Sally&#39;s Journal

I may be paraphrasing a little. He argues that even if the complexity of the universe proves that there is a god, there is no proof offered that that god is a Judeo-Christian deity and could, instead, by any one of a number of other options. And then he gives some of the other options which, actually, are almost all more interesting than the standard Judeo-Christian god.

Tis in Dialogues somewhere, if you're feeling like poking through it all.

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wraithwitch.livejournal.com

And there I was thinking I'd missed Hume mentioning some kinda proto-HPLovecraft-Azathoth =P

If I stay at the Oast any longer I shall look it up as that volume is certainly on the shelves...

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He might have done. But I think I missed that bit. He did talk about deities creating the world and then getting bored and buggering off (my reading of Hume is a mix of skim reading, dipping in and out, and reading analyses of his work by other people, so I'm being a bit sketchy here!)

If he did pre-figure Cthulhu by over 100 years I will definitely build a small creepy shrine to him.

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wraithwitch.livejournal.com

Ooh, maybe HPLovecraft read Hume and just took his ideas a little further? (and by little further I mean twisted them round a corner 'til the broke...)

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Thing is, Intelligent Design feeds into some very unpleasant modern-day politics.

In addition, it's possible to admire beautiful writing and description whilst still finding the argumentation contained within badly lacking.

There are a number of movements and belief systems throughout history which had awesome, genuinely remarkable aesthetics connected to belief systems and philosophies for which "it's all crap" is far too mild a description.

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But I do find it...I don't know...irritating when an exceedingly intelligent, complex and well thought through argument is dismissed with 'it's crap'. This is partly because 'it's crap' isn't actually an argument. It doesn't persuade anyone. It doesn't offer a counterpart. It just says 'I'm refusing to listen' and also absolutely limits you to talking only to people who already share your particular value system.

And I also think it's dumb to write off centuries of philosophical debate, discourse, ideas and thought, going back to Plato, because you don't like what a bunch of evangelical Christians in the United States are doing with it right now. That's like saying 'screw Hegel. Hitler used to read him'. Um. Yes. He did. That doesn't mean Hegel isn't still a really interesting and important philosopher.

Equally, Stalin was really fond of Marx. I'd rather like to believe that those men and women who have made a professional career based on studying Marx haven't been wasting their time and shouldn't have written it off with 'it's all bollocks' because Soviet Russia was a deeply unpleasant place to live.

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"It's crap" could mean several things, of course. It could mean "I don't want to debate this, I just want to believe you're wrong", but it could also mean "this argument does not survive attack from a number of well-known counterarguments I'm already familiar with and feel no need to rehash here."

ID arguments tend to fail on a number of reasonably well-known counterarguments. If the arguments you're quoting fail on the same counterarguments, no matter how beautifully they're put, it's hard to argue that they have value as arguments, although as you say, they may have value on other grounds, such as being beautiful examples of rhetoric, or having good points to make beyond their flawed central thesis.

(I don't know whether the arguments you're quoting do fail, of course - although I'd assume that if they didn't, they'd see more modern-day play in ID debates.)

Finally, since you've already introduced the nazis - I agree, to say in 2011 that we shouldn't study Hegel because Hitler liked him is clearly bullshit.

However, were I a Jew living in the late 1930s, I might be less enthusiastic about, say, supporting the excellent rhetoric in "Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_the_Nineteenth_Century)".

The extreme anti-science front are a clear danger right now, not 70 years ago, and ID is one of their main battlegrounds in an attempt to discredit rationalism.

Hence, whilst if the arguments work, they work, I'm not inclined to be overly nice to them.

Edited Date: 2012-01-26 11:15 pm (UTC)

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You are aware that the far right are still remarkably active in Europe and the UK at the moment and the philosophy of Nazism is not an ancient relic? Right?

I think, perhaps, we're coming at this from different perspectives. You are assuming that anyone discussing teleological theory is trying to convert you.

You're not trying to persuade/influence anyone who is either already someone who believes in Intelligent Design or is uncertain/undecided, and you're not debating philosophy or the history of philosophy, and if that is the case, I can see why 'it's all bollocks' would seem like a better response, as it's shutting down communication immediately.

Edited Date: 2012-01-26 11:34 pm (UTC)

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"You are assuming that anyone discussing teleological theory is trying to convert you. "

No, I'm not, nor am I, to rephrase your later points, deliberately shutting myself in an echo chamber.

If you have an argument for intelligent design that does in fact make logical sense and defeat all counter-arguments currently available, that's a different kettle of fish altogether.

However, on the assumption that you haven't stumbled upon that particular Grail, I'm actually trying to understand the value you see in arguments that don't fulfil those criteria.

I've already posited that you, perhaps, find value in their ideas beyond the central argument. Or that the value you see lies in the power or technique of their rhetoric, language, or argumentative style. In addition, I can certainly see that studying them in the context of the intellectual conversation of the time is also interesting.

However, you seem to be emphatically denying that the value you're finding in them is based in any of those things.

So what else are you positing as their value?

As a side note - nowhere so far have I said that "it's all crap" is the only appropriate response. I am, however, arguing that it may not be the wholly inappropriate response under all circumstances you characterise it as.

Finally - yes, of course I pay some attention to modern politics. I'm not quite sure where you're going with the Nazi sarcasm (which is a phrase I've never used before).

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Re - nazism. You said that you felt that it was not inappropriate to read or study Hegel without dismissing him but didn't feel the same about design theory as Intelligent Design was an issue now, and not something that had happened 70 years ago. I was pointing out that this wasn't the case. That, in fact, there are still crazy right wing people swallowing Nazi philosophy.

Re - 'it's all crap'. I said that when reading lots of interesting philosophy, from Plato, to Cicero, to the philosophers of the enlightenment, I realized how little I understood about this particular philosophical argument and how it deserved a more thorough and intelligent critique in return.And as a note, I've actually never heard these 'standard arguments' you keep talking about. I've actually never really looked at Intelligent Design before. I've no idea what the standard arguments are. All I've ever heard is 'well, IT is stuff that crazy American Christians say, so it's wrong'.

And it's that that I am realizing is really weak and not actually very satisfying to listen to. And I liked that Hume did give me more than that, and gave me an awesome and interesting and equally intelligent rebuttal of the design theory, which was what this LJ post originally was - a little love note to Hume. I like people who make me think.

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Philosophy - all makes sense!

Standard arguments - I'm short on time right now, but I'll try and find a useful primer on them. Hume's argument is one of them - it's one that Richard Dawkins quotes, I'm told.

Can you precis the arguments for ID that you're finding impressive?

Nazism - I changed from Hegel to Chamberlain as an example deliberately. Having looked into it, Hegel's philosophy doesn't inevitably lead toward Nazi policies - but Chamberlain does.

ID, if accepted as an argument, badly undermines all evidence-based policymaking and decision making in general.

Now, if ID is actually right, then science is just going to have to deal with that.

But all current evidence suggests it really, really isn't, but that a lot of powerful crazy people want to push it into being accepted truth anyway.

Of course, that doesn't mean we shouldn't study ID arguments - or Chamberlain on the rise of the Aryan people, for that matter. It doesn't mean we shouldn't give credit where credit is due for great writing, interesting philosophical points, or historical context. (Foundations of the Nineteenth Century was hugely feted at the time of its publication.)

But it does rather mean that a lot of people, including me, who would like to see the US government continue to fund scientific research, will be liable to prefix any such discussion with "yes, but we do all know that these arguments are bollocks, right?"

Edited Date: 2012-01-27 10:27 am (UTC)

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Standard arguments:

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html#CI

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There's a quote by the Dalai Lama (I'll see if I can dig it out) where he's talking about art. He says that it isn't aesthetics that makes something beautiful, but instead it's the effect it has on people that defines whether or not a thing has beauty. Appearance is basically irrelevant.

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I would be interested to read that.

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Trying to find it now, but I have a feeling I may have read it in a library book. I've found a picture of the piece (it's this statue (http://www.flickr.com/photos/tango48/2950103268/)) he's talking about along with a summary of what he said, but I can't find the actual quote yet. From what I remember, he's asked what he thinks is the most beautiful work of art (or maybe the most beautiful statue?) and he describes this one, even though he's never seen it, as it's inspired so many people.

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And five minutes later I find it. Gimme a mo.

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From "The Story of Tibet, Conversations with the Dalai Lama" by Thomas Laird, Atlantic Books (London), 2006, pp. 101-103

[When asked about his favourite statue]
The Dalai Lama said that his favourite representation of the Buddha is a three-foot-high stone image carved in the ancient kingdom of Ghandara, about A.D. 100. Today, the statue is in a glass case in the Lahore Museum, Pakistan, famous as the Wonder House in the opening of Rudyard Kipling's novel Kim.

It is an image of the Buddha on the night of his enlightenment. He had just completed six years of extreme asceticism; he had starved himself and was nearly naked. His belly is obviously shrunken, along with his gaunt cheeks, and his blood vessels stand out clearly over his emaciated rib cage. The stone carving is remarkably detailed. The Buddha has only just broken an extended fast and eaten enough food to sustain the long nights of meditation that will lead to complete liberation, underneath the Bo tree at Bodh Gaya, on the Full Moon of May. The Dalai Lama has never seen the statue in person, only pictures of it.

"You say this is your favourite picture of the Buddha?" I asked. "What do you see?"

"It clearly conveys the message that is taught in Buddhist texts," the Dalai Lama said. "It shows how we must undertake many hardships during spiritual practice for countless eons. This is clearly demonstrated in his life, and in this statue. When we compare the hardship that we have undergone to those of the Buddha, then we see how spoiled we are. Especially, generally speaking, those who have the name Tulku, they are much spoiled."

"And when you see this statue, what do you feel?" was my next question.

"What we really need," the Dalai Lama explained, "is the determination to work hard. Like Milarepa and many authentic lamas or master, they all spent time in hardship and then they had high spiritual realizations. It is very difficult to achieve anything if we follow the easy way. For instance, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche also took hard practice by isolating himself in a cave for three years. Later in his life, he actually shed tears from happiness when he recalled that time in the cave. It was years of hard work and meditation, but it was the happiest period of his life. So that is the proper way. I think many of us, including myself, are hoping to achieve Buddhahood easily."

"So the Lahore Buddha," I said, "reminds you that without hard work, it is impossible to achieve enlightenment. But the statue is also a great artistic achievement, isn't it?"

"I don't have much sensitivity to the aesthetics," the Dalai Lama replied.

"Yes, you have given me that feeling," I said. "Why don't you appreciate the artistic achievement?"

"Strictly speaking," the Dalai LAma said, "from a Buddhist practitioner's point of view, if it is an image of the Buddha, then mearly because of that fact you regard it with respect. Not because it is costly or beautiful-looking or made of gold or made of mud."

"But it does count if the artist has skillfully conveyed the determination of the Buddha, very powerfully, in a statue," I said. "It is preferred over an ugly image that does not convey his determination."

"Yes, that is true," the Dalai Lama conceded.

"So that counts," I said, "and this Lahore Buddha you like more than any other Buddha because it conveys the determination. This art is worthwhile because of that."

"Yes," he said.

"But generally speaking, if it is made of diamonds or mud, or beautiful or not, it doesn't matter," I said.

"That is so" was his answer.

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taimatsu

I had no idea he was doing theology. You know I used to study theology, right? I should ask him what sorts of things he's working on...

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