Such words, for example, as “principle”, “wealth” and “spiritual” have meanings which can never be conveyed by a simple picture of an object or an action, or of a relation between objects and actions. Their proper meaning is a kind of summary or abstraction of many different things. . . . To obtain clear meanings for any but the common names of real objects requires a certain amount of mental effort, and idleness leads us to be content with taking many words into our speech and thought without making the effort.
(Thouless and Thouless 2011, p. 35)
Aggression
In a follow-up to his debate with Christopher Hitchens (accessed 27.09.11)), Tony Blair suggests that it is “an aggressive secularism that... joins forces with the fanatics”. No sensible atheist only thinks of religion as what extremists do, but clearly the actions of some religious believers do cause great harm. If Blair thinks that publishing books and articles and lobbying for a secular state counts as “aggression”, what word would he use to characterize the bombing of large parts of Iraq and the killing of tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of civilians?
Arrogance
Scientists who are prominent atheists are sometimes dismissed by religious believers as “arrogant”. (Scientists who are religious and who make large, unsubstantiated claims for their beliefs tend to be praised by these same religious believers.)
In an article on Therapeutic Touch (The Skeptic 22(4)/23(1), p. 27). Mahlon Wagner cites the authors of a study who were bold enough to state that “control of confounding variables was not possible, and therefore not an object of concern”. Primed by exposure to Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science blog, I too share Wagner’s alarm that this “seems to reflect an arrogance that scientific protocol is irrelevant as long as positive results are obtained”.
Many Christians believe that God created humans because he needed the fellowship of humans. Passing over the odd idea that a being such as God is in need of anything, Cunningham (2010, p. 105) points out that
Humans need the fellowship of other humans, but we don’t seek the fellowship of things we create.Even if creators did seek fellowing with their creation (p. 106):
Couldn’t God have created a race of more intelligent, compassionate, cooperative beings than human beings for fellowship?But of course, some Christians already think of themselves as that higher race, and in their arrogance even imagine non-believers to be a lower form of life. It stands to reason that they are so exalted, in spite of their dissembled humility, since they spend so much time communing with God, gossiping with each other over the nature of their personal relationship with Jesus.
Double standard
In an article on Therapeutic Touch (The Skeptic 22(4)/23(1), pp. 27–28). Mahlon Wagner exposes the intellectual double standards that are often at work in alternative medicine:
On the one hand they seem to be strongly committed to research. But when design flaws are found or the research is not supportive of the claims, the proponents of these alternative approaches quickly switch and say that science is irrelevant or is not necessary or that the mysterious physics of quantum mechanics surely has answers. . .Of course, any regular reader of Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science blog will be familiar with the temptation to bury bad results, but any scientist who does succumb to this kind of temptation will presumably not go all anti-science in the way that proponents of alternative medicine often do.
Militant atheism
This isn’t just any atheism, this is militant atheism.
Some Christian commentators and apologists for religion, it seems, have taken inspiration from the M&S advertising campaign that escalated to hyperbolic levels the adjectives describing their food products. Instead of promoting anything as sensual as a chocolate pudding bursting open its hot laval core cooled by rivulets of silky double cream, these pious folk have quite another agenda, and prefer to let rip their particular brand of humourless and rancid cynicism. When they see Richard Dawkins, it’s as if that old Fleetwood Mac song starts up in their heads, the soundtrack to an inflated scheme of fantasized depravity: here is no ordinary man, no thoughtful, scholarly professor of biology, no peaceful, law-abiding citizen, no humane member of the community who happens to be an atheist – no, this is not just any atheist, here be a monster of militant atheism. How ironic that those who regularly bellyache about reductionistic science themselves reduce a person to a mendacious soundbite.
It’s become fashionable among the witless to reach for the adjective “militant” when describing atheists. Steven Hepburn uses the phrase “militant atheist” in this Face to faith piece (see also “The context of eternity”), while the fevered imagination of Theo Hobson fancies there is “an endless appetite for militant atheism” (accessed 18.11.11). Such writers debase the English language with their word games, and disrespect the memories of all those who have actually suffered at the hands of militant religion throughout history.
What word would they use to describe the murder of Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad (accessed 18.11.11)? He investigated links between the military and al-Qaida, and was known for delving deep into the murky underworld of Islamist militancy. Note the appropriate use of the word “militancy” in this context. What fate would befall a journalist who dared infiltrate the inner core of “militant atheism”? As someone committed to enquiry and establishing the truth, this journalist – and I’m having a wild guess here – would be welcomed with open arms and a cup of tea.
Steven Pinker (2011, p. 132) points out:
Medieval Christendom was a culture of cruelty. ... Sadistic tortures were also inflicted by the Christian church during its inquisitions, witch hunts, and religious wars.Though Christianity began as a pacifist movement, things rapidly went downhill in 312 CE when the Roman ruler Constantine had a vision of a flaming cross in the sky with the words “In this sign thou shalt conquer” and converted the roman Empire to this militant version of the faith. Perhaps the reason we don’t hear the phrase “militant Christian” is because it has long been oxymoronic?
Suggestion
According to Thouless and Thouless (2011, pp. 128–29):
The psychological fact of suggestion is that if statements are made again and again in a confident manner, without argument or proof, then their hearers will tend to believe them quite independently of their soundness and of the presence or absence of evidence for their truth. ... A speaker successfully using suggestion relies, then, on three things: (1) repeated affirmation, (2) a confident, insistent method of speaking, and (3) prestige.There are some, believe it or not, “who prefer that people should act blindly and enthusiastically under their guidance rather than that they should decide calmly and wisely”. Two groups of professionals who perhaps contain more than their fair share of such people are advertisers and priests. Thouless and Thouless (2011, p. 130) continue:
The psychology of advertising is a very sophisticated business – rather more so than that of political speeches, since it combines verbal and visual forms of suggestion. ... I once analysed part of a sermon constructed on this principle, and found that the preacher had in quite different forms repeated a single idea 31 times in the course of 13 sentences.
Truth
What is truth? The Philosophy Magazine set this as the Question of the Month in a recent issue. I submitted an essay of just under 400 words – and it won a prize! It appeared in the September/October 2011 issue, along with several other entries:
A straight ruler appears bent when half-submerged in a glass of water. What is the truth of the matter? True beliefs portray the world as it is; false beliefs portray the world as other than it is. Propositions that describe the world can be either true or false, so truth’s character is both logical and empirical. Non-contradiction ensures that `the ruler is straight’ and `the ruler is not straight’ cannot both be true at the same time, and observation, in principle, settles which is the case.
In practice, of course, things are not so simple. This observer’s truth would seem to change as the ruler enters the water. Perhaps this is to be expected? After all, if true beliefs describe the world and the world changes, then truth must change too. However, relativists rubbing their hands at the thought that we can each construct our own truth and sceptics finger-wagging that there is no such thing should both hang fire.
As well as the logical principle of non-contradiction, we are also guided by the empirical principle that nature is uniform and not capricious. Solid objects are not usually deformed by immersion in water. So, we can approach a truth that is independent of observers by, ironically, taking account of the observer, by looking at the bigger picture: optical effects resulting from refraction of light explain why the ruler appears bent but, really, is straight.
But, how can we be sure there is a world to describe? What if reality itself is an illusion, like the bent stick, a flickering shadow on the cave wall? It’s possible, but we have yet to see the flame while we can see what causes the stick to appear bent.
We may never know whether our observations are just shadows of what is truly real, but we should resist both mysticism and metaphysics when thinking about truth. Reaching a consensus on an objective description of the world is possible in principle: that is the wonder of science. Consensus on our subjective descriptions is impossible in principle: that is the wonder of consciousness.
Truth is the single currency of the sovereign mind that is the knowing subject, and the best thought – in philosophy, science, art – discriminates between the two sides of the coin and appreciates both the unity of reality and the diversity of experience.
(Wainwright 2011, p. 34)
Some of the books I found useful are by Blackburn (2005), Frankfurt (2007), Haack (2009), Lynch (2004) and Stenger (2011), although with a concept as widely used (and misused) as “truth” there are endless ways in which we form our own view. In fact, an important step in my understanding of the layering of subjective experience and an objective worldview was a single word – “clumsily” – in the following passage in Anne Tyler’s Amateur Marriage (p. 184):Every sound he made was identifiable. She didn’t have to be present. The attic stairway sliding through the trap door in the hall ceilings; his uneven tread up and down, twice, with suitcases clumsily knocking against the wooden steps; and then the stairway sliding back.In this wonderful passage Tyler’s third-person narrative describes the scene using details that could be shared by any observer. Then the word “clumsily” switches us almost imperceptibly into Pauline’s consciousness. Remove that word, and the casual reader might not notice the difference, but it shows us what this character thinks of her husband, Michael.
In a universe without consciousness, the adverb “clumsily” would be redundant. Nothing could be described as being done clumsily. For that, you need a point of view, a person observing another agent capable of acting either clumsily or gracefully. The relevance here is that Michael has a war wound in his lower back, and his movement is somewhat impaired. An empathic observer who knows this might think he was managing quite well, and would probably refrain from using pejorative words like “clumsily”. Pauline of course knows all about her husband’s injury, but she still can’t help thinking in these cruel terms. No wonder their marriage is over.
Misuses of the word
Cunningham (2010, p. 192) describes how Francis Collins uses the word “truth” in its everyday sense while at the same time shielding his ideas from the usual standards of how we determine what is and is not true. In a particularly abstruse and unintelligible passage, Collins says, “Biologos is not intended as a scientific theory. Its truth can be tested only by the spiritual logic of the heart, the mind, and the soul.”
Words
Lewis Carroll captures an important feature of language in this famous exchange:
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
