Ch. 8: The Enemy Within ("Good Thinking" - by Guy P. Harrison)

[Harry Marks]

Traditional theology is pretty coherent

Yes, I’m looking at you, Sola Scriptura. Anyone who has studied the formation of the biblical canon knows scripture is tradition.
Yes, I’m looking at you, Sola Fide. The fact that Luther wanted to chop James from the canon is telling.
Yes, I’m looking at you, Calvinism. Common grace is a superfluous doctrine that only becomes necessary when Total Depravity privileges the fall over the imago dei.
Yes, I’m look at you, Arminianism. Prevenient grace is another response to the same Total Depravity blunder…

These are not particularly good examples of incoherence.

Yes, "scripture alone" ignores the fact that the Biblical canon is of the same type as other tradition, but in the context of Luther's rejection of the current state of the church, scripture is decisively different. The reason, as everyone at the time with any education or worldly acquaintance knew, was that the church had been pursuing worldly power for centuries and the scripture stood outside that stream of history.

Yes, Luther called James the "gospel of straw" but his reasons are quite compelling. James addresses evidence of faith, but does not engage whether faith is salvific. To rest on the words of James, as the defenders of indulgences did, is to ignore the real sense conveyed by the other epistles in order to justify something corrupt.

I had to look up "common grace" and "prevenient grace." I don't see that either one is problematic for coherence.

If you are going to argue that any time theologians disagree it means the whole structure is incoherent, then my side of the argument has been defined away. I still think coherence means that the different parts fit together and support one another. I would not argue that pre-Modern Christian theology is completely coherent, but then physics is not completely coherent in that sense either.

In my view plenty of theology is wrong. But that is not the same thing as showing it to be incoherent. An example of incoherence that I would find convincing would be: idea A is important to the structure of theology, idea B is important to the structure of theology, and idea A and idea B cannot both be true.

The closest thing to it that I know of is the argument (pre-Christian) from Plato that God cannot be both omnipotent and omnibenevolent. But of course God can be both, if there is a large amount of significant information about alternatives that we do not have. If you take omnipotence to mean "there is nothing that can possibly be done that God cannot do" then the loophole of "can possibly be done" lets all kinds of conceivable alternatives be swept under the rug as "impossible for reasons we do not yet know." It's just Liebniz - a truly formidable intellect.

[Harry Marks]

Making the unconscious conscious is a less promising path, in my view, because, like Tillich's "broken myth" it presupposes some internal perspective which is outside the perspective which finds meaning in the old connections.

I don’t know what you meant by ‘internal’ in your phrase an “internal perspective”, unless just the tautology that perspective is always internal to a head.

I took your proposal to "make the unconscious conscious" to be something like Freudian dream interpretation, in which a person becomes able to recognize hitherto incomprehensible experiences as results of forces which can be described and analyzed. I see now that you are satisfied with any process which analyzes the unconscious of anyone, so that it does not necessitate a change in internal perspective by the person experiencing the unconscious phenomena.

Otherwise you seem to be arguing that we should respect blatantly false assertions on relativist grounds. Traffic rules are not like virgin birth.

I am arguing first that you should assess values propositions by different criteria than fact propositions. Values propositions can be apparently contradictory but in fact both true or correct. "Truth" about a should is not the same as "truth" about an is. The epistemology is different, and the notion that contradictory claims cannot both be true simply fails to understand the nature of truth in the context of values.

It would be good if you would query that if you disagree, because I find it frustrating to proceed without it having been clarified when you regularly show evidence of confusion on the point.

I am arguing second that you should distinguish between assessing the motivation for beliefs and assessing the truth of beliefs. You have repeatedly, on this thread, dismissed the possibility that worthy motives could be behind a belief on the basis of your belief that it is factually incorrect. I understand the notion of "bad faith", in which wrong motives can be uncovered based on refusal to consider evidence, but that is itself easily used as an excuse not to assess the actual motivation involved.

Proverbs involve conscious ethical forces at work in religion, but proverbs and fables are not myths, in the sense of stories that are believed to be true. There is obviously conscious intent by the bard who recrafts the mythic content in an old song, but the reasons why his audience find a specific mythical story resonates with them are largely unconscious.

That gets into chancy ground. We are claiming to understand the reasons why a myth (or a presidential candidate) "resonates" in a force of which the resonated person is not aware. Some of it operates like movie music: going on in the background without conscious processing. But let's face it, people are often all too aware of why they respond to what they respond to.

A broken myth is essentially a parable, or perhaps if it operates on a more limited scale, a symbol. And since the whole point is to learn to process these effectively, recognizing the reasons for their effects, I think it would be a good idea not to start with claims of superior insight until that has been demonstrated.

Generally the power of myth relies on the ability to enter a fantasy world where disbelief is suspended, but its memetic power rests on unconscious factors.

The distance between our positions on this material is not very great. I like exploring this question, I think you understand the matter and have valuable insights, but I fear I am giving the impression that I consider you wrong on the subject. That would be the wrong impression. However, I remain dissatisfied on some relatively minor aspects, and one of them is the requirement that the function of myth must operate by means of unconscious factors.

It seems to me that suspension of disbelief works primarily by excluding the distraction of fact-checking. We don't really care whether Hamlet talks with a ghost or the whole conversation occurs in his head, or whether Macbeth got some reassuring guidance from wielders of dark power or just decided "to hell with it, I am going for the crown." The interesting use of the plot device is to raise aspects of the matter that would lose their emotional force if we had to keep assessing whether we believe that things happen that way.

I don't think that means the emotional force is unconscious, only that it is a whole lot more work to access it and work with it by explicit means than by a good story.

Why did the Church latch onto the Virgin Birth? I doubt if it was an unconscious purity need

But the mythical content in virgin birth dogma is not the purity need, ... The immaculate conception is a truly bizarre example of unconscious need, which in this case includes social factors such as the patriarchal need for femininity to be controlled by masculinity and the need to have a feminine image of divinity, forcing their way into belief as an impossible gendered myth.

Well, the need for femininity to be controlled by masculinity strikes me as an example of an unconscious force at work, but I fear I cannot see how it is at work in the Immaculate Conception material.
(edited for inappropriate quote brackets)

This recognition of cultural trauma appears to be a good explanation of the high value that the modern theory of liberal tolerance places on cultural relativism, the idea that no single truth can reconcile or measure conflicting perceptions of truth.

Your driving example would only be relevant to cultural relativism if someone said one or the other side were better,

I chose it deliberately for its extreme obviousness. I am claiming that some cultural relativism is inevitable. I do not hold that it is impossible to ever make judgments about which values are better (though I do believe it is impossible to demonstrate them with the methods we use for adjudication of factual claims), only that it is an incomplete system of comparison. It works sometimes, but in many, many cases one cannot give arguments from one perspective that a different perspective will find persuasive, nor demonstrate that the reason for this is a violation of moral principles. Liberal tolerance emphasizes cultural relativism for good reason, and the inevitability of cultural relativism, that is, the dependence of a principle's value on the conditions in which it is held, is part of that reason.

Cultural relativism is purely about values. It is defined in anthropology as the doctrine that “an individual human's beliefs and activities should be understood by others in terms of that individual's own culture.” (wiki) Acceptance of cultural relativism implies we have no universal standards to judge morality. It is a hotly debated topic in the politics of multiculturalism.

We had some of those debates on the "banning the hijab" thread. But if you underline the word "understood" in the Wiki quote, you can see that accepting the onus to understand is not the same as being required to agree or even tolerate.

You are confusing a value (something that is perceived as good) with a rule or convention. Road rules are not moral values.

Road rules are a particularly pedestrian (ouch) example of values.
Your seat belt example is better - we are in no position to judge which risks are worth taking as evidence of lack of intimidation. I doubt if all Russians share the perception you cited, but even if they do, how do we distinguish that from the question of whether a person should ever risk, say, talking back to a teacher? I know people who will not drive on Third World roads. Are they just sissies, or are they going by sensible precautions? That is not adjudicable because right and wrong are internal categories. And for the same reason, cultures may differ in the relative emphasis they put on competing values.

My own Christian faith sees tolerance as a high value, and I agree that relativism is often necessary as a matter of practical respect and humility. But the ethics of tolerance become difficult when we are asked to tolerate unacceptable practices on relativist grounds.

Okay, we see eye to eye. I agree with your second statement, and I am happy to consider the first to be "practical agreement."

[youkrst]

yeah Harry i was posting from a tablet after a champagne, always a challenge.

that was just a quote from one of the links, a catholic puzzling on protestant theology.

the image at the top was much better at making my point.

lemme have another go.

Traditional theology is pretty coherent

[youkrst]

Harry

i just cant let a statement like "traditional theology is pretty coherent" pass

i would say "traditional theology is one of the greatest examples of intellect rationalising insanity that there has ever been."

traditional theology is absurd.

lemme find an example

http://www.crivoice.org/tulip.html

Harry can you give an example of this coherent theology?

even it were coherent, it would be coherent bullshit.

theology does not sit well on a thread with the words "Good Thinking" in the title.

theology is smart people trying to justify dumb thinking.

“A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it.”
― H.L. Mencken

[youkrst]

Harry, here's a great one

“Popular religions all over the world, for the most part, are misunderstandings of … poetic images. The chief way to misunderstand an image is to imagine that it is a fact. One says to one’s beloved, “You are a rose,” “You are a swan,” and she says, “Make up your mind, which is it?” She’s what I would call a theologian.” (laughter from the audience follows)

[youkrst]

for example i read in the NT

But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven

add perspectives to your mind, great stuff.

and i think, right on! i've been doing that the last three weeks and it is great!

then along comes a theologian....heaven is a real place you go when you die if you kiss the holy ring...

[Harry Marks]

i just cant let a statement like "traditional theology is pretty coherent" pass
traditional theology is absurd.
even it were coherent, it would be coherent bullshit.
theology is smart people trying to justify dumb thinking.

Okay, so I am not neurotypical. I have this strange idea that "coherent" has a specific meaning, and "dumb" has a different meaning.

Sue me.

[Harry Marks]

Harry, here's a great one

“Popular religions all over the world, for the most part, are misunderstandings of … poetic images. The chief way to misunderstand an image is to imagine that it is a fact. One says to one’s beloved, “You are a rose,” “You are a swan,” and she says, “Make up your mind, which is it?” She’s what I would call a theologian.” (laughter from the audience follows)

I like that one. I laughed. But what does "theologian" have to do with "popular religion"?

These days, if you can find a theologian who claims that heaven and hell are real places, you are looking at a denomination that treats professors as hired hands to be told what to think.

[Robert Tulip]

Incoherence means the parts do not relate correctly to each other, not inconsistency with evidence. Traditional theology is pretty coherent - it is filtered through centuries of probing by some pretty fine minds. You should be clear in your own mind that lack of evidence is your issue, not incoherence.

The meaning of coherent and consistent are not that simple. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criteria_of_truth explains that coherence and consistency are primary criteria of truth, and suggests quite different meanings of these terms from yours. It argues “To be coherent, all pertinent facts must be arranged in a consistent and cohesive fashion as an integrated whole. The theory which most effectively reconciles all facts in this fashion may be considered most likely to be true.” Consistency is just when a theory does not contradict itself.

A theory that is internally consistent but which ignores relevant facts is usually seen as an incoherent rationalisation. The use of such incoherent methods is a primary reason for the low intellectual reputation of theology. While there is some excellent theology that does strive for logical coherence, the widespread use of questionable assumptions puts the general coherence of theology into doubt.

Traditional theology suffers from intense political bias. For example, hidden agendas regarding bolstering the power of the church are at play regarding which theologies are preferred. The false assumption that the Bible is largely historically accurate is a common failing, as is the magical view that reality is actually very different from what our senses reveal, instead being governed by an invisible and undetectable personal intentional entity, known as God.

But as with Aristotle’s false theory of motion, his organising theory arose because he lacked method and interest to test his assumptions.

That is an example of an incoherent sentence. His theory arose on the basis of casual observation and some thought. Lack of method and interest to test was the reason for him settling for a false theory, not for the arising of the theory in the first place. Your explanation is an explanation of something besides what you claim it explains, and so, incoherent.

You are wrongly applying just one specific meaning of “because” here. Aristotle was responsible for the philosophy of the four causes, the material, efficient, formal and final. It looks reasonable to me to say that lack of method and interest was responsible for his error about gravity, perhaps as the final if not the formal or efficient cause. That hardly looks an incoherent argument.

I tried to use the case of your own interest in astrotheology to point out to you that the motivation is distinct from the truth value, but you missed that point completely. It seems to be a bit difficult to get you to look at the two separately - you seem to consider the motivation to be worthless if the truth value is wrong, and irrelevant when you are still investigating the truth value.

Yes, I am still missing that point. My particular interest is to show that astrotheology shows the truth value of conventional theology is weak, since the claims of religion have a better explanation in allegory than fact.

I can accept that there is sincere motivation among Christians, for example creationists, who see their community cohesion as blown away by the observation that Christ was not in any literal sense the Second Adam. If Paul’s claim that Christ repaired Adam’s sin is incoherent, then the central faith idea that we are washed in the blood of the lamb starts to look false.

But this sincere motivation is irrelevant to efforts to construct an ethic that coheres with evidence. Your argument reminds me of an analogy with the labour theory of value. Marx held that economic value is a function of labour, and therefore of effort. But if you put immense effort into something no one wants to buy, your labour is worthless. Similarly, sincere motives that rest on false premises have little worth.
Paul's argument in 1Cor15, that without Christ raised our faith is in vain, should therefore only make sense when we understand resurrection as allegory rather than fact.

However, outside of science the motivation for people's interest in a proposition can be far more important than its truth value, and condescension based on the conclusion you have reached about its truth value may be completely misplaced.

Your argument implies we should respect people who are manifestly deluded. Medieval popes thought that geocentrism bolstered their values of social order. Their motive may have been sincere, but the growth of science showed that the popes were deluded, and their worldview was subject to tectonic breakage once the pressure became to great.

I accept that condescension of science towards fantasy can be sometimes partly misplaced, since fantasy can serve useful social functions, and can conceal unconscious science, for example with the social and psychological value of worship and ritual. But I don’t agree it is ever completely wrong to point out that a fantasy is factually incorrect. A sound evidentiary basis in knowledge is rather what I contend is the real basis of sound values.

You again missed the point. Motivation is to be assessed separately from epistemic foundations or factual basis. Factuality can be one element of motivation, and it is certainly one that deserves respect. But it is not overriding, as my example about Churchill was meant to demonstrate.

This discussion raises the vexed problem of the relation between facts and values, a central theme in philosophy brought to focus by Hume’s assertion that you cannot logically derive an ought from an is, that factual statements never entail a decision about what we should value.

While perhaps logically coherent, I think that Hume’s view, at the basis of positivism, fails in practice because we do routinely believe that facts entail moral response. For example, in Churchill’s insistence on war against Hitler, the British people accepted that the fact of German aggression morally required British resistance as an expression of cultural values.

But again, motivation that lacks sound epistemic foundations deserves stringent critique. That is not at all to say people should not have faith, because we can never base a decision solely on evidence, but must always bring to bear general moral principles.

The reason this distinction (which you seem unable to even see) is important is that the people who are attached to beliefs about the supernatural are looking at it as the difference between civilized life and anarchy, and when you attack that you are not "patting them on the head" you are pointing a spear at their deepest motivations. If you are so blinded by issues of epistemological justification that you cannot see the person and the meaning of the proposition in their life, you become worse than irrelevant.

Really, that is an excellent point you are making here Harry, and I am alive to the dilemma you raise. Political stability depends on social consensus and trust. That is why Constantine insisted on a common dogma with the Nicene Creed, and why the government of the People’s Republic of China retains its assessment that Mao was 70% good and 30% bad to secure social stability. But there is also a slow tectonic issue at play here, that rigid beliefs eventually become obsolete, and so far removed from experience that they collapse.

Creationism and supernaturalism enable some very helpful social values, but their incoherence also leads to a broad social contempt on the part of the secular world for the whole of the associated theological package of Christianity. That is why I call for faith to shift its base from myth to reason, to develop a theory of social evolution that builds upon the valuable precedents within religion rather than proposing some revolutionary abandonment of all faith.

I do not argue for avoiding dialogue because of this issue, but I do insist that people who consider themselves the smarter side in a discussion have the obligation to understand the people they are discussing with. Dismissing their entire life purpose with a condescending phrase like "emotional comfort" doesn't cut it

I certainly do not dismiss anyone’s entire life purpose. However, when a person sincerely believes that their purpose in life is to get to heaven after they die, I try to find a valid unconscious meaning within this delusion. For example, Weber argued in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism that such heavenly aims enabled deferment of pleasure and promoted an investment culture.

Sexual fidelity, which I would argue is the issue at the heart of fundamentalist values, is hardly outside "a scientific value system." The fact that their values are all connected to that through the concept of sin is not mistaken, either

That is another good point, but it raises some complex problems in religious psychology. Believing in Jesus in the fundamentalist sense has proven a highly adaptive moral system, justifying stable conservative values and protecting against anarchic experiment. That seems to me a big part of why Christianity still has such strong social purchase in ways that appear superficially irrational, such as fear of hellfire. I would like to be able to respect conventional values while promoting a conversation about how they can be rationally justified.

Perhaps you feel that sexual fidelity is mere "emotional comfort" but I suggest you not talk as if you see life that way when addressing most religious people.

Far from it, but the point here is that sexual fidelity is a central example of a good social ethic that is supported by a delusional theory, the emotional comfort of a personal Lord and Savior. It is a very difficult problem how to rebase good outcomes on logical foundations, helping to show how our brains are not completely rational. I see the recognition that the Bible has powerful allegorical meaning as central to this problem.

Carrier’s demolition of Erhman’s Did Jesus Exist? at http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/1026 and elsewhere is comprehensive, and illustrates that “severe incoherence” is a good description for both Erhman and Crossan, who maintain a purely emotional belief in Jesus against all evidence.

First and foremost, the blog you cite does not address Crossan at all. [/quote] We can look elsewhere for discussion of Crossan. An example is http://vridar.org/2013/01/09/crossans-p ... did-exist/ which argues that Crossan applies dogmatic presuppositions to defend the incoherent belief that gospel fiction is compatible with the existence of Jesus.

Second, his criticisms of Ehrman, while apparently valid (I am not an expert), do not establish incoherence. The word Carrier uses over and over, "sloppy", is the correct word. He amply demonstrates that Ehrman was sloppy, and the criticism is fair enough, though it should be kept in mind that Ehrman was writing before OHJ was published, so Carrier was up to his eyeballs in the details of the material while Ehrman was probably tossing off a shallow review in response to someone asking him to give his take on the issue because he was becoming known as a scholar who could be taken seriously by both Christians and skeptics.

Ehrman has been cited by some rather rank rationalisers as providing proof that mythicism is incoherent, even though his slapdash review does nothing of the sort. This helps to illustrate the power dynamics at play in this debate, that serious analysis is trumped in some circles by superficial nonsense because that is what people want to believe.

I think the fidelity dynamic you mentioned is an important subconscious background here, especially considering Carrier’s rather disturbing comments about polyamory. Many Christians would accept the ad hominem argument that a person who promotes adultery cannot be a serious scholar.

Third, his "demolition" is not "comprehensive." Carrier takes crucial liberties himself with the evidence, presumably because of motivated reasoning, and his disgust with Ehrman's sloppiness is nowhere near the same thing as establishing a case for any other interpretation of the evidence.

Recall I did say “and elsewhere”, so I was just citing that blog as a first port of call. To really explore this topic in detail, see the brilliant collection of essays http://www.amazon.com.au/Ehrman-Quest-H ... B00C9N0WBI which are the best source I have seen describing the emerging paradigm. Incidentally I am particularly supportive of Frank Zindler’s argument about Jesus Christ as Avatar of the Age of Pisces, a topic which routinely falls stillborn from the press, to use Hume’s phrase about his own work.

I was apparently confusing his treatment of Freke and Gandy (I have seen his response on YouTube) with his response to Doherty (and Price, evidently).

The complete absence of all mention of astrotheology from Carrier’s work is to my mind evidence of serious prejudice on his part. Freke and Gandy focus on the secret mystery schools as the foundation of Christianity. I am yet to see any coherent engagement with their work by Carrier.

I think you would have trouble substantiating a claim that Crossan is being "purely emotional" in his historicitous approach. Crossan is methodical and avoids apologetics. He does interpret things in light of his overarching hypotheses (motivated reasoning) but that is how good detective work is done, and I don't know of any scholars pinning a charge of bad methodology on his interpretations.

Your mention of motivated reasoning helps show the strong relevance of this very extended discussion to the thread topic, how confirmation bias, motivated reasoning and anchoring beliefs distort our logical processes. I simply believe that religion is the best example of that broad problem.

When even a writer as distinguished and intelligent as Crossan can be acknowledged by you as applying motivated reasoning, it helps to show that this is all a topic very worthy of careful analysis. My citation of critique of Crossan above does in fact cast his methods into question, illustrating that mysterious commitments to religious tradition exercise a power over people’s thought processes which can be hard to explain and understand in purely rational terms.

[youkrst]

Yes Harry

Possibly I was thinking of theology as in a bunch of crap that justifies absurd doctrines that ruin lives, the word traditional there may have been the red rag.

But perhaps you were thinking of something other, say some fine Tillich essays or such.

To me great tomes dedicated to an imbecilic misreading of mythology was the sort of thing the term "traditional theology" was bringing to mind.

It is much easier to fool someone than it is to convince them they have been fooled, as the saying goes.