No Hard Problem?

Central to the debate between those who believe that everything is explicable in terms of matter and energy (materialists) and those who believe that in addition to our material selves there's also an immaterial substance that's essential to our cognitive experience (substance dualists) is human consciousness. The phenomena of conscious experience are very difficult to explain if we limit ourselves to just the matter and chemistry of the human brain.

So difficult to explain are these phenomena - sensations like pain, color, sound, flavor, fragrance, etc. - that the task has been dubbed by philosopher of mind David Chalmers the hard problem of consciousness.

An article at Mind Matters examines the solution to the problem offered by philosopher David Papineau, a materialist and professor of philosophy at King’s College, London.

Papineau argues that all that's involved here are brain processes that "feel like something." For Papineau,

Conscious states are just ordinary physical states that happen to have been co-opted by reasoning systems. Consciousness doesn’t depend on some extra shining light, but only on the emergence of subjects, complex organisms that distinguish themselves from the rest of the world and use internal neural processes to guide their behaviour.

Papineau's solution, then, is simply to restate the materialist position. There really is no hard problem, he insists, there are just electrochemical goings-on in the brain. The solution to the hard problem is to affirm that there is no hard problem.

That's not a very convincing argument.

What the materialist needs to do is provide a plausible theory as to how mental phenomena like the sensation of sweet or pain are generated solely by neurochemical processes in the brain, and this no one has been able to do.

Imagine a miniature scientist inserted into a person's brain in order to discover the location of sweet when the person tastes sugar or the location of pain when the person strikes his thumb with a hammer.

The scientist will never find sweet or pain, only electrons whizzing about and molecules bonding and breaking apart, but these phenomena aren't sensations anymore than touching a sugar cube to one's tongue is the sensation of sweet. So where in all of that welter of neurochemical activity is the sweet or the pain? And what exactly are these phenomena anyway?

They're not the chemical reactions that produce them, they're something more than those. The gap between the material processes associated with these sensations and the sensations themselves is called an "explanatory gap."

The Mind Matters article quotes a commenter at Reddit Philosophy named Etherdeon who explains that,

...dualism is a proposed response to materialism’s inability thus far to account for the explanatory gap. What a lot of these materialist thinkers fail to understand is that the hard problem is hard because we cannot even begin to conceptualize a possible solution.

That’s what makes it different from most of the other unresolved issues in science. For example, we don't currently have a universally accepted unified theory of quantum gravity, but we can imagine what it would look like (tiny particles that can interact with gravity that we just haven't discovered yet). Meanwhile, we cannot even think of a materialist proposal that would explain a causal chain that starts with interacting particles and ends in qualitative experience.

Literally all it takes to solve the hard problem is a sound hypothesis, and to the best of my knowledge, nobody has been able to come up with one. You can’t just say “consciousness refers to brain processes that feel like something” and call it a day. We know that already, it’s a strawman argument. The real question is how are those brain processes able to feel like something?

There's more on this at the link. As the evidence in favor of dualism continues to mount and the corresponding confidence in materialism begins to wane it seems that the only reason anyone has to cling to it is an apriori commitment to metaphysical naturalism from which materialism is often, though not necessarily, inferred.

Four Things the Media Should Explain

Here are four aspects of the current covid situation the media could do a better job of addressing:

1. The media publish data that show that confirmed cases of the disease are increasing, but don't explain that that's perhaps entirely a function of increased testing. The more tests we give the more cases we'll find. The increasing number of cases doesn't mean that the situation is worsening, but that's the impression the failure to explain this gives the general public.

2. They tell us how many total cases there are but don't tell us how many of those cases are active. How many people included in the number of confirmed cases are now recovered? By only giving the number of confirmed cases and omitting the context they make it seem as if the numbers of victims is rising when in fact there may be fewer people suffering from the disease now than there were a few weeks ago.

3. Nor does the media ever seem to ask this question: In Pennsylvania where the stay at home order has just been extended to June 4th, 69% of the deaths from covid are in nursing homes, either patients or staff, so why doesn't the governor, Democrat Tom Wolf, direct resources to protecting those who live and work in these facilities and let everyone else go back to work? Indeed, early on in the crisis the Wolf administration required that infected patients from nursing homes who'd been sent to hospitals for treatment be returned to the nursing homes. Is it any wonder that the virus has spread through the occupants of these care facilities like a fire through dry straw?

4. Nor does the media seem eager to tell us that whatever argument is made to justify the stay at home order and keep people from working could be made with equal cogency for banning motor vehicles, but, so far at least, no one has proposed we do that. Every year in this country 38,000 people die in traffic accidents and 4.4 million are seriously injured. If we banned motor vehicles we'd save all those lives, but, those who impose the stay at home orders might retort, we can't ban cars and trucks because doing so would destroy the economy and throw millions of people out of work. People have to be allowed to risk getting behind the wheel.

Precisely.

How's That for Precedent?

During a private phone call to former staffers in his administration president Barack Obama weighed in on the DOJ's decision to not press charges against Michael Flynn. The contents of the call were leaked, and it turns out that Mr. Obama delivered himself during the call of some embarrassing asseverations.

In the first sentence of the following excerpt he says three things that according to law professor Jonathan Turley are patently false:

And the fact that there is no precedent that anybody can find for someone who has been charged with perjury just getting off scot-free. That’s the kind of stuff where you begin to get worried that basic — not just institutional norms — but our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk. And when you start moving in those directions, it can accelerate pretty quickly as we’ve seen in other places.

Turley responded on Twitter with this bit of acerbic analysis:

President Obama is being quoted on Flynn, saying "There is no precedent that anybody can find for someone who has been charged with perjury just getting off scot-free." It is a curious statement. First and foremost, Flynn was not charged with perjury...

That's true. He was accused of lying to the FBI which is a crime, but it's not perjury unless he was under oath which he wasn't (See https://jonathanturley.org/2020/05/05/did-the-mueller-team-violate-brady/here for Turley's analysis of the Flynn case). Moreover, it apparently slipped Mr. Obama's mind that Bill Clinton managed to get off scot-free after committing perjury.

Anyway, Mr. Flynn was accused of violating the Logan Act about which Turley states,

Second, we now know Obama discussed charging Flynn under the Logan Act which has never been used successfully to convict anyone and is flagrantly unconstitutional. Third, this reaffirms reports that Obama was personally invested in this effort. Finally, there is precedent [for dismissing cases like Flynn's]

There is a specific rule allowing for this motion under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 48(a). There are specific Supreme Court cases like Rinaldi v. United States addressing the standard for such dismissals....

The Justice Department has dismissed cases in the past including the Stevens case. That was requested by President Obama's own Attorney General Eric Holder for the same reason: misconduct by prosecutors. It was done before the same judge, Judge Sullivan. How is that for precedent?

In other words, Mr. Obama simply doesn't know what he's talking about. I am not trying to be unkind, but Mr. Obama would do well to retire to his family room and watch ESPN reruns or leaf through old copies of Sports Illustrated, two of his favorite pastimes, even while president. When he ventures to speak out on public affairs he just causes people to wonder how he ever got to be a professor of law, much more president of the United States.

Chasing the Roadrunner

Matt Margolis has a column at PJMedia in which he asserts that there are at least five things that President Trump did or said for which he took criticism from the media, but about each of which he was correct and the media was wrong.

Here are the five are with excerpts from Margolis' explanations:

1. Mr. Trump correctly claimed that we rely too much on China. Margolis writes, "Trump’s “America First” foreign policy was called protectionist, isolationist, and even xenophobic. His trade war with China was mocked. China may have offered cheap labor, but the coronavirus pandemic has shown us just how deadly our dependence on China really is."

2. Mr. Trump correctly claimed that the Obama administration botched their response to the H1N1 epidemic. Obama waited months after the World Health Organization declared H1N1 a global pandemic to declare a national emergency. By then, millions of Americans were already infected, and over a thousand had died. President Trump declared the coronavirus a national emergency two days after the WHO declared the coronavirus a global pandemic, and had been aggressively responding to the outbreak before most Americans were even paying attention to it.

I might add here that this is especially ironic in light of polls showing that nearly 50% of Americans believe Obama would've handled the current pandemic better than Trump.

3. Mr. Trump (probably) correctly claimed that the fatality rate for Covid19 is likely under 1%. When the World Health Organization estimated that the fatality rate of the coronavirus was 3.4 percent, Trump was skeptical. “Well, I think the 3.4 percent is really a false number," he opined in an interview. "Now, and this is just my hunch, and — but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this. Because a lot of people will have this and it’s very mild. They’ll get better very rapidly. They don’t even see a doctor."

4. Mr. Trump correctly claimed there was no ventilator shortage. Remember when states were requesting ventilators in huge numbers? Governor Andrew Cuomo alone requested 40,000 ventilators and blamed Trump for not providing enough. “You pick the 26,000 people who are going to die,” Cuomo dramatically said during a press conference.

Trump didn’t believe he needed 40,000. “I have a feeling that a lot of the numbers that are being said in some areas are just bigger than they’re going to need,” President Trump said. “I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. You go into major hospitals sometimes, and they’ll have two ventilators. And now, all of a sudden, they’re saying, ‘Can we order 30,000 ventilators?’”

Trump’s belief that states drastically overestimated their needs proved right. Despite claims from the media, there was no ventilator shortage.

5. Mr. Trump correctly claimed that travel bans work. In January, President Trump took the bold step of banning travel from China back in January. The World Health Organization said it wouldn’t work. Joe Biden called it xenophobic. Others joined in on the criticism. But, a month later WHO experts conceded that it worked and it saved lives.

While Trump was widely criticized for his travel bans, his critics have largely flip-flopped on the issue. Even Joe Biden has flip-flopped on this; he now supports the travel ban with China after previously calling it “xenophobic.” Other former critics of the ban would later claim the ban didn’t go far enough and should have been implemented earlier.

In each of the cases Margolis cites the media excoriated the president, and in each case the media was shown to be wrong and the president right. Even so, each time he's proven to be correct it seems to just deepen the media's hatred and contempt for him and to strengthen their resolve to humiliate him over the next thing he says.

Perhaps our media people would benefit from spending a little time watching some old Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons. Just like the coyote they just never seem to learn.

Spring Migration

One of the most astonishing phenomena in nature is occurring this week across much of the United States, but since it happens largely after dark most people aren't very much aware of the amazing spectacle that's occurring in the skies above them most nights at this time of year.

I'm referring to the movement of millions of birds from their winter haunts in Central and South America to their breeding territories in North America. The migration involves birds of all types, hundreds of different species, navigating their way north to find a mate, establish a territory, breed and return south again in the Fall.

To help give a sense of the movements of birds during migration, the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology has produced a fascinating animated feature that shows the annual migration pattern of 118 different North American species. The migration animation can be viewed here.

There's also a link on the page which takes you to a similar animation which shows the particular species of bird that's being represented. If you love nature you're sure to enjoy this.

Here are a few questions to ponder while you're watching: How did migration, not just in birds but also in butterflies, fish, turtles, whales, dragonflies and numerous other creatures, ever evolve through random mutation and natural selection? How do these animals know how to navigate their way back and forth, often returning to the exact patch of territory they departed from six months before? How do the young of the year, which have never made the trip before, know how to do it?

It truly is a marvel.

Cape May Warbler

Make the Lockdown Permanent

The satirical Babylon Bee reports on the next brilliant idea by some state governments to save lives:

Many states have begun extending their lockdowns permanently in a bid to end traffic deaths for good.

States found that as they locked everybody in their homes, car accidents virtually disappeared. So they did the obvious thing and decided the lockdowns should be made permanent.

"A million people die in auto accidents every year, and if you want people to be able to go outside, you obviously want all these people to die," said New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. "Why do you hate people so much, anti-science bigots? I'll wait for an answer."

Cuomo then just stood there, arms folded, waiting for an answer, but since it was a live stream, he stood for hours before aides finally cut the feed off.

Scientists believe the lockdown can also end all deaths from various other sources:

• Shark attacks
• Falling into the Grand Canyon
• Getting crushed by a falling pine tree
• Being mauled by a grizzly bear
• Skydiving
• Getting run over by a steam roller

"Together, we can defeat death itself," said California Governor Gavin Newsom as he announced the state would be under lockdown permanently. "O traffic deaths, where are your sting?"

Unfortunately, new projections indicate the number of people who will die of starvation and other lockdown-related causes may offset the decrease in traffic deaths.

And so they would. Here's another, more serious, piece that's apparently been making the rounds on the web, sent to me by a friend:

• When the State tells you it’s safe to go to Home Depot to buy a sponge, but it’s too dangerous to go to a florist and buy flowers—it’s not about your health.
• When the State shuts down millions of private businesses but doesn’t lay off a single government employee—it’s not about your health.
• When the State bans dentists because it’s unsafe, but deems abortion visits safe—it’s not about your health.
• When the State prevents you from buying cucumber seeds because it’s too dangerous, but allows in-person lottery ticket sales—it’s not about your health.
• When the State tells you it’s too dangerous to go golf alone, fish alone or be in a motorboat alone, but the Governor can get his stage make- up and hair done for 5 TV appearances a week—it’s not about your health.
• When the state puts you in jail for walking in a park with your child because it’s too dangerous but lets criminals out of jail for their health—it’s not about your health!
• When the state tells you it’s too dangerous to get treated by a doctor of chiropractic or physical therapy treatments yet deems a liquor store essential—it’s not about your health!
• When the State lets you go to the grocery store or hardware store but is demanding mail-in voting, it's not about your health!

It's hard to argue with the logic of this, or, for that matter, with the logic of the plan to eliminate traffic deaths by making the lockdown permanent. To see the sense of it one need only think like a government bureaucrat.

Student Attitudes Toward Free Speech

Yuichiro Kakutani at The Federalist discusses a recent poll of 3,319 college students from 24 different schools who were queried on their views of campus free speech and related matters.

The poll, conducted by Gallup and the Knight Foundation, produced both good news and bad news.

First the good news. Fully 97% of the students polled believe that free speech is an essential pillar of American democracy. Moreover, a majority of students (58%) support the Trump administration's decision to ban federal funding for colleges that do not protect free-speech rights, and more than four-in-five students prefer a campus environment that exposes students to all types of speech.

Kakutani quotes Evette Alexander, director of learning and impact at the Knight Foundation, who said that survey respondents felt greater pressure from their peers, rather than their professors, about voicing their dissenting opinions:

We understand that [pressure] mostly comes from peers. The professors would be open to hearing different thoughts, but the people who feel uncomfortable usually have a point of view that doesn't align with the most vocal students in the room. And so they feel like by speaking up, they would expose themselves to retaliation.

All of that is cause for hope that a majority of students and a lot of faculty still hold to the value of open discussion that have traditionally prevailed on college campus until political correctness managed to co-opt so many administrations and faculty. But the poll also revealed some bad news, not least of which is that, as noted in the above quote, students who hold unpopular opinions are afraid to voice them for fear of their peers. In fact:

Sixty three percent of students feel that their campus climate deters students from expressing themselves openly, up from 54% in 2016. The students say that conservative students experience greater barriers to openly expressing their opinion in public, with Democrats feeling more comfortable than Republicans about sharing dissenting views in class.

This is disturbing but not surprising. Part of the reason for this is that students on the left are often uninterested in a calm discussion of differences. Their preferred mode of argument is the ad hominem abusive or the "shout them down" technique.

Also disturbing is the finding that 17% of pupils would impose restrictions on the distribution of Christian pamphlets on campus. Why? Would those 17% of students be willing to impose similar restrictions on Muslims?

In any case, 78% of students also want "safe spaces" on their campuses that are free of "threatening actions, ideas, or conversations." More than 80% favor the establishment of a "free-speech zone" where preapproved protests and the distribution of literature are permitted. Yes, but why shouldn't the entire campus be a "free-speech zone"?

Kakutani quotes Spencer Brown, a spokesman for Young America's Foundation, a conservative activism group, who noted that universities often create safe spaces explicitly to shut down viewpoints that break from liberal orthodoxy:

In almost every case, safe spaces are set up in response to a conservative speaker visiting campus. The powers that be at a given school issue trigger warnings to spook students, offer them a safe space to hide from harmless words, and ensure that the coddled minds of impressionable youth don't hear a conservative idea that, God forbid, might make them reconsider the leftist ideas they're all too often force-fed in the classroom.

The only safe space in an intellectually vibrant community, such as a university should be, is a student's own dorm room. The idea that students need to be protected from ideas which may challenge their firmly-held convictions is not only a capitulation to their psychological fragility, it also stifles their intellectual development. The only way to grow one's mind is to sharpen one's ideas on the whetstone of contrary opinions.

To deny students this opportunity, to actively encourage them to shun it, is pedagogical malpractice.

Principles, Schminciples

For years we've been told by the left that we have a duty to believe women when they make an accusation of some sexual impropriety perpetrated by a powerful male.

For years we've been told by the left that "It's my body, it's my choice" when a woman wants to abort a child.

For years we've been told by the left that no one who is not in the same circumstance as a pregnant woman (i.e. men) have no business dictating what women should be allowed to do with their bodies.

Now, in just the last month or so, we've seen the left all but abandon each of those "principles."

In the last month the Democrats' presidential candidate, Joe Biden, has been accused of having sexually assaulted a woman named Tara Reade when he was a U.S. Senator and she was a staffer in his office. Until just recently the liberal media completely ignored the accusation.

However, when Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was accused of having jumped on top of a woman at a party when he was a young student the Democrats and their media allies were adamant that the FBI should investigate the accusation, that no stone should be left unturned to demonstrate his guilt, that the accusation was itself enough to prove Kavanaugh's depravity and unfitness for such a lofty office.

Now it is a presidential candidate who has been accused of pressing a woman against a wall and "penetrating her with his fingers" and the media and the Democrats have until just recently gone completely silent. They don't know what to do or say and are eager to sweep the whole business under the rug. All the feminist organizations so apoplectic over the Kavanaugh nomination that they were willing to destroy his life to keep him from sitting on the Supreme Court are unfazed by the prospect of a sexual molester becoming president.

Their concern for women only applies, it seems, if the lout is a Republican. Democrat louts like Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton and, allegedly, Joe Biden are on occasion embarrassing, perhaps, but are otherwise fine.

The principle is only a principle when it suits one's politics.

The notion that I should have the right to do with my body as I please has also been shown to be a sham, at least by many on the left. There are millions of Americans who desire to risk illness and maybe even death in order to return to work, but Democrat governors across the nation are refusing to let them. They're insisting that people don't have that choice even if it is their own body they're putting at risk.

Of course, the argument is that no one has the right to risk the well-being of others by getting out and mixing with people when they may be contagious, but isn't that the same argument pro-lifers make when a woman insists on the right to do with her body as she wishes? Don't pro-lifers argue that there's another person involved and you don't have the right to kill that person just because you want to be able to do with your life what you wish?

In other words, the liberal shibboleth "My body, my choice" only applies when it's convenient.

And how often have we heard it said that men have no business opining on abortion, unless they support the pro-choice position, because men can't get pregnant. Pro-life men, we've been told for four decades, should just shut up about abortion. The principle seems to be that if you're not suffering the emotional distress of an unwanted pregnancy you should have no say on what those who are suffering do with their bodies and their lives.

Very well, but then why is that principle not applied to those suffering both emotional and economic distress from the nation-wide shutdowns. Those who want and need to get back to work and who have been protesting and otherwise making their displeasure known to their political leaders have been strongly criticized by talking heads in the media for their impertinence. Don't they know they're a hazard to others? They should bite the bullet and stay at home for the greater good, these media mavens sniff.

Now virtually all those who are saying this on television and elsewhere are themselves still getting their hefty paychecks. They're not at any risk of losing their homes, their jobs or their businesses. So, let's apply the principle to these critics. If you're still getting paid, if you're not suffering economic distress while others are losing their livelihoods, then you should just shut up.

The Enduring Warfare Myth

You have doubtless heard that ever since the dawn of the Enlightenment science and religion have been at loggerheads - Galileo, and all that. The claim, however, is historical horsepucky as almost all scholars agree and as an article by Dr. Justin Taylor adumbrates.

Taylor begins by noting that scholars as diverse as Ronald Numbers (an agnostic) and Timothy Larsen (a Christian theist) agree that the alleged warfare between science and religion was a myth perpetrated for propaganda purposes in the 19th century primarily by two men. He goes on to explain who these two very influential characters were.

The first was Andrew Dickson White (1832-1918), the founding president of Cornell University, and the second was John William Draper (1811-1882), professor of chemistry at the University of New York.

Taylor writes:

In December 1869, Andrew White--the young and beleaguered Cornell president--delivered a lecture at Cooper Union in New York City entitled “The Battle-Fields of Science.” He melodramatically painted a picture of a longstanding warfare between religion and science:

I propose, then, to present to you this evening an outline of the great sacred struggle for the liberty of Science--a struggle which has been going on for so many centuries. A tough contest this has been! A war continued longer--with battles fiercer, with sieges more persistent, with strategy more vigorous than in any of the comparatively petty warfares of Alexander, or Caesar, or Napoleon . . .

In all modern history, interference with Science in the supposed interest of religion—no matter how conscientious such interference may have been--has resulted in the direst evils both to Religion and Science, and invariably.

His lecture was published in book form seven years later as The Warfare of Science.

Andrew Dickson White (1832-1918)

In 1874, Professor Draper published his History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science. His thesis was as follows:

The antagonism we thus witness between Religion and Science is the continuation of a struggle that commenced when Christianity began to attain political power. . . . The history of Science is not a mere record of isolated discoveries; it is a narrative of the conflict of two contending powers, the expansive force of the human intellect on one side, and the compression arising from traditionary faith and human interests on the other.

Draper’s work was enormously popular, going through 50 editions in the next half century.

John William Draper (1811-1882)

The conflict these men envisioned existed wholly in their own minds, but the theme was nevertheless popular among secular folk, and their work gained a currency unmerited by it's accuracy. Thanks largely to these two writers the notion of a warfare between science and religion became something of an urban legend and has persisted up to the present day despite having been debunked by numerous historians and other scholars.

Taylor provides a sample of the claims that Draper and White promoted and which have subsequently been shown to be utterly false. They wrote, for instance, that:

1.The church believed for centuries that the earth is flat.

2.The church opposed the use of anesthetics in childbirth since Genesis promised that childbirth would be painful.

On the first myth, Lesley B. Cormack, chair of the Department of History and Classics at the University of Alberta, writes that “there is virtually no historical evidence to support the myth of a medieval flat earth. Christian clerics neither suppressed the truth nor stifled debate on the subject.”

On the second myth, Larsen states that:

No church has ever pronounced against anesthetics in childbirth. Moreover, there was no vocal group of ministers who opposed it. In fact, the inventor of chloroform received fan mail from ministers of the major denominations thanking him for helping to alleviate the suffering of women in labor.

Rather, the opposition to anesthetics during childbirth came from medical professionals, not from ministers, and for scientific, not religious, reasons.

So why, Taylor asks, did men like White and Draper--along with English biologist T. H. Huxley, who championed Darwinism and coined the term “agnostic”--manufacture these historical myths and this overall legend of perpetual conflict?

He cites Larsen's answer:

The purpose of the war was to discredit clergymen as suitable figures to undertake scientific work in order that the new breed of professionals would have an opportunity to fill in the gap for such work created by eliminating the current men of science. It was thus tendentiously asserted that the religious convictions of clergymen disqualified them from pursuing their scientific inquiries objectively.

More to the point, however, was the fact that clergymen were undertaking this work for the sheer love of science and thus hindering the expectation that it would be done for money by paid full-time scientists. Clergymen were branded amateurs in order to facilitate the creation of a new category of professionals.

This may be true as far as it goes, but I think there's a more fundamental reason for the conflict thesis. To wit, it has been an effective weapon in the arsenal of those atheists who wish to discredit religious belief altogether. If students and others who know that science has been enormously successful are convinced that science and religion are incompatible, then obviously there's not only no need for religion, but it's also positively pernicious to the extent that it impedes the progress of science.

As we've pointed out on Viewpoint numerous times over the years, and as Alvin Plantinga masterfully explains in his book Where the Conflict Really Lies, there's no conflict between religion and science, but there is a conflict between religion, particularly theistic religion, and metaphysical naturalism. Opponents of religion sometimes blur the distinction between naturalism and science to make it appear as if there's an incompatibility between science and religion, but this is a bit of polemical sleight-of-hand that simply obscures the truth.

It is naturalism, the belief that physical nature is all there is, which is at war with theism which is, of course, based on the belief that nature is not all there is. There is a supernature as well.

This belief and science are, contrary to those who wish to perpetuate the warfare thesis, perfectly sympatico.

Philosophical Fashion

A somewhat older piece in Aeon by J. Bradley Studemeyer makes the case that philosophy as a discipline is often subject to the whims of fashion, not fashion as in wearing apparel, but as in fashionable ideas. He writes:

The rise and fall of popular positions in the field of philosophy is not governed solely by reason. Philosophers are generally reasonable people but, as with the rest of the human species, their thoughts are heavily influenced by their social settings. Indeed, they are perhaps more influenced than thinkers in other fields, since popular or ‘big’ ideas in modern philosophy change more frequently than ideas in, say, chemistry or biology. Why?

The relative instability of philosophical positions is a result of how the discipline is practised. In philosophy, questions about methods and limitations are on the table in a way that they tend not to be in the physical sciences, for example. Scientists generally acknowledge a ‘gold standard’ for validity – the scientific method – and, for the most part, the way in which investigations are conducted is more or less settled.

Falsifiability rules the scientific disciplines: almost all scientists are in agreement that, if a hypothesis isn’t testable, then it isn’t scientific. There is no counterpoint of this in philosophy. Here, students and professors continue to ask: ‘Which questions can we ask?’ and ‘How can we ask, much less answer, those questions?’ There is no universally agreed-upon way in which to do philosophy.

Given that philosophy’s foundational questions and methods are still far from settled – they never will be – it’s natural that there is more flux, more volatility, in philosophy than in the physical sciences. [T]his volatility... is [similar to] changes of fashion.

I'm not sure Studemeyer is correct in what he says about testability being the litmus test of science. Perhaps it should be, but it often isn't. For example, it's difficult to imagine how some of the hypotheses concerning the origin of life, macroevolution, the big bang, the multiverse, string theory, and so on, could be tested. Yet they're all considered by many scientists to be legitimate science. The notion of a "scientific method," despite the fact that it's in the early chapters of just about every secondary school science text, is not one that many working scientists actually ascribe to.

Indeed, the problem of separating science from non-science, called by philosophers of science the "demarcation problem" is one that philosophers have for sometime despaired of solving. There simply is no consistent definition of what science is.

Scientists like their theories to be testable, but if they aren't they want them to be elegant, and if they aren't they want them to have expansive explanatory power, and if they don't they want them to at least conform to a materialist worldview, and if they're incompatible with materialism, well, then, they're just not science.

Or so we're told, but the materialist criterion is simply an arbitrary philosophical preference. There's no compelling justification for it, and, in fact, it's becoming increasingly clear in both origin of life studies and in cosmology that the "materialist explanations only" requirement is producing a lot of dead ends.

Is Polyamory Still in Our Future?

A few years ago I wrote a post on the growing movement toward polyamory, or marriage with multiple partners. Since that post appeared in 2017 there've been a host of movies, books and articles promoting this conjugal innovation which demonstrates, if nothing else, that the movement certainly hasn't lost steam.

Given the increasing popularity of this next step in the sexual revolution, I thought the 2017 post would still be relevant. Here it is:

Several years ago, before the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in the Obergefell decision, I commented on VP (see here and here) that I thought the strongest argument against legalizing gay marriage was that if society decides that the gender of those entering into marriage no longer matters there'll be no logical barrier to concluding that neither should the number of people forming a marriage matter.

At that point marriage will be defined as a union of any combination of people who wish to legally unify their lives, and if marriage were to mean pretty much anything it'll no longer have much meaning at all.

There were doubters. Respondents, many of whom supported gay marriage, were nevertheless incredulous that I'd think that anyone would want to be in a group marriage (polyamorous relationship). That would be sick, some said. The courts would never allow it, said others. I, for my part, thought the skeptics were being naive about what people would do if the legal barriers to doing it were dismantled.

I cited in that original post a couple of articles which advocated the legalization of polyamorous marriages, and claimed that pressure would begin to mount in the social mainstream for the recognition of such unions.

Then came yet another article, at CNN this time, to further bolster my prediction.

Janet Hardy argued from the existence of a number of polyamorous relationships among her acquaintances to the conclusion that polyamorous marriage should be legal. Her argument is that traditional families are becoming increasingly scarce and that they're in any case often problematic for the people in them. Thus, we should allow people to form whatever arrangements they feel comfortable with.

I'm not sure, though, how her conclusion follows from those premises. She seems to be concluding that because there are these alternative arrangements therefore there ought to be these arrangements, but this commits the fallacy of deriving an ought from an is. She also seems to argue that because traditional marriage has difficulties that we should therefore allow other arrangements, but, of course, these would have difficulties as well.

But set aside these criticisms of Ms Hardy's logic. You may agree with her in thinking this would be a fine development. I'm not arguing the merits of either polyamory or gay marriage in this post. Nor do I want anyone to think or say that to oppose gay marriage is somehow "gay-bashing" or reflects hatred toward gays. That'd be both simple-minded and false.

I'm merely pointing out that once we have changed the laws governing marriage - which has traditionally been seen as a union of one man and one woman - so that the gender of the participants is no longer relevant we have no good reason to resist changing the laws so that the number of participants is no longer relevant as well. At that point marriage, family, and society will have a much different aspect than what it has been throughout most of our history. I leave it to the reader to decide whether or not that will be progress.

After describing some of the arrangements of her friends and a brief mention of some hazards of polyamory Hardy closes with this:

I am sure that many marriage equality opponents reading this are shouting "I told you so!" as their predictions that plural marriage would follow same-sex marriage come nightmarishly true.

Many grew up as I did, in a time and place where the single-wage-earner nuclear family was the unquestioned norm and would like to see their country conform to that unrealistic standard for the rest of history.

But even then, the nuclear family was an uncomfortable fit for many, and an impossible dream for others. The America in which I want my children and grandchildren to live will make room for all kinds of families, and it will offer the same support and benefits -- legally, financially and socially -- to any family that is based on a core of love, consent and mutual responsibility.

That's what "family values" should really be about.

Well, I did tell you so, but I'm not "shouting."

Intellectual Virtues

One of my favorite works in philosophy is a book by the English philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) titled On Liberty. Throughout this elegantly written essay Mill offers excellent advice on how to think clearly about the proper limits of state coercion and the freedom of the individual citizen.

In chapter two he takes up the related topic of a citizen's responsibility to inform him or herself on important matters like "morals, religion, politics, social relations, and the business of life". In these, Mill suggests, we should make it our practice to follow the example of one of the greatest rhetoricians in history, Marcus Tullius Cicero.

Mill writes:

The greatest orator, save one, of antiquity, has left it on record that he always studied his adversary’s case with as great, if not with still greater, intensity than even his own. What Cicero practised as the means of forensic success, requires to be imitated by all who study any subject in order to arrive at the truth.

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. The rational position for him would be suspension of judgment, and unless he contents himself with that, he is either led by authority, or adopts, like the generality of the world, the side to which he feels most inclination.

How many people know, for example, the arguments on the other side of the issue from their own on matters like the existence of God, evolution, immigration, climate change, abortion, etc.? If we don't know what the opposing arguments are on such questions how are we justified in dogmatically declaring or believing that our opinion is the only one that's reasonable to hold?

Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. That is not the way to do justice to the arguments, or bring them into real contact with his own mind. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them.

He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; else he will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which meets and removes that difficulty.

In other words, if we only hear opposing views from those who agree with our position then we're probably not hearing those views presented as cogently as they would be by someone who really believed them. We shouldn't be afraid to read books and listen to lectures by people with whom we disagree. It'll either sharpen our own views or lead us closer to the truth.

Those on college campuses today who seek to shout down speakers they disagree with, or to prevent them from even appearing on campus, are, in addition to revealing their own intellectual primitiveness, doing both the truth and their fellow students a grave disservice.

John Stuart Mill

Most people, even educated people, Mill laments, don't really know the arguments against the positions they hold:

Ninety-nine in a hundred of what are called educated men are in this condition; even of those who can argue fluently for their opinions. Their conclusion may be true, but it might be false for anything they know: they have never thrown themselves into the mental position of those who think differently from them, and considered what such persons may have to say; and consequently they do not, in any proper sense of the word, know the doctrine which they themselves profess.

They do not know those parts of it which explain and justify the remainder; the considerations which show that a fact which seemingly conflicts with another is reconcilable with it, or that, of two apparently strong reasons, one and not the other ought to be preferred. All that part of the truth which turns the scale, and decides the judgment of a completely informed mind, they are strangers to; nor is it ever really known, but to those who have attended equally and impartially to both sides, and endeavoured to see the reasons of both in the strongest light.

Of course, few people have the time, let alone the inclination, to thoroughly explore all sides of all important issues, but if we don't then we certainly have no justification for being dogmatic in expressing our opinions. It would be better instead to display a genuinely open-minded intellectual humility which, so far from communicating the message, "I'm right and you're wrong", says instead that, "I might well not know all that I should about this matter, but here's what I think based on what I do know...."

Unfortunately, just as in Mill's time, so, too, in ours. Open-mindedness and humility are two intellectual virtues not conspicuous among many of those who take sides on the issues of our day.

Whale Evolution

Over the last thirty years or so Darwinians have frequently cited a series of fossils that they maintain illustrate the evolutionary development of modern whales. This series of alleged transitional forms is offered as compelling evidence that whales have evolved through a sequence of ancestral forms leading to the modern behemoths of the sea.

Well, perhaps they have, but there are problems with the particular series of transitions that are commonly believed to be ancestral to whales. The fossils proponents have adduced to buttress their claims of whale evolution simply don't support their conclusion, as this light-hearted ten minute video makes clear:

Escaping the Implications of the Big Bang

Ross Pomeroy has a brief column at Real Clear Science in which he argues that the Big Bang theory of cosmogenesis (the origin of the universe) was resisted by many scientists because they harbored an anti-religious bias that rendered any theory of a beginning of the universe apriori repugnant.

A beginning to the universe implies a transcendent act of creation, which sounds too much like Genesis 1:1, and that sort of thing has no place in science, or so we've been told ad infinitum.

There were problems with the Big Bang to be sure, but as time wore on evidence accumulated that the universe was expanding which meant that if scientists extrapolated back in time they would come to a state of affairs in which all the universe was compressed into an infinitely small, infinitely dense point.

In other words, the universe seems to have come into being out of nothing which is what theologians had been saying for thousands of years. Atheistic scientists were chagrined by this notion. After all, science was supposed to debunk religious beliefs, not confirm them.

Then, in the 1960s, two scientists working for Bell laboratories, looking for something else entirely, accidentally confirmed a prediction of the Big Bang theory. They discovered the remnant energy from the initial "Bang." This discovery of what's called the cosmic background radiation rocked the scientific world.

Pomeroy writes:

Today, the Big Bang model of cosmology is pretty much taken for Gospel, and for good reason. For more than fifty years, evidence gathered from all manner of sources has supported the notion that the Universe as we know it expanded from an infinitely dense singularity.

But things didn't always look so certain for the Big Bang. In its most nascent form, the idea was known as the hypothesis of the primeval atom, and it originated from an engineer turned soldier turned mathematician turned Catholic priest turned physicist by the name of Georges Lemaître. When Lemaître published his idea in the eminent journal Nature in 1931, a response to observational data suggesting that space was expanding, he ruffled a lot of feathers.

As UC-San Diego professor of physics Brian Keating wrote in his recent book Losing the Nobel Prize, "Lemaître's model... upset the millennia-old orthodoxy of an eternal, unchanging cosmos. It clearly implied that everything had been smaller and denser in the past, and that the universe must itself have had a birth at a finite time in the past."

Besides questioning the status quo, Lemaître's primeval atom also had some glaring problems. For starters, there were hardly any means of testing it, a must for any would-be scientific theory. Moreover, it essentially suggested that all the matter in the Universe came from nothing, a flabbergasting claim. It also violated an accepted notion known as the perfect cosmological principle, which suggested that the Universe looks the same from any given point in space and time.

For these reasons, English astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle gathered with a few colleagues to formulate the Steady State theory of the cosmos. The idea kept the observable universe essentially the same in space and time, and it accounted for evidence suggesting that the universe is expanding by hypothesizing that matter is instead being created out of the fabric of space in between distant galaxies.

Steady State didn't have the problems inherent to the notion of a primeval atom, and, as Keating wrote "it sure didn't look like the creation narrative in Genesis 1:1."

As Keating observed, anti-religious sentiments provided underlying motivation to debunk Lemaître's theory:

Many atheist scientists were repulsed by the Big Bang's creationist overtones. According to Hoyle, it was cosmic chutzpah of the worst kind: "The reason why scientists like the 'big bang' is because they are overshadowed by the Book of Genesis."

When a man is dead set against the evidence that God exists there's not much that can persuade him to believe otherwise. Hoyle remained adamantly opposed to the Big Bang until his death in 2001. Many modern cosmologists are searching for a theory of cosmogenesis today that will allow them to avoid a cosmic beginning.

Stephen Hawking even claimed to have come up with one, but his theory, depending as it does on an imaginary time, has been roundly criticized by his peers as much too fanciful.

Nevertheless, maybe someone else will find a theory that doesn't lead to a beginning of everything, but there seems to be something peculiar about people who insist that religious belief has no place in science being animated by their own religious belief to spend their lives in search of a way to escape a theory for no other reason than that the theory has religious implications.

Beauty, Morality and Reason

Biologist Ann Gauger, in an article at Evolution News, discusses three aspects of the world that C.S. Lewis thought eluded any naturalistic explanation or account.

The first of these is beauty. She writes:

Why should there be beauty? What is it for? We find joy in beholding something truly beautiful, a sense of awe even. And we never grow tired of that beauty, unless some spiritual sickness has entered and sapped us of all capacity for joy. Even more strange, it is a great pleasure to participate in the creation of something beautiful, something that moves other people, that brings joy to them.

Why should this be, that there is joy for the creator in the creative act and joy for the audience also?

Scientifically speaking, does beauty indicate design or un-design? The answer is this: there is no reason to expect random mutation and selection to produce beauty, and no particular reason for us to find certain things beautiful. Functional, yes. But the beauty we see does not necessarily correlate with safety or suitability for eating or mating. It has no particular survival value. Instead, beauty is a lovely surprise that points toward the transcendent Something that is the source of beauty.

The second aspect of the world that Lewis believed could not be adequately explained within a naturalistic framework is morality. Here's Gauger:

As [Lewis] observed, when people quarrel, they often appeal to moral standards: “You promised,” or “You shouldn’t treat people that way.” They appeal to these standards expecting to be understood.

Where does our sense of right and wrong come from? Or even our belief that there is such a thing as right or wrong?

There are certain acts that are universally acknowledged to be morally wrong, such as the killing of innocent human beings. Where does such objective certainty come from? If someone says, “Well, we evolved that view,” then there is no reason to suppose it has any basis in objective truth. Any moral view selected for its survival value loses any claim to objective truth. Should it not be just as moral, if not more so, to kill innocent humans if it benefits you, under that scenario?

On the other hand, if we concede that we didn’t evolve morality, a lot of people then default to the position that there is no objective basis for morality. We must define it for ourselves. Why, then, do most people still choose to adopt the moral precept that it is wrong to kill innocent human beings?

All this argues for the objective reality of moral values, and for our innate sense of them, sometimes called the natural law. And the existence of objective moral law points toward a designer who set this law into our hearts.

Lewis' third point is the existence of human reason. Gauger explains:

The fact that we reason at all, and that our reason corresponds with reality, is a remarkable thing. Have you never thought that it should be surprising that our minds are capable of probing the deep things of the universe, and that the universe is constructed in such a way as to be discoverable? That it should be founded on laws that we can grasp and that surprisingly find a match with our abstract mathematics?

Ape brains that evolved to hunt prey and run from lions should not be expected to do higher-order mathematics or particle physics. Yet our brains are fitted for the task, as deep as we need to go. Our brains and our abilities go so far beyond what survival requires that no evolutionary explanation could possibly account for the things we can do.

If evolution is all there is, then rationality hasn’t got a leg to stand on. Natural selection may favor the fastest or strongest or most fertile, but it doesn’t care about syllogisms or propositions or inferences. And if all we have is an evolved feeling that our minds are trustworthy, then our minds aren’t trustworthy.

She quotes Lewis:

All possible knowledge . . . depends on the validity of reasoning. If the feeling of certainty which we express by words like must be and therefore and since is a real perception of how things outside our own minds really “must” be, well and good. But if this certainty is merely a feeling in our own minds and not a genuine insight into realities beyond them — if it merely represents the way our minds happen to work — then we can have no knowledge. Unless human reasoning is valid no science can be true.

Her argument is that "naturalism has cut itself off at the knees." She adds that,

Naturalism depends on the idea that science has discovered the truth about the world — what the world really is — namely, that it is nothing but matter and energy, particles in motion, and neurons firing, with consciousness an epiphenomenon and free will an illusion. But see — on what basis do they claim to know? Science is supposed to be a logical enterprise that interrogates the natural world and discovers its hidden reality using reason and logic, which naturalism cannot justify as being reliable.

Just so. We can add to what Gauger wrote the words of atheist philosopher John Gray who stated that,

Modern [naturalism] is the faith that through science humankind can know the truth and so be free. But if Darwin's theory of natural selection is true this is impossible. The human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth.

And in his book On Miracles Lewis wrote this:

Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no Creative Mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true?.... Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.

It's a marvel that a worldview, naturalism, that's so intellectually thin would nevertheless be so attractive to so many intelligent people.

Some Interesting Facts

One of the concerns with the current Covid-19 pandemic is that the virus seems so deadly and the morbidity rate for the virus seems so high that federal and state authorities have decided that it's better to shut the country down than to expose people to such a deadly contagion.

As new data keeps coming out, though, the morbidity rate (the deaths/ the number of cases) appears to be much less than had been feared.

In a column at TownHall.com Kevin McCullough points out that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo stated on Thursday that antibody testing in his state has shown that at least 13.9% of New Yorkers have had Covid-19. This is very significant because it means the denominator in the morbidity ratio has been pegged way too low.

Here's McCullough:

The implication of this is a shockwave to the system. With a population of 19,540,500 the findings point out that over 2,500,000 New Yorkers had the virus and have recovered. Keep in mind that as of this writing that only 263,000 New Yorkers have currently confirmed cases. Also as of this writing New York has reported 19,543 fatalities.

We’ve been told that the true death rate is 7.4% in New York. We were told there would be hundreds of thousands dead. We were told that this was worse than the flu, which has still recorded more deaths to date in this past flu season—even though the CDC instructed medical personnel to start counting influenza, heart disease, pulmonary, respiratory, drug overdose, and possibly even car crash deaths as COVID-19 deaths.

We were told that we had to upend an economy, go into solitary confinement, and divorce ourselves from normal life because this [disease] would rage beyond any previous pandemic. We were told that this virus with 846,000 current confirmed cases was worse than the H1N1 that broke out on Obama’s watch that infected 60,000,000 people.

More precisely, using McCullough's numbers, the number of New Yorkers who have had the virus would be 2,716,129. This means that the actual morbidity rate is about .72% which makes it just slightly more virulent than the seasonal flu:

The death rate in New York State isn’t 7.4%, it is actually [about] .75%. The recently ended influenza season numbers from the CDC indicate possibly 56,000,000 cases of flu, 740,000 hospitalizations, and 62,000 deaths.

Thus, the morbidity rate for the seasonal flu is about .11%. I have no doubt that Covid's toll would've been higher had New York and a few other locales not taken the measures they did to slow it, but I'm not sure that the risk the disease poses warrants the continued destruction of our economic infrastructure.

At some point soon we have to find the point at which the risk to health is outweighed by the need to get people back to work and save us from a federal debt burden that will almost certainly crush our children and grandchildren.

Why Would Beauty Evolve?

A couple of days ago I did a post on beauty and meaning. Today I'd like to do one that addresses a different question raised by beauty: How can we account for it in an evolutionary framework?

Glenn Stanton has a column at The Federalist in which he poses a question that we've occasionally discussed on VP: Why would beauty evolve in living creatures? How does it enhance survival?

Stanton thinks that beauty is counterproductive from an evolutionary point of view, and he cites both Charles Darwin and Alfred North Wallace, the co-founders of the theory of natural selection, as having said essentially the same thing.

Here are some excerpts from Stanton's essay:

The genius of evolution is its brutal pragmatism; do whatever is needed to pass your genes onto the next generation in the fastest, most efficient, enduring way possible. It knows nothing else. As such, it should be inherently prejudiced against not only complex beauty, but any conspicuous beauty at all.

Mr. Guppy is a child’s starter fish for a reason. He lives years in a tiny, dirty fishbowl needing minimal attention. Algae thrives there. The same is true of the common finch over the peacock, or the dandelion and the orchid. One is common, while the other is rare for a reason.

If natural selection reined [beautiful fish like the above Moorish Idols] would see the runaway genetic success and durability of the common guppy and ask, “Why am I knocking myself out trying to maintain this extravagantly conspicuous design when I could be that guy?”

In survival of the fittest, the fittest is the least complex and needy — Occam’s razor applied to living things. Extravagant, superfluous beauty is not evolution’s friend.

Thus, beauty is one of evolution’s most serious and persistent problems. Its adherents have no good answer for it, and not for want of trying.

The two men who simultaneously developed the theory of natural selection, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, were profoundly burdened by the problem of beauty. Darwin confessed to a friend, “The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!”

Wallace held that a peacock’s raiment was more than unnecessary under natural selection; it was a detriment. He confessed the “excessive length or abundance of plumes begins to be injurious to the bearer of them.” Darwin and Wallace both worked tirelessly but unsuccessfully to come up with a sufficient explanation for beauty. Both disagreed passionately with the other’s answer.

Darwin proposed that natural selection was not the only phenomenon at work here and developed the theory of sexual selection. The more "handsome" an organism is, the more likely it is to attract a mate.

The theory of sexual selection has lots of problems, but one big one is that it raises an even greater difficulty. Why would organisms evolve sexual reproduction in the first place, with all of the necessary adaptations - behavioral, genetic, biochemical, anatomical and physiological - when asexual reproduction is far simpler, more efficient and involves far less expenditure of energy?

The asexuality of the mudworm or hydra is simple and highly efficient. Why remove that ability from the individual and require complex coupling? Natural selection is not inclined to say, “Let’s make this exponentially more difficult,” which finding, competing for, wooing, and impregnating a mate certainly is.

Moreover, spectacular beauty not only requires more more energy to develop and maintain, Stanton writes, but it also makes one highly conspicuous and attractive to predators.

In short, there's no good evolutionary account for why our world should be filled with beauty, but it is. Perhaps that's because naturalistic evolution isn't the answer, or at least not the entire answer, for why and how beauty came to be.

Read Stanton's article at the link. It's very interesting, particularly his remarks on Mr. and Mrs. Blobfish.

Does Suffering Disprove God's Existence?

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a professing Catholic, said recently that it wasn't God who has flattened the curve of covid cases in his state, it was New Yorkers. "Our behavior has stopped the spread of the virus," he claimed, "God did not stop the spread of the virus."

A couple of days later he added, "The number is down because we brought the number down. God did not do that. Fate did not do that. Destiny did not do that. A lot of pain and suffering did that."

To which Michael Stone at Patheos replied: "Cuomo is right. Prayers do not effect [sic] the virus. Some imaginary God does not effect [sic] the virus. But people, human behavior, can and do effect [sic] the virus."

Now I don't profess to know what role God has played in this disease, if any, but I do know that, despite their arrogant asseverations to the contrary, neither Cuomo nor Stone knows either. Indeed, both of these men might profit from a little more intellectual humility.

Another thing I know is that one of the most potent defeaters skeptics have employed over the ages against theistic belief is what's often called the problem of evil.

Those who believe in the existence of a wholly good, all-powerful deity are often challenged to come up with an answer to the question why such a being would not prevent completely gratuitous suffering, or why, in a time of plague, God wouldn't act sooner to mitigate the effects of the disease? Why, in the present case, has an allegedly loving Father allowed so many good people to have their lives cut short by this corona virus?

Peter Kreeft, a philosopher at Boston College, presents an interesting introduction to this vexing problem which has perplexed believers ever since the time of Job and surely before. Kreeft's treatment gives us a good idea of the direction in which possible solutions might lie.

The video is only about five minutes long, but it covers a lot of ground and is well worth watching:

Beauty Without Meaning?

Michael Baruzzini writing at First Things recalls the an exchange between Richard Dawkins and Archbishop Rowan Williams in which Dawkins admitted that he was an agnostic about God, not, strictly speaking, an atheist. Much was made of the admission in the media despite the fact that it was a trivial distinction as Baruzzini explains:

This admission, though it caught the notice of the media, was not really anything new for Dawkins, who has made similar concessions in the past. Dawkins’ approach to all knowledge is strictly scientific. And since scientific knowledge is always technically tentative, so too must his ostensibly scientific opinion of the non-existence of God. Dawkins dismisses God because he finds no scientific evidence for God, but he must make allowances for the fact that scientific knowledge is always expanding.

Dawkins is still an atheist, after all, because agnosticism is simply a species of the genus atheism. Atheism is the lack of belief in a God and agnostics lack a belief in God. They are what might be called soft atheists because, unlike the hard atheist, they don't make the very strong and undemonstrable claim that God doesn't exist. They simply hold that the evidence is insufficient to justify believing that He does.

It was another comment that Dawkins made in the same discussion that I found much more interesting:

Speaking to his believing conversational companion, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Dawkins said, “What I can’t understand is why you can’t see the extraordinary beauty of the idea that life started from nothing—that is such a staggering, elegant, beautiful thing, why would you want to clutter it up with something so messy as a God?”

I don't think Dawkins is quite right about this. Beauty ultimately depends upon meaning. Meaningless form and color may please the senses, it may be pretty, but it doesn't rise to the level of beauty unless there's meaning to it. Just as a meaningless sexual experience, though it may afford some degree of pleasure, is hardly beautiful, a world full of things for which we've evolved an aesthetic appreciation may be intriguing, but it's ultimately beautiful because it exudes meaning from every nook, cranny, and pore.

Baruzzini puts the point somewhat differently:

The archbishop, rather than disputing, agreed with Dawkins about the beauty of the scientific description of the development of life. But he then explained that God was not an extra that was “shoehorned” onto the scientific explanation. Dawkins’ mistake, the archbishop attempted to show, was to suppose that the scientific explanation suffices, and the religious one is an unnecessary complication. The beauty that Dawkins finds in science is not challenged by belief in God; it presupposes it.

Beauty is something reasonable. The beauty of scientific explanation comes from seeing that the arrangement of things is so ordered to produce the phenomena we observe. The scientist begins with a mess of clues and an unfinished puzzle. He begins with a mystery. He seeks that moment when the pieces fall into place. Dawkins’ picture of scientific beauty comes from seeing just this arrangement in evolution, in the material development of the universe. But where creation presents a unified theme returning, finally, to reason, atheistic scientism must insist that at bottom [there] is only unreason.

If it all has no meaning, no purpose, if it's all simply the effluent of a cosmic belch, the beauty drains out of it.

Baruzzini goes on to make a further point about Dawkins' views that should be emphasized. He asserts that:

Dawkins supposes that the doctrine of creation requires a Divine Tinkerer, interfering with or co-opting the natural beauty present in the workings of the natural world. Whether or not God tinkered with creation in the manner envisioned by creationism or some versions of intelligent design, such tinkering is neither necessary to the doctrine of creation nor is it the source of the beauty seen by the believer.

To use an analogy previously developed by Stephen Barr, to ask whether God or evolution created life is like asking whether Shakespeare or Hamlet killed Polonius. If there is no Shakespeare, Hamlet’s act is meaningless. It is merely the accidental arrangement of ink on a page. If there is a Shakespeare, however, his existence as the creator of the literary Denmark does not obviate the drama of the play. It is rather a necessary prerequisite for it. Shakespeare, as a playwright, is not a competitor with the drama of the play.

There's more at the link, but I want to return for a moment to the matter of beauty: Philosophers going back to Plato have affirmed that the highest ideals are the Good, the Beautiful, and the True, but if the world is nothing more than atoms spinning in the void then there really is no Good, no Truth that matters, and no Beauty. The awe we feel when we look at mountains or a sunset or a galaxy is just the perturbations of chemicals in our brains triggered by a particular visual pattern.

It's only when we somehow see meaning in what we observe that we experience its beauty, but there can only be meaning if behind the experience there is a mind that has intentionally created it. Take away the author, the painter, the composer, the architect and there is no meaning and thus no beauty for us to enjoy. A novel filled with eloquently turned phrases and well-crafted sentences nevertheless lacks beauty if the story makes no sense.

The world and life are beautiful because they're filled by it's composer/author with deep, profound meaning.

Two Thoughts on the Current Shutdown

As protests mount for governors across the country to reopen their states for business recent polls show that almost six out of ten people are worried about loosening restrictions too soon. I wonder how many of that sixty percent are people working from home without having suffered any lost income. Indeed, I wonder how many of those who have lost no income in the midst of the current restrictions will also receive a check from the government.

I suspect that if everyone among that sixty percent was out of work that percentage wouldn't be nearly so high.

Another thought: here in Pennsylvania, and I expect elsewhere as well, over half the fatalities due to covid have occurred among nursing home patients. It would seem that these people would be the easiest to protect from the virus via constant monitoring, quarantine and minimal contact with outsiders.

If we took measures to enhance the safety of these most vulnerable could we not reopen the state and get back to work? There'd still be some risk of contracting the disease, but for most of the workforce, except those with co-morbidity factors like obesity and diabetes, the risk of very severe infection would be minimal.

I'm certainly not a medical expert, and perhaps there's more to this that I'm not aware of, but by staying shut down we may be trading safety from covid in exchange for greater risk of personal economic devastation with accompanying suicide, domestic abuse and opioid addiction. For many, that probably doesn't seem like a wise trade.

I imagine that for a lot of folks the risk of a covid infection is one worth taking if the alternative is the loss of their business and livelihood.