November 30, 2009

• John Loftus and Keith Parsons on Naturalistic Total Depravity

  Intro:

  It should be no surprise we atheists have our pessimists in our ranks.  It's a shame when people turn their subjective perspectives into an ideology to be imposed on everyone else at the expense of the contrary evidence. 

  ---

  John Loftus blogged on what he called the strongest argument for Christianity:

  I [John Loftus] like what he [Keith Parsons] said at the end very much and agree wholeheartedly:

  Christian depiction of the human condition seems to be spot-on. This is one thing Christianity gets exactly right. There is something deeply and seemingly irremediably wrong with us. We stain everything we touch. Even the citadel of reason is breached. As an academic, I long regarded intellect as a very high if not quite the highest good. Now I think it is grossly overrated. I have come to realize that I.Q. and rationality are hardly correlated at all. On the contrary, I have discovered the appalling extent to which very many of the smartest people employ their intellectual gifts and high-powered intellectual tools (like analytic philosophy) to create and defend pernicious ideologies and towering lunacies. Maybe worse are those who sell their intellects to the service of the highest bidders. “Reason is a whore,” said Luther, and, by God, he was at least 90% right.

  Link

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  I pointed out:

  John,

  I think that's called pessimism, cherry picking, and confirmation bias, John. It's upsetting to see both Parsons and yourself take this route. It's only "spot on" if you are stuck in your own psychological rut. On behalf of the goodness of the human race where it can be found, please keep the insults to yourself.

  thanks,
  Ben
  

  ---

  John responded to someone else with this:

  Of course, I think if this is the strongest argument for Christianity then it's pathetic, you see. And I think Parsons would agree.

  But my point in the highlighted text is how pathetic we are with analytic philosophy. Our minds can use philosophy to defend lunacy.

  This isn't a credit to Christianity though, since it can be known via psychological studies. It's just that believers seem to be persuaded that this is why people don't believe.

  ---

  I inquired about one quote of his in the above comment:

  "it can be known via psychological studies"

  That all humans have something irremediably wrong with us?
  

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  John replied:

  War, maybe you can explain why intelligent people kill, maim and torture others. And maybe you can explain why human beings can be led to believe in lunacies. I saw a program where a Ph.D in psychology was duped by a con artist that he was a CIA operative and that the enemy was close to getting him, so he took her on a wild goose chase around Europe, taking every last penny she had before she wised up to him.

  Why are we humans so easily misled? And if this is true of intelligent people then don't think you're immune from this either. Participants in the Holocaust were intelligent, educated people. I doubt whether many of us would have done differently, although if we had then we could've fallen for something else.

  We're not that rational no matter what we pride ourselves on being. It's who we are no matter what words are used to describe us.

  Agnosticism then becomes the default position in my opinion.

  ---

  I replied:

  John,

  Well I didn't say humans haven't done lots of bad things or that IQ is a guarantee of good behavior.  That's such a simplistic view of human psychology as though what goes into making a stable moral agent with good character only has to do with something like their ability to pass an advanced placement math test.  That's just plain silly.  Just because the skeptical movement emphasizes reason as its primary virtue doesn't mean that a holistic lifestyle doesn't include healthy portions of a whole lot of other things working in conjunction with each other like a well oiled machine.  Your view turns reason into an idol, and obviously with the wrong expectations of it, it will fail you.  Reason is the slave of your emotions and if your emotions are screwed up, reason isn't necessarily going to save you. 

  As I recall, I originally pointed to cherry picking and confirmation bias as though the things you've listed necessarily characterize *everyone.*  Would *every* psychologist be misled in such a way as you've described?  Hardly.  One Christian once told me that the reason his psychosomatic healing story couldn't possibly be a cookie cutter psychosomatic healing story was because the person who had their subjective symptoms prayed away was a registered nurse.  Yes, because all nurses are created equally objective.  Why are you aping Christian logic, John?   

  How do you explain all the people who have never done any of the things you've listed and never will?  To even ask this sounds silly, and yet here I am.  Surely you've thought about it before, right?  What gives?  It's called disconfirmation.  Do I need to tell you that what they show on the nightly news doesn't actually characterize the entire world?  Surely not.  

  Do you like have any arguments against the Christian doctrine of total depravity or are you totally on the same page with the ideological self-deprecaters?  This post basically says, "Christians, they got psychology right!"  And that's just plainly ridiculous on so many levels.  I'm assuming you would claim to have grown up a bit emotionally since your apostasy, right?  So I'm a little perplexed here.

  If I've misunderstood your point of view in some way I apologize.  Feel free to bring me up to speed. 

  Ben 
  

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  John responded:

  Ben, my view is that I am dreadfully like other people. I am not much different than they are. If they can be led to believe false things then so can I. And if we can be led astray then we will commit atrocities. Of course, this makes me wise as Socrates said, precisely because I know this and am skeptical of ideas until tested.

  Christians got psychology right for the wrong reasons though. Salvation for them is in Jesus whereas salvation for me is recognizing the limitations of knowledge.

  ---

  I responded:

  John,

  I agree, we shouldn't feel like we are immune from all manner of failures.  However, that seems beside the point. 

  I was questioning your meta-analysis of the human condition.  There are people who are more well adjusted than I am, who are more moral than I am, who are more happy than I am, who are prone to less mistakes than I am, and who have a lot more experience than I do navigating life's difficulties.  And there are plenty of people who aren't as good as I happen to be at those things.  There is definitely a way to make a distinction between sociopaths and the best person ever (whoever that was) with a wide enough spectrum in between.  You can make a list of all the characteristics and values that you think make up a decent human being, and someone out there majors in just about all of them and someone minors in just about all of them.  Why wouldn't that be true? 

  Perhaps you might disagree about how practically wide the spectrum is.  People who have clinical depression for example could try to tell themselves that people without it aren't doing much better than they are.  And they're probably wrong.  They are wrong enough to say there's good reason to desire to not be depressed all the time.  And there are people out there who aren't depressed all the time.  And yes, it sucks that such things are unevenly distributed, but that doesn't change reality. 

  Sure we're all imperfect, but that doesn't justify the level of indictment you seem to have applied in such broad strokes and that's what I don't think is fair to humanity.  If you don't mind me saying so, your view appears to be more about you getting in touch with your own sense of humility rather than being dispassionately realistic with the evidence the world presents. 

  You say you are dreadfully like other people, but why can't you be *delightfully* like other people in other ways?  Have you no positive qualities?  Does no one respect anything about you?  I find that hard to believe.   

  Ben
  

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  John responded:

  Ben, nothing I said indicates human beings don't have positive qualities. We do. But humanity as a whole is a mess. We need to figure out why. How about this: Humanity is a mess. Science, skepticism and humility are the answers.

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  I responded:

  I think I can agree to that, but it doesn't seem like that's where we started out.  We've gone from "irremediably wrong" to "has a mess it can sort out."  Humanity needs to get its act together for sure, and I think it has the qualities to do it over time.  I doubt we'd even be having this conversation if that wasn't the case.   

  As to the why question, that doesn't seem terribly mysterious to me.  The engine of human character isn't perfect and requires genuine care and informed maintenance to run at peak efficiency.  That kind of thing simply isn't evenly distributed amongst the world (on top of genetic problems).   Plus we're living in the wake of inherited collective cultural prejudices, biases, and various other errors and systemic cultural difficulties that were never planned out in the first place.  It's like asking why all the modern roads are so screwed up. 

  I can't say that I'm really looking for another answer.  Do you think I'm missing something? 

  Ben

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  Outro:

  Do I honestly have to write a "how not to be a pessimist" guide for dummies?  Really? 

  Ben

  • 10:18 pm
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