What to make of Massimo Pigliucci's argument against the "new" atheists

[Humes fork]

Massimo Pigliucci's main critique of the "new" atheists (Dawkins, Stenger, Coyne, etc) is not that they are wrong (he pretty much agrees with their views), but that they put out their arguments as scientific, whereas he thinks they are philosophical. Granted, Pigliucci's limits for science seem rather strict, so much that even a philosopher like Dennett is guilty of trespassing.

What to make of this sort of argument? Is it a distraction from the issue, or an important point? Even more importantly, is it accurate to begin with?

 

[godless dave]

It's nonsense. The question of whether any gods exist is a scientific question.

 

[Henry Bannister]

It's nonsense. The question of whether any gods exist is a scientific question.

What's the hypothesis?

 

[Tony]

What's the hypothesis?

I know this wasn't addressed to me. But I would consider the idea that reality, time, space and the universe was created by an intelligent agent to be the hypothesis.

 

[Henry Bannister]

I know this wasn't addressed to me. But I would consider the idea that reality, time, space and the universe was created by an intelligent agent to be the hypothesis.

Fair start I'd have thought - although does it have to be intelligent? Not just some sort of organizing principle whatever that might be?

 

[Weak Kitten]

It's not a proper hypothesis unless it is falsifiable.

What evidence would prove this hypothesis false?

 

[Henry Bannister]

Also fair play but isn't the experiment a later stage?

First you have to look at what the advantages of the hypothesis are and what it would explain that isn't explained elsewhere?

 

[Weak Kitten]

Falsifiability does not necessarily mean testability. It merely asks what would be different between a universe which has this feature and a universe which does not.

 

[Henry Bannister]

Ah ok, in that case one thing would presumably be that the explanation of the world would be a simple one rather than the complex models that physicists have now. Which was also be an advantage of the adopting the hypothesis.

 

[Brian-M]

Fair start I'd have thought - although does it have to be intelligent? Not just some sort of organizing principle whatever that might be?

Intelligence is an essential prerequisite for being a God. Exactly what the requirements are for being a God are very vague and undefined, but intelligence is definitely among them.

 

[Slowvehicle]

When do we make the poster?

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Actually, it occurs to me that we don't really even have to have the most generic hypothesis about what a God could be like. Most religions make FAR more concrete claims about what their God is or does. And quite a bunch of that stuff is not only falsifiable, but testable too.

In fact, I'd even say that to be of any use to a theist group or worth giving a damn about it if you're not one of them, a religion HAS to be a bit more concrete than just acknowledging that some form or another of vague and undefined creator of the universe may have existed.

A God that's of any use needs not only intelligence (which was mentioned already), but also intent, and a propensity to act in some way or another according to that intent. (You won't get many people joining in your new cult of Apatheia, the Goddess who won't help you, smite you, or even judge you, because She truly can't be bothered to care, much less do anything.) You want it to have some rules or preferences at least, and you want it to be at least somewhat predictable in applying them. (Not much point in trying to appease a God who's purely random in whether he'll smite you for adultery or reward you for it, or for any other action, thought or state.) Etc.

True, there are some, like for example the Deists, who basically acknowledge such a deity, but when was the last time one of those told you that his non-intervening outside-his-own-universe deity will smite you for allowing gays in the army? See what I mean? You can pretty much ignore that kind of gods.

So, anyway, the ones we have to worry in practice are the Gods which, we're told by their fanboys, send earthquakes and tsunamis, answer prayers, judge all the time like Dredd, perform miracles, and invariably bestow great magic powers upon charismatic con-men.

And thanks to statistics and sociology data and medical data, etc, some of that stuff is more testable than many people realize. We're not longer in an age where we could only look at some individual peasant's prayers remaining unanswered, and we can imagine that maybe only that was a fluke, or maybe only that peasant didn't qualify. We have statistics. We can actually test whether the most religious communities recover more often from just about any illness or other problems than us heathens, for example.

That just moved it from a philosophy problem, to a problem that actually can be run through the scientific method.

 

[Aepervius]

What's the hypothesis?

Just guessing :
1) The null is that there is no god.
2) The hypotheses is at the very least, some divine agent(s), gods, created the universe. Note that the hypotheses does not state that those agent are still intervening today, just the act of creation.

naturally those holding 2) as belief usually never advance evidence for the claim is...

 

[Dinwar]

This is why I advocate studying theology. Theology presents the current working hypotheses for deities. IF you accept ad arguendum that a deity exists, the rest of theology should follow--and that gives you a working hypothesis. This is no different than constructing any other working hypothesis: assume X, work out the implications of X, see which ones you can test for, run those tests.

Simply put, unless you understand theology you don't understand the hypothesis atheism rejects, because theology IS that hypothesis.

As for the scientific/philosophical question debate, I find it a non-starter. Science is an epistemology; therefore, it is a subset of philosophy. You may as well say "You can't operate a vehicle; you're only licensed to drive a car!" or "You can't be a mammal, you're a human". You cannot subdivide a system such that the components are no longer members of the system. That's why I always preferred the term "natural philosopher' to "scientist"; scientists are philosophers, we merely focus on a particular subfield.

 

[Henry Bannister]

Null hypothesis that there is no god - yes very nice ta for that I've never looked up null hypothesis before

Although we do have to define god. I don't think there needs to be intelligence or intent - it seems to me too much like having a disembodied brain somewhere attached to a white beard. I said an organizing principle which sounds good but i don't *really* understand but I'd say something like Prigogine's Self Organizing Systems would count (or Sheldrake's morphogenetic fields if they made sense).

Interesting though - science or philosophy decision? If we can test it then it's amenable to scientific method surely and down to science, if it's not testable then it's a question for philosophy and personal choice.

Religions like Christianity as given literally in the Bible I think are definitely testable and can be discounted as being false.

 

[Henry Bannister]

Just guessing :
1) The null is that there is no god.
2) The hypotheses is at the very least, some divine agent(s), gods, created the universe. Note that the hypotheses does not state that those agent are still intervening today, just the act of creation.

naturally those holding 2) as belief usually never advance evidence for the claim is...

Ta for that again - I've been considering myself an agnostic really but I think you've cleared it up for me :

1) I'm atheist because the null hypothesis has to be that there's no god
2) but I'm actually an agnostic because I can't really know because I don't believe in god (see 1).

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Well, not really. If it's not testable, then it's not up for personal preferences, but it's simply something you should apply Occam too.

E.g., if I told you I have invisible dark-matter elves in my fridge -- i.e., really, they only interact with the rest of the world by their gravity, and for a 1 pound elf, eh, that's well below the sensitivity of any instrument -- it doesn't really mean that it's up for personal preferences whether you believe in elves or not. If there is no measurable difference between the universe that contains the ancient and noble race of fridge elves, and the universe that doesn't have them, if there is nothing that needs those elves to explain, etc, then the sane default position is that fridge elves don't exist.

Yes, there is some "agnosticism" or "open mindedness" built in, in that if evidence presented itself for the existence of fridge elves, we'd all go with what the evidence points at.

But until then it doesn't mean that the existence or non-existence of fridge elves are equal. You'd still need to be anywhere between gullible and delusional to believe in the fridge elves kingdom in my fridge WITHOUT that evidence for it.

 

[tsig]

This is why I advocate studying theology. Theology presents the current working hypotheses for deities. IF you accept ad arguendum that a deity exists, the rest of theology should follow--and that gives you a working hypothesis. This is no different than constructing any other working hypothesis: assume X, work out the implications of X, see which ones you can test for, run those tests.

Simply put, unless you understand theology you don't understand the hypothesis atheism rejects, because theology IS that hypothesis.

As for the scientific/philosophical question debate, I find it a non-starter. Science is an epistemology; therefore, it is a subset of philosophy. You may as well say "You can't operate a vehicle; you're only licensed to drive a car!" or "You can't be a mammal, you're a human". You cannot subdivide a system such that the components are no longer members of the system. That's why I always preferred the term "natural philosopher' to "scientist"; scientists are philosophers, we merely focus on a particular subfield.

Would that be Christian theology, Islamic theology or Scientology theology? Should we also study the theory of homeopathy before we reject it?

 

[Brian-M]

This is why I advocate studying theology. Theology presents the current working hypotheses for deities. IF you accept ad arguendum that a deity exists, the rest of theology should follow--and that gives you a working hypothesis. This is no different than constructing any other working hypothesis: assume X, work out the implications of X, see which ones you can test for, run those tests.

Simply put, unless you understand theology you don't understand the hypothesis atheism rejects, because theology IS that hypothesis.

Theology includes the study of various religious traditions and practices built around the belief in the existence of gods.

If you want to take the strong atheist position, the position that no god(s) exist, there's no need to study these traditions first. All that's needed to hold this position is to understand what is meant by god(s).

In fact, a full understanding of what is meant by god(s) isn't needed either. Just knowing that the term god applies to an intelligent supernatural entity may itself be enough to reject the position. The fact that gods are supernatural (not bound by the laws of physics) is the giveaway.

If you know that a huge amount of effort has gone into searching for evidence of the supernatural, but no substantiated evidence has ever been found, and you also know that humans are prone to inventing supernatural explanations and apocryphal accounts of supernatural events, then it's only reasonable to conclude that claims about the existence of supernatural entities such as gods are almost certainly false.

 

[Brainache]

Ta for that again - I've been considering myself an agnostic really but I think you've cleared it up for me :

1) I'm atheist because the null hypothesis has to be that there's no god
2) but I'm actually an agnostic because I can't really know because I don't believe in god (see 1).

Didn't I see you on the stairs?