of English literature is not normally regarded as part
of "Science", but it's a decent intellectual field for all that.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 88 11:54 CDT
From: <CMENZEL%TAMLSR.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
Subject: theistic arguments
In a recent AIList number, T. William Wells writes of the argument from
design:
> This argument goes: "the universe appears to have been
> designed, therefore there was a designer. I shall call it god."
> How silly! In its refined form, this argument posits god as a
> "primary cause": this makes god "beyond" natural law, as an
> explanation for natural law. It is trivially refuted by pointing
> out that it begs the question. (If the universe requires a
> cause, why shouldn't god require a cause? And if not, why
> presume god anyway?)
Wells is confusing two traditional theistic arguments here. The first is the
argument from design, or teleological argument, which traces its origins
primarily to Paley in (if I recall) the early 18th century. The second is the
the cosmological argument, which goes back in its best known forms to Aquinas.
The teleological argument is more or less as Wells reports, though he doesn't
sufficiently emphasize the role of *explanation* in the argument; the idea is
that the amazing precision, detail, and apparent *purpose* (hence the name
"teleological argument") exhibited in the natural order can only reasonably be
explained by a rational designer, just as (Paley argues) it would be
unreasonable to suppose an intricate watch found in the desert had no designer.
Wells does less justice to the cosmological argument, which in its strongest
form argues not from the idea that anything that exists requires a cause, which
would then be open to Wells' trivial refutation, but from the *contingency* of
the universe. The idea is that since everything in the physical universe is
contingent, i.e., might not have existed, the universe itself is contingent
(possible fallacy of composition here, but never mind). A contingently
existing thing requires some sort of explanation for its existence, some reason
for why it exists rather than not. The only possible explanation (so the
argument goes) is that its existence must be rooted in a *necessary* being, a
being whose nature it is to exist and hence which doesn't require a cause. It
is a further step of course to say that this being has to be God as usually
understood.
I'm not saying it's a *good* argument, just a lot better than Wells would
have it.
--Chris
------------------------------
Date: 30 Aug 88 22:37:36 GMT
From: pluto%beowulf@ucsd.edu (Mark E. P. Plutowski)
Reply-to: pluto%beowulf@ucsd.edu (Mark E. P. Plutowski)
Subject: Re: science, lawfulness, a (the?) god
Regarding this quote from a previous posting:
> ...the "quotation" from Einstein ...is just a restatement of...
> the argument... [that goes something like this:]
> ..."the universe appears to have been
> designed, therefore there was a designer. I shall call it god."
> How silly! In its refined form, this argument posits god as a
> "primary cause": this makes god "beyond" natural law, as an
> explanation for natural law. It is trivially refuted by pointing
> out that it begs the question. (If the universe requires a
> cause, why shouldn't god require a cause? And if not, why
> presume god anyway?)
God didn't design the universe, God is the universe.
Therefore, God is everywhere (just like Elvis ;-} ) and everything
is God, including you and me. Very simple.
If you accept this philosophy, then it is easier to accept the belief
that AI is plausible, since by the same token, intelligence doesn't
"cause" a being (or mechanism) to behave intelligently,
intelligence is the behavior, and hence, the being (and/or mechanism)
itself. Therefore, hope springs eternal that this "intelligence"
is not some elusive spirit or ether; and can be studied
rationally.
At the same time, since intelligence is the whole
behavior, decomposing the behavior into its parts is only a part
of the solution to understanding it, just as separating God from
the universe (creating a separate entity called God)
can inhibit you from passing thru the proverbial "eye of the needle,"
and understanding your particular universe.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Plutowski INTERNET: pluto%cs@ucsd.edu
Department of Computer Science, C-014 pluto@beowulf.ucsd.edu
University of California, San Diego BITNET: pluto@ucsd.bitnet
La Jolla, California 92093 UNIX:{...}!sdcsvax!beowulf!pluto
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Listen to your surroundings and your self, instead of Jimmy Swaggert.
------------------------------
Date: 31 Aug 88 18:41:55 GMT
From: sri-unix!orawest.SRI.COM!ejs@decwrl.dec.com (e john sebes)
Subject: Re: science, lawfulness, a (the?) god
I'd like to respond to a few of things that T. William Wells has been
writing lately about that good ole hobby-horse "science and religion".
In a previous article, T. William Wells writes:
>: > >Science, though not scientists (unfortunately), rejects the
>: > >validity of religion: it requires that reality is in some sense
>: > >utterly lawful, and that the unlawful, i.e. god, has no place.
>"Lawful" does not mean "following, by choice, law", rather, it
>means: "constrained by law". However, religion posits "god" or
>"the absolute" or what have you as that which is beyond, above,
>determines, flouts, or whatever adjective you like, natural law.
>This is essential to religion.
It is erroneous to say that "religion" requires belief any particular idea.
*Some* religions require belief in *some* particular ideas.
Specifically, the western, theistic religions Mr. Wells is familiar with
(to the exclusion of all others, apparently) does include belief in God,
with those attributes Mr. Wells mentioned. But this is *absolutely not*
essential to religion in general, or to all particular religions.
A further point is that there are several theistic religious attitudes
which in no way entail any notion about a God acting in the physical
universe which scientists take as their puview. The "watchmaker" God of late
18th century European thought is probably the best known example to
netters; God made the universe, set it going, and enjoys the show.
Ah, Mr. Wells will say, but God *could* then act in the universe, but
just doesn't. A response then might be that perhaps He created the
universe so that He couldn't interfere after creation. Does this make
sense? Can God constrain Himself? Can he create an unmovable stone and
an irresistable force?
Honestly, there is no point to such freshman philosophy hairsplitting.
Even R.C. Church theologians got over that stuff centuries ago.
Get this: it doesn't have anything to do with science!!!
After all, what is it that is so repugnant to Mr. Wells and his ilk
about a theistic scientist who also beleives that God (or whatever)
doesn't act in the physical universe?
Perhaps I am missing something here, but we went over a lot of the same
ground in my 6th grade science class.
I will also try to clarify the notion of "revealed knowledge".
You call something knowledge because you beleive it is true.
Current usage of terms like "knowledge" and "fact" tend to be in the
context of "physically or objectively verifiable", but of course that is
because we believe in such verification. Revealed knowledge is simply
what people call fact, but do not claim to be verifiable. In common
usage, it is therfore a misnomer. But saying that
>This translates to: "this knowledge is unknowable".
just plays on this fact, and doesn't refute the fact that some
people have beliefs to which they choose to apply this term.
I think Mr. Wells' strong concern over the fact that even today many
"rational" people are not logical positivists, really stems from a kind
of hysteria over "creationism" and similar things. He says that
>
>This individual has managed to illustrate in one very short note
>*exactly* why religion has *no* place in scientific discussion:
>the use of religion perverts reasoning by substituting "revealed
>knowledge" for evidence, requires the unknowable as part of
>reasoning, and uses ignorance as its justification.
>---
>Bill
>novavax!proxftl!bill
>
Well, I hate to let the cat out the bag, but "religion" does no such
thing. This perversion (if you want to call it that) is done by
individuals who try to compel people who want evidence to believe in
things that will not admit of evidence. And some of these people even
try to hoke up some evidence as well!
Despicable, I admit, but also more pitiable that anything else.
And equally so is Mr. Wells religion-bashing. Try to make this
connection: yes, religion has no place in scientific discussion, but
that it because it is *irrelevant*, not evil (the only "evil" in this
context is masking religion as science); therefore it is of little
concern in scientific discussions, and in little need of being bashed.
Rest from your intellectual imperialism, and concentrate on whether
someone's science is good work, regardless of whatever other thoughts
there might be lurking in his or her mind, thoughts which you say are
"wrong" or "silly", but are in fact merely irrelevant.
After all, isn't that what we are supposed to be about, in these
scientific discussion groups?
--John Sebes
As a postscript, I beleive that all this came about not because someone opined
"I know God exists, and you AI types leave God out of your theories"
but because someone had the temerity to ask if others might be missing
ideas for interesting models of mind because of wholehearted indulgence in
total reductionism. Unfortunately, this question was stated in a way
that mentioned that fateful word "God". Oh well.
------------------------------
Date: 31 Aug 88 17:32:22 GMT
From: modcomp!joe@uunet.UU.NET (Joe Korty)
Subject: Re: Giordano Bruno
--
It has been interesting to read (although not particularly relevant to this
newsgroup) the differing views readers have on the role that Giordano Bruno
has played in history. Perhaps some quotes from L. Lerner and E. Gosselin
("Galileo and the Specter of Bruno", Scientific American, November 1986) can
shed some light on the issue. E. Gosselin, it should be noted, is a professor
of history whose major research interest focuses on the intellectual and
cultural history of the Renaissance and Reformation.
All quotes are w/o permission. Editorial changes on my part are indicated
by brackets.
"The two men are often honored as martyrs to science, but for Bruno
astronomy was a vehicle for politics and theology. Galileo was tried
partly because his aims were mistakenly identified with those of Bruno.
"[...] Bruno has the Copernican model of the solar system wrong. He
demonstrates total ignorance of the most elementary ideas of geometry
[...]. He throws in scraps of pseudoscientific argument, mostly garbled,
and proceeds to high flying speculations [...].
"[...] If Bruno had merely been a fool, he might have met with laughter
and derision [instead of being burned at the stake]. Bruno repeatedly
makes it clear that the "Supper" [his most important work on the Copernican
system] is really not about the Copernican system at all: it is only
peripherally a work on natural science and it is emphatically not to be
taken literally. In accordance with the title, its central subject is
[instead] the nature of the Eucharist.
"For Bruno, the value of the Copernican system lies not in its astronomical
details but instead in its scope as a poetic and metaphoric vehicle for
much wider philosophical speculation. The Copernican replacement of the
earth by the sun [...] is for Bruno a symbolic restoration of what he
calls "the ancient true philosophy"; according to him, it is this philosophy
one must turn in order to understand the true meaning of the Eucharist.
"It is important to understand that Bruno's adoption of natural science
to foster broader theological, ethical, social and political purposes
was entirely characteristic of the Renaissance world view. For the people
of the Renaissance, science was literally a branch of philosophy, often
called upon to illuminate or illustrate a nonscientific issue. Intelligent
and well-educated people often saw explicit and highly anthropocentric
parallels between scientific knowledge and other aspects of life. Bruno is
typical of [his contemporaries] in leaping to conclusions about the relation
of human beings to God based on theories about the workings [of nature].
In short, Bruno was condemned as a heretic because he really WAS a heretic.
He was not interested in whether or not the Copernican system was correct
or not, nor whether the his own Copernican speculations were correct. He
was interested only in how to use it to further his own religious and
political agenda.
For these reasons, I feel that the net discussions over Bruno have missed
the target by focusing excessively on his views of the physical world. These
views were not important to Bruno, so I don't think they should be important
to us.
--
Joe Korty "flames, flames, go away
uunet!modcomp!joe come back again, some other day"
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End of AIList Digest
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