Pressuring people to violate conscience

If you pressure someone to act against their deeply-set moral beliefs, then your pressure is an action which, if successful, results in:

1. the person’s changing their deeply-set moral beliefs, or

2. the person’s acting against their deeply-set moral beliefs.

Our experience of life shows that (2) is rather more likely than (1). People rarely change their deeply-set moral beliefs, but they act against them all too frequently.

But it is wrong to act against one’s moral beliefs. Moreover, acting against one’s moral beliefs is more likely to be culpable than other wrongdoings. For in other wrongdoings, there is always the possibility of being inculpable due to ignorance. But when one acts against one’s moral beliefs, that excuse isn’t available. There is still the possibility that one is insane or that fear of the pressure has taken away one’s free will, but it seems very plausible that most of the time when someone acts against their deeply-set moral beliefs, they are culpable.

Thus, if you pressure someone to act against their deeply-set moral beliefs, there is a very significant chance—bigger than 25%, it is reasonable to estimate—that if you succeed, you will do so by having gotten them to act culpably wrongly. But we should have learned from Socrates that there is nothing worse in life than culpable wrongdoing. Thus the pressure risks a greater than 25% chance of imposing a harm worse than death on the person being pressured.

There are times when it is permissible to impose on someone a 25% risk of death, but that requires very grave reasons indeed, and one should go to great lengths to avoid such an imposition if at all possible. One requires even graver reasons to pressure someone to go against their deeply-set moral beliefs, and one should go to greater lengths to avoid such an imposition.

Remark 1: Here is a kind of a case where it is easier to justify pressure. The harm in violating a mistaken conscience is two-fold: (i) doing wrong, and (ii) culpably so. But now suppose that in fact the person is objectively morally obligated to perform the action they are being pressured to. In fact, let’s suppose the following: the person has a particularly grave objective obligation to ϕ, but they mistakenly believe they have a mild or moderate obligation not to ϕ. Then we may imagine that if they ϕ, they culpably violate a moderate moral obligation, but if they refuse to ϕ, they inculpably violate a grave moral obligation. Which is better? Is it more destructive of one’s moral character to inculpably violate a grave obligation or to culpably violate a moderate one? This is not clear. So in a case like that, pressure is a lot easier to justify.

Conversely, where pressure is hardest to justify is where there is no objective moral duty for the person to perform the action they are being pressured to.

Remark 2: Does it make any difference whether the deeply-set moral beliefs are religious in nature or not? My initial thought is that it does not. In both cases, we have the grave harm of being pressured to wrongdoing, and likely culpable wrongdoing. But on reflection, there can be a difference. Our lives as persons revolve around significant interpersonal relationships. Damaging the deepest relationships between persons requires extremely strong justification. That is why, for instance, we do not (with some exceptions) require spouses to testify against each other in court. But in the fact the deepest relationship in a person’s life is their relationship with God. And to go not only against morality but against what one takes to be the will of God imposes particularly nasty damage on that relationship. Thus when the person cognizes the action they are being pressured to take as not only wrong but contrary to the will of God, the harm that befalls them in doing the action is especially grave. Note that for this harm, it is not necessary that the action be contrary to the will of God—it is enough that the agent believes that it is.

I mean the argument in the previous paragraph to depend on the fact that the person really is in a relationship with God, and in particular that God really exists. I am not talking of the merely subjective harm of thinking that an imaginary relationship is harmed. The extent to which that argument can be extended to people whose religion is non-theistic takes thought. One might hope that these people are still having a relationship with God in and through their religion, and then a version of the point may well apply.

Socrates and thinking for yourself

There is a popular picture of Socrates as someone inviting us to think for ourselves. I was just re-reading the Euthyphro, and realizing that the popular picture is severely incomplete.

Recall the setting. Euthyphro is prosecuting a murder case against his father. The case is fraught with complexity and which a typical Greek would think should not be brought for multiple reasons, the main one being that the accused is the prosecutor’s father and we have very strong duties towards parents, and a secondary one being that the killing was unintentional and by neglect. Socrates then says:

most men would not know how they could do this and be right. It is not the part of anyone to do this, but of one who is far advanced in wisdom. (4b)

We learn in the rest of the dialogue that Euthyphro is pompous, full of himself, needs simple distinctions to be explained, and, to understate the point, is far from “advanced in wisdom”. And he thinks for himself, doing that which the ordinary Greek thinks to be a quite bad idea.

The message we get seems to be that you should abide by cultural norms, unless you are “far advanced in wisdom”. And when we add the critiques of cultural elites and ordinary competent craftsmen from the Apology, we see that almost no one is “advanced in wisdom”. The consequence is that we should not depart significantly from cultural norms.

This reading fits well with the general message we get about the poets: they don’t know how to live well, but they have some kind of a connection with the gods, so presumably we should live by their message. Perhaps there is an exception for those sufficiently wise to figure things out for themselves, but those are extremely rare, while those who think themselves wise are extremely common. There is a great risk in significantly departing from the cultural norms enshrined in the poets—for one is much more likely to be one of those who think themselves wise than one of those who are genuinely wise.

I am not endorsing this kind of complacency. For one, those of us who are religious have two rich sets of cultural norms to draw on, a secular set and a religious one, and in our present Western setting the two tend to have sufficient disagreement that complacency is not possible—one must make a choice in many cases. And then there is grace.

State promotion of supernatural goods

Should a state promote supernatural goods like salvation? Here is a plausible argument, assuming the existence of supernatural goods:

1. Supernatural goods are good.

2. Any person or organization that can promote a good without detracting from any other good or promoting any bad should promote the good.

3. The state is an organization.

4. Thus, other things being equal, the state ought to promote supernatural goods when it can.

Here is a second one:

5. If a state can contribute to the innocent pleasure of someone (whether inside or outside the state) with no cost to anyone, it should.

6. Humans receiving supernatural goods gives the angels an innocent pleasure.

7. So, the state should promote human salvation when it can do so at no cost.

One might think that the above arguments show that we should have a theocracy. But there are two reasons why that does not follow.

First, it might be that the state is not an entity that can promote human salvation, or at least not one that can do so without cost to its primary defining tasks. This could be for reasons such as that any attempt by the state to promote supernatural goods is apt to misfire or that any state promotion of supernatural goods would have to come at the cost of natural goods (such as freedom or justice). I kind of suspect something of this sort is true, and hence that the conclusions of the arguments above are merely trivially true.

Second, and more interestingly to me, a theocratic view would hold that it is a part of the state’s special
duties of care towards its citizens that it promote their salvation. But the above arguments do not show that.

Indeed, the first argument applies to any organization, and I suspect the second one does as well. A chess club needs to promote salvation, other things being equal, perhaps every bit as much as the state. Free goods should always be promoted for all. (Worry: Am I too utilitarian here?)

Moreover, the state’s special defining duties of care are towards the state’s citizens. But it does not follow from the above arguments that the state has any special reason to promote the supernatural goods of its citizens. The arguments only show that the state, like any other organization, has a general duty to promote the supernatural goods of everyone (other things being equal).

Mystery and religion

Given what we have learned from science and philosophy, fundamental aspects of the world are mysterious and verge on contradiction: photons are waves and particles; light from the headlamp on a fast train goes at the same speed relative to the train and relative to the ground; objects persist while changing; we should not murder but we should redirect trolleys; etc. Basically, when we think deeper, things start looking strange, and that’s not a sign of us going right. There are two explanations of this, both of which are likely a part of the truth: reality is strange and our minds are weak.

It seems not unreasonable to expect that if there were a definitive revelation of God, that revelation would also be mysterious and verge on contradiction. Of the three great monotheistic religions, Christianity with the mystery of the Trinity is the one that fits best with this expectation. At the same time, I doubt that this provides much of an argument for Christianity. For while it is not unreasonable to expect that God’s revelation would be paradoxical, it is a priori a serious possibility that God’s revelation might be so limited that what was revealed would not be paradoxical. And it would also be a priori a serious possibility that while creation is paradoxical, God is not, though this last option is a posteriori unlikely given what we learn from the mystical experience traditions found in all the three monotheistic religions.

So, I am not convinced that there is a strong argument for Christianity and against the other two great monotheistic religions on the grounds that Christianity is more mysterious. But at least there is no argument against Christianity on the basis of its embodying mysteries.

The sexual, the secret and the sacred

Some ethical truths are intuitively obvious but it is hard to understand the reasons for them. For instance, sexual behavior should be, at least other things being equal, kept private. But why? While I certainly have this intuition, I have always found it deeply puzzling, especially since privacy is opposed to the value of knowledge and hence always requires a special justification.

But here is a line of thought that makes sense to me now. There is a natural connection between the sacred and the ritually hidden recognized across many religions. Think, for instance, of how the holiest prayers of the Tridentine Mass are said inaudibly by the priest, or the veiling of the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Jerusalem, or the mystery religions. The sacred is a kind of mysterium tremendum et fascinans, and ritual hiddenness expresses the mysteriousness of the sacred particularly aptly.

If sexuality is sacred—say, because of its connection with the generation of life, and given the sacredness of human life—then it is unsurprising if it is particularly appropriately engaged in in a context that involves ritual hiddenness.

Note that this is actually more of a ritual hiddenness than an actual secrecy. The fact of sex is not a secret in the case of a married couple, just as the content of the inaudible prayers of the Tridentine Mass is printed publicly in missals, but it is ritually hidden.

I wonder, too, if reflection on ritual hiddenness might not potentially help with the “problem of hiddenness”.

Pascal's Wager at the social level

There is a discussion among political theorists on whether religious liberty should be taken as special, or just another aspect of some standard liberty like personal autonomy.

Here’s an interesting line of thought. If God exists, then religious liberty is extremely objectively important, indeed infinitely important. Now maybe a secular state should not presuppose that God exists. There are strong philosophical arguments on both sides, and while I think the ones on the side of theism are conclusive, that is a controversial claim. However, on the basis of the arguments, it seems that even a secular state should think that it is a very serious possibility that God exists, with a probability around 1/2. But if there is a probability around 1/2 that religious liberty is infinitely important, then the religious liberty is special.

Religions as "faiths"

It is common in our culture to see religion as a matter of faith. Indeed, religions are sometimes even called “faiths”.

Here is a reason why one should be cautious with conceptualizing things in this way. Faith is a specifically Christian concept, with Christianity being centrally conceptualized as a matter of faith in Jesus Christ. To think about all religions in terms of faith is to presuppose that the Christian understanding of what is central to Christianity yields a correct way of understanding the life of other religions.

Either Christianity is or is not basically true.

If Christianity is basically true, then its self-understanding in terms of faith is likely correct. However, the truth of Christianity does not give one good reason to think other religions, with the possible exception of Judaism, would be rightly understood in terms of the concept of faith.

If Christianity is not basically true, then we should be cautious even about its own self-characterization. Self-understanding is an epistemic achievement, and if Christianity is not basically true, then we should not take it for granted that faith has the central role it is claimed to have. And we should certainly not expect that the self-characterization of a religion that is not true should also apply to other religions.

The argument from highly intelligent saints who are Christians

1. There have been many highly intelligent saints who were Christians.

2. If there have been may highly intelligent saints who were Christians, then probably (insofar as the above evidence goes) the central doctrines of Christianity are true.

3. So, probably (insofar as the above evidence goes), the central doctrines of Christianity are true.

(An interesting variant is to replace “are true” in (2) and (3) with “are approximately true”, and then to combine the conclusion with my previous post.)

I do not plan to defend 1. That’s too easy. Note, though, that while easy, it’s not trivial. I am not claiming that there were many highly intelligent people who were canonized “Saints” by the Catholic or Orthodox Church, though that’s true. Nor am I claiming that there were many highly intelligent people who were Christian saints. I am claiming that there are may highly intelligent people who were saints simpliciter, as well as being Christian.

What is a saint like? Saints are deeply morally good people who, insofar as it depends on them, lead a deeply flourishing human life. Their lives are meaningful and when seen closely—which may be difficult, as many saints are very unostentatious—these lives are deeply compelling to others. Saints tightly integrate the important components of their lives. In particular, those saints who are highly intelligent—and not all saints are intelligent, though all are wise—integrate their intellectual life and their moral life. Highly intelligent saints are reflective. They have an active and humble conscience that is on the lookout for correction, and this requires integration between the intellectual life and the moral life.

An intelligent saint who is a Christian is also a Christian saint. For Christianity is not the sort of doctrine that can be held on the peripheries of a well-lived life. Someone who is a Christian but to whose life Christianity is not central is neither a saint simpliciter nor a Christian saint. For a central part of being Christian is believing that Christianity should be central to one’s life, and an intelligent saint—in either sense—will see this and thus either conscientiously act on such a belief, making Christianity be central to her life, or else conclude that Christianity is false.

Now, the existence of a highly intelligent saint who is a Christian is evidence for coherence between central moral truths and the truth of Christianity. For if they were not coherent, the reflectiveness of the highly intelligent saint would likely have seen the incoherence, and her commitment to morality would have led to the rejection of Christianity. But it’s not just that the moral truths and the truth of Christianity cohere: the truths of Christianity support and motivate the moral life. For the saint who is a Christian is, as I just argued, also a Christian saint. And a Christian saint is motivated in the moral life by considerations central to Christianity—the love of God as shown in creation and in the incarnate Son’s sacrificial death on the cross.

It is difficult to have a coherent theory that includes in a highly integrated way deeply metaphysical beliefs and correct moral views in a way where the metaphysical beliefs support the moral ones. That a theory is such is significant evidence for the theory’s truth. More generally and loosely, I think that a person whose life is deeply compelling is likely to be right in those central beliefs of her that are tightly interwoven with what makes her life compelling. But the saint’s moral life is compelling, and if she is a Christian, then her central Christian beliefs are tightly interwoven with her moral life.

Hence, 2 is true.

Of course, the above is not all the evidence there is. What about highly intelligent saints who are not Christians? The existence of such may well weaken the argument. But at least, I think, the argument makes Christianity an intellectually serious option.

And there may be something we can say more specifically on a case by case basis about saints outside of Christianity. Crucial to my argument was that one cannot be a saint and a Christian and have the Christianity be peripheral to one’s moral life. But one can be a saint and an atheist and have the atheism be peripheral to one’s moral life. Atheism is a negative doctrine, after all. If one turns it into a positive motivational doctrine, one gets something like Russell’s “A Free Man’s Worship”. But that is too proud, too haughty, too cold, too dark to be the central motivational doctrine of a saint. A saint who is an atheist is, I suspect, not as likely to be an atheist saint as a saint who is a Christian is to be a Christian saint.

Eastern religions have their saints, but there is an obvious tension between the irrealism to which Eastern religions tend and moral truths about the importance of love of others, of corporal care for the needs of others. One can adhere to an irrealist philosophy and despite this live a life of service to others, but it is unlikely that the service to others be central to one’s life in the way that moral sainthood requires.

What about Jewish and Muslim saints? Well, it may be that many of the motivationally central parts of Judaism and Islam are shared by Christianity—though the converse is not true, given the motivational centrality of the Incarnation to Christianity. One might object that the transcendence and simplicitly of God as taught in Judaism and Islam is motivationally central. But classical Christian theism embraces the transcendence and simplicity of God—and the Incarnation and Trinity, too.

Spiritual but not religious

A lot of people identify as spiritual but not religious. It would be interesting to have statistics on how common this is among professional philosophers. There are lots of naturalists and a significant minority of theists of definite religion, but I just haven’t run across many in between. But shouldn’t one expect that there be a lot of philosophers like that, convinced by argument or just intuition that there is much more to the world than science could possibly get at, but not convinced by the arguments for any particular religion? Maybe it’s because as a profession we prefer definite views? Or maybe there are many philosophers in this category but they just don’t talk about it that much?

I do think it’s important not to downplay the intellectual bona fides of the “spiritual but not religious”. The arguments that there is more to the world and to life than there is room for in naturalism, that there is something “spiritual”, are very strong indeed. (Josh Rasmussen’s and my forthcoming Necessary Existence is relevant here, as are considerations about the meaning of life, the narrow space for normativity and mind on naturalist views, the implausibility of holding that there be a whole category of human experience that is never veridical, etc.) I think there are strong arguments that this something “spiritual” includes God, and there are strong arguments that Catholic Christianity is correct. But it should be very easy to imagine being convinced by the arguments for a spiritual depth to the world but not being convinced by the further arguments (I am not taking a stance in this post on whether it would be rational full stop to be in this position—I do, after all, think the arguments going all the way to Catholicism are strong).

Integration

It sure seems that:

1. A good human life is an integrated human life.

But suppose we have a completely non-religious view. Wouldn't it be plausible to think that there is a plurality of incommensurable human goods and the good life encompasses a variety of them, but they do not integrate into a unified whole? There is friendship, professional achievement, family, knowledge, justice, etc. Each of these constitutively contributes to a good human life. But why would we expect that there be a single narrative that they should all integrally fit into? The historical Aristotle, of course, did have a highest end, the contemplation of the gods, available in his story, and that provides some integration. But that's religion (though natural religion: he had arguments for the gods' existence and nature).

Nathan Cartagena pointed out to me that one might try to give a secular justification for (1) on empirical grounds: people whose lives are fragmented tend not to do well. I guess this might suggest that if there is no narrative that fits the various human goods into a single story, then one should make one, say by expressly centering one's life on a personally chosen pattern of life. But I think this is unsatisfactory. For I think that the norms that are created by our own choices for ourselves do not bear much weight. They are not much beyond hobbies, and hobbies do not bear much of the meaning of human life.

So all in all, I think the intuition behind (1) requires something like a religious view of life.

Music, religion and appreciation

I typically do not appreciate music at all. While there are rare exceptions, music typically leaves me aesthetically cold or annoys me (though there may be a non-aesthetic emotional impact, say of creepy music during a scary part of a movie). This inability to appreciate music is a kind of disability, one that I hope will be gone in heaven (plus the music there will be better), since music seems an important part of the human good of aesthetic appreciation.

I suspect that how I typically feel about music is how many (though not all) non-religious people feel about religion: while it may be good for others, it's just not something one finds oneself getting anything out of. But I think there is a crucial disanalogy. For it is uncontroversial that to be properly benefited by receptive aesthetic goods, like those proper to listening to music or contemplating a painting, one needs to experience them with appreciation. One gets nothing from musical goods without listening to the music, and mere listening gets one nothing of the aesthetic good if one doesn't appreciate. (Though experiencing the art without appreciation can lead to later development of appreciation, and an analogous claim can be true of religious practice.) But according to many of the great religions, many of the goods of participation—say, innate transformations of the soul, the intrinsic value of praising God, etc.—can occur in the absence of experiential appreciation.

There is also another disanalogy. Participating in religious goods isn't exactly analogous to experiencing works of art. Rather, it is analogous both to experiencing and to creating them. And creating works of art is an aesthetic good that perhaps does not require appreciation of the works of art that one is creating. One could have a sculptor who manages to express her artistic vision in incredible ways, but who incorrectly experiences herself as producing junk. The artist need not understand her work.

Laws violating religious freedom and conscience

This post is an oblique response to one of the lines of thought in a petition against Notre Dame University's lawsuit against the HHS contraception mandate.

If your religion or conscience (and on my view of conscience, the former is a special case of the latter if you sincerely accept the religious teachings) forbids you to obey a law, then the law violates your religious freedom or your freedom of conscience. (There is also a further question whether this violation is justified, and I won't address that question.) But the converse is not true. A law can violate your religious freedom, and maybe your freedom of conscience (that's a harder question), even if obedience is not forbidden by your religion or your conscience.

This is easiest shown by example. A paradigm example of a law violating religious freedom is a law prohibiting Christians from meeting to worship on Sunday under pain of death. But obedience to such a law need not go against the requirements of Christianity. Christianity does not require public Sunday worship when such worship seriously endangers innocent life, including one's own. Thus, there is no duty to get to Sunday worship if there is a hurricane, and to get to church one would have to leave the hurricane shelter one is in. Thus, a law that prohibited Christians from Sunday worship on pain of death would violate religious freedom without Christianity holding it to be wrong to obey the law. In case it's not clear that this law violates religious freedom, one can run this a fortiori argument. A law forbidding Sunday worship with a five dollar fine as a penalty would be wrong to obey according to Christianity, unless one is quite poor, and hence violates religious freedom. But if forbidding Sunday worship under pain of a five dollar fine violates religious freedom, a fortiori so does forbidding Sunday worship under pain of death.

For another example, consider a law explicitly prohibiting Jews from meeting to pray together on the Sabbath. It is my understanding that while rabbinical Judaism encourages meeting to pray together on the Sabbath, it does not require this (if I am wrong, just make it a hypothetical example). Thus, this would be a law that it is not wrong to obey, but it surely violates religious freedom.

In fact, one might even have a law that violates freedom of religion without requiring or forbidding the practitioners to do anything. For instance, consider a law requiring doctors who are not themselves Jehovah's Witnesses to forcibly administer blood transfusions to Jehovah's Witnesses when this is medically indicated, even when the Witness does not consent. Such a law violates the patient's freedom of religion, even though the patient is not being required or forbidden to do anything by the law. (The law may also violate the doctor's freedom of conscience.)

It is harder to see whether a law obedience to which does not violate conscience can violate freedom of conscience. There is a prima facie case for a negative answer: How can freedom of conscience be violated by something that doesn't require one to go against conscience?

But I think a case can be made that it is possible to violate freedom of conscience without requiring something contrary to conscience. The cases parallel the above two.

The case of Christian Sunday worship was one where something is required unless there are serious reasons to the contrary. Now, typical vegetarians do not think it is always wrong to eat meat. They would not, for instance, think that an Inuit child whose parents only make meat available to her in winter is morally required to refuse to eat it and thus starve to death. But now imagine a law put in place by the pork lobby that requires everyone to eat six ounces of pork daily, under penalty of death. If it is permissible to eat meat to preserve one's life, it would be permissible for the vegetarian to eat the pork. But surely there is something very much like violation of the vegetarian's freedom of conscience here.

The common thread between the Sunday worship and vegetarian cases is that these are situations where there is a strong duty to go against what the law says, but it is the law's penalty that provides a defeater for the law.

To parallel the case of rabbinical Jewish attitudes to Sabbath worship, consider a Kantian. Now, Kantians believe that there is an imperfect duty to help others, i.e., a duty where it is not specified to what degree and in what way one should help others. Imagine, then, a law that prohibited one from helping others except between 4:30 pm and 5:00 pm on Tuesdays. Such a law might not be such that Kantianism forbids one to obey it. But it is a law that surely in some important sense violates the Kantian's freedom of conscience, by forbidding that which her conscience very strongly encourages her to do, namely help people at other times, even if it does not specifically require it.

The alleged conflict between science and religion

Some Spaniards hate some Romanians and are hated back by them (I assume so--there are enough Spaniards and Romanians in the world that this must be true).  It does not follow that there is hatred between Spain and Romania.

Some scientific claims conflict with some religious claims.  It does not follow that there is a conflict between science and religion. 

If it did, then by the same token it would follow that there is a conflict between science and science.  For there are plenty of scientific claims that are rationally incompatible with each other.  Scientists all the time make claims that other scientists deny.

Perhaps this is an unfair way to take the claim of conflict.  Maybe the people who claim a conflict between science and religion holds that some well-evidenced claims of science conflict with some religious claims.  But suppose some reasonable Spaniards hate some Romanians.  That's not enough to count as hatred between Spain and Romania.

What if we take a more symmetric approach?  Suppose we say that some well-evidenced claims of science are rationally incompatible with some well-evidenced claims of religion.   Is that enough to make for a conflict between science and religion?  I think not.  But in any case, if by "well-evidenced" we mean ultima facie probable, then it is not clear that this is ever going to happen.  For how could p and q be both ultima facie probable and yet rationally incompatible?  Surely, the evidence for p would lower the probability of q and the evidence for q would lower the evidence for p to such a degree that p and q would not be ultima facie probable.

Maybe the claim is that there are claims of science that are prima facie probable that are incompatible with prima facie plausible claims of religion.  But that kind of tension does not rise to the level of "conflict", or again we have to say science is in conflict with science.  For it does happen, not infrequently, that an experiment prima facie shows something that is incompatible with the consequences of a prima facie probable theory.  When that happens, the experimental conclusion is denied on grounds of some experimental error or the probable theory is abandoned or the credences of both are lowered.  And that sort of thing happens all the time in science and elsewhere.  So if this is the sort of conflict that is claimed between science and religion, there is nothing special to it: it is a phenomenon endemic to the intellectual enterprise.

Or perhaps the claim is this: there are claims of science that are scientifically ultima facie justified that conflict with claims of religion that are religiously ultima facie justified.  This would make for a conflict between these two systems of justification, I suppose.  But it wouldn't be something to worry particularly about.  It is easy to generate conflicts between "ultima facie justified" claims when the claims are only ultima facie justified with respect to different subsets of our total evidence.  This is even true within science.  It is not particularly surprising if there were one conclusion about some phenomenon one would come to if one considered only chemical evidence and another conclusion one would come to if one considered only evidence from particle physics.  This sort of "conflict" is not particularly surprising.  We need to form beliefs on total evidence, and partial evidence is, well, partial.  And in any case unless this kind division in the evidence was wide-spread or concerned really central cases, as opposed to concerning two or three issues, we would not call it a conflict between chemistry and particle physics.

Now, it may be that if the most important Spaniards hated the most important Romanians and were hated back, then that would count as hatred between Spain and Romania (though on the other hand, one might worry about why the elites get to define things).  Likewise, if there was rational tension between the most important scientific claims and the most important religious claims, one might say that there conflict between science and religion.  But nobody has made out a good case that this is so.  Consider two famous cases: (1) evolution and creation, and (2) evolutionary psychology and religious theories of religious and ethical experience.  In case (1), the conflict is only there on certain readings of the creation doctrine, and while it is a central religious claim that we were created, it does not seem to be a central religious claim that we were created in the way that the particular creation doctrine claims.  In case (2), it is clear that evolutionary psychology is not among the most important scientific claims.

So is there a conflict between religion and science?  If there is, it is at most there in a sense that is unimpressive and common in the intellectual life: some claims justified by one body of evidence conflict with claims justified by another body of evidence, and we need to decide what to do on the total evidence.  This kind of conflict is present within science whenever theory is in tension with experiment, and a revision is called for.

Wittgensteinian views of religious language

Wittgensteinians lay stress on the idea that

1. One cannot understand central worldview concepts without living as part of a community that operates with these concepts.

The non-Christian cannot understand the Christian concept of the Trinity; the Christian and the atheist cannot understand the Jewish concept of God's absolute unity as understood by Maimonedes; the theist cannot understand the concept of a completely natural world; and the non-Fascist cannot understand the concept of the Volk. It is only by being a part of a community in which these concepts are alive that one gains an understanding of them.

Often, a corollary is drawn from this, that while internal critique or justification of a worldview tradition such as Christianity, naturalism or Nazism is possible, no external critique or justification is possible. In fact, there is an argument for this corollary.

2. (Premise) One's evidence set cannot involve any propositions that involve concepts one does not understand.
3. (Premise) Necessarily, if a proposition p uses a concept C, and a body of propositions P is evidence for or against p for an agent x, then some member of P involves C.
4. If x is not a member of the community operating with a central worldview concept C, then x does not have any evidence for or against any proposition involving C. (1-3)
5. (Premise) External critique or justification of a worldview of a community is possible only if someone who is not a member of the community can have evidence for or against a proposition involving a central worldview concept of that community.
6. Therefore, external critique or justification of a worldview of a community is not possible. (4 and 5)

This is a particularly unfortunate result in the case of something like Nazism, and may suggest an unacceptable relativism.

The argument is valid but unsound, and I think unsalvageable. I think that (5) is false, and on some plausible interpretations of (1), (2) and (3) are false as well.

First of all, people successfully reason with scientific concepts that they do not understand, like the concept of a virus or of gravity. They inherit the concept from a scientic community that they are not a member of, and while they do not understands the concept, they get enough about the inferential connections involving the concept that the concept should become useful. Thus, even if I do not really understand the concept of a virus, my evidence set can include facts about viruses that I know by virtue of testimony[note 1], and inferential connections with other facts, such as that if x has the common cold, then many viruses are present in x's body. Thus, (2) is false.

As for (3), I don't know for sure if it's false, but seems quite possible that while C does not occur in one's evidence set, it might occur in one's rules of inference. And there does not seem to be anything wrong with having a concept in one's evidence set that one does not understand.

But perhaps you are not convinced by the critique of (2) and (3). I suspect this is because you take (1) to be more radical than I do. The "cannot understand" in (1) is understood as entailing "cannot operate with"—even the weak sort of grasp that the layperson has of scientific concepts is denied to non-members of a community in the case of central worldview concepts. On this interpretation of (1), (2) and (3) are false. I am inclined to think that this interpretation of (1) is the incorrect one because it renders (1) false. The central worldview concepts of a community do not seem to be significantly different from the central concepts of a scientific community. Still, I see the force of such a beefed-up (1), at least in the case of the concepts of the Christian faith (not so much because of the need for community membership as such, but because of the need for grace to enlighten one's understanding).

In any case, (5) is false on either understanding of (1). The reason is simple. To support or criticize a position, one does not need evidence for or against a position. One only needs evidence for or against the second order claim that the position is true. Often, this a distinction without much of a difference. I have evidence that

7. there is life on Mars

if and only I have evidence that

8. the proposition that there is life on Mars is true.

However, this is so only because in (8) I refer to the proposition under the description "that there is life on Mars." But take a different case. I go to a mathematics lecture. Unfortunately, as I shortly discover, it's in German. I sit through it uncomprehendingly. At the end of it, I turn to a friend who knows German and ask her what she thought. She is an expert in the field and says: "It was brilliant, and I checked that his central lemma is right." I still don't know what the speaker's central lemma is, but I know that it is true. I do not have evidence for the lemma, and it could even be (say, if the talk is in a field of mathematics I don't know anything about) that I don't have the requisite concepts for grasping the lemma, but I have evidence that the lemma is true.

Likewise, it is possible to have evidence for and against the claim that the community's central worldview propositions are true, without grasping these propositions and having evidence for or against them. For instance, while I may not be able to understand what the members of the community are saying in their internal critiques, but I may understand enough of the logical form of these critiques and of the responses to them to be able to make a judgment that the critiques are probably successful. Moreover, even if I do not understand some concept, I may grasp some metalinguistic facts such as that if x is a Gypsy, then x is not a part of anything in the extension of the term "the Volk", or that if the only things that exists at w are the particles of current physics, and at w their only properties and relations are those of current physics, then w is in the extension of the term "completely natural". Given such facts, I can gain arguments for or against the thesis that the central worldview claims of the community are true. Thus, (5) is false.

There is a hitch in my argument against (5). External evaluation of the community seems to require that while I have no grasp of particular central terms, I have some grasp of the larger grammar of sentences used by members of the community and I understand some of the non-central terms in their language. But what if I don't? This could, of course, happen. The community could speak an entirely foreign language that I am incapable of parsing.

I can make two responses. The first is that (5) is a general claim about communities whose central worldview concepts I do not understand, and that general claim has been shown to be false. There could be some radical cases where the outsider's lack of understanding is so complete that external critique or justification is impossible. But such cases do not in fact occur for us. Humans share basic structures of generative grammar and a large number of basic concepts due to a common environment.

The second response is that the behavior of members of the community can provide evidence for and against the correctness of their central ideas. If their airplanes keep on crashing, there is good reason to think their scientific concepts are bad. If they lead a form of life that does not promote the central human goods, there is good reason to think that their ethics is mistaken, while if they lead a form of life that does promote the central human goods, there is good reason to their ethics is sound. Now, of course, I could be wrong. Maybe for religious reasons they want their airplanes to crash and design them for that. Maybe they abstain from some central human goods for the sake of some God-revealed higher good. Maybe they are a bunch of hypocrites, and they aren't really achieving the central human goods. However, such possibilities only show that I cannot be certain in my external evaluation. But the claim that external justification and critique is possible is not the claim that one can achieve certainty in external justification and critique. What I've said shows we can achieve high probability even in cases where the community's language is radically not understandable.

Things might be different if we're dealing with an alien species of intelligent beings. But I suspect we could still come to probabilistic judgments, just somewhat less confident ones.

I think the above considerations not only show that the argument (1)-(6) fails, but that we're unlikely to get any successful argument along those lines.

Gould's non-overlapping magisteria

Gould says:

NOMA [Non-Overlapping Magisteria] is a simple, humane, rational, and altogether conventional argument for mutual respect, based on non-overlapping subject matter, between two components of wisdom in a full human life: our drive to understand the factual character of nature (the magisterium of science) and our need to define meaning in our lives and a moral basis for our actions (the magisterium of religion).

An obvious problem is that in fact all religions I know of make claims that entail scientific claims. There are several classes of such claims:

1. Historical claims about miracles that intersect the realm of science, such as that at least one person who was once dead was later alive, or that once water was changed into wine.
2. Uncontroversial historical claims that, nonetheless, intersect with science. For instance, non-anti-realist Buddhisms entail that somebody (e.g., Siddharta Gautama) has embarked on an ascetical life, while Judaism, Christianity and Islam all teach that we are not members of the first generation of human beings.
3. Claims about possibilities for human transformation. Thus, Buddhism claims that at least some degree of detachment is possible to achieve, while Christianity claims that at least some degree of unselfish neighbor love is possible to achieve. And if Kant is right that ought implies can, any claim about what one ought to do entails a claim about what one can do, while claims about what one can or cannot do obviously intersect with science.
4. Scientific claims, often uncontroversial or not, that are presupposed by various specific moral judgments. For instance, religious and non-religious moral thinking about the ethics of war would have to be significantly modified if it were proved that whenever anybody is "killed" in war, their brain travels through another dimension to another galaxy, where they live a somewhat happier life. Catholic sexual ethics is based on the empirical presupposition that human beings reproduce through intercourse. Now most of us know this biological fact, but there have been tribes where it is not known. Similarly, many religions centrally presuppose the claim that other people are like us in relevant respects, a claim that has scientific components: for instance, if I discovered empirically that everybody else is a non-intelligent robot, Christian neighbor-love would be an empty duty, and could not be the center of my life.

One might, mistakenly, dismiss (1) by thinking that the better religions make no miracle claims in the realm of the physical or by claiming that history is not science. Cases (2) and (4) highlight an important point: uncontroversial common-sense science is still science. Case (3) is in some way the most interesting here, because it is closest to Gould's idea that morality helps define the meaning in our lives. It would be very difficult to come up with an account of the meaning in our lives that made no reference to what is or is not possible for our lives. So even if we denuded religion of miracles and science of entirely common-sense claims, NOMA would still be mistaken, because what the meaning in our lives is surely depends on what is possible for our lives, and these possibility claims are not entirely uncontroversial.

Sita Sings the Blues

Over the last three nights or so, I watched Sita Sings the Blues (available for free on youtube, and downloadable as an almost free DVD). I enjoyed it immensely. It was both moving and funny, and visually striking. Almost tone-deaf as I am, I found the musical elements too long, but they were nice, too, especially with Closed Captions turned on. (Pet peeve: Films--especially foreign-language ones--where the subtitles don't give song lyrics. Not so here!) It's tempting to assign it to my Love and Sex class in the marriage and commitment section.

Inerrance

Occasionally, the rhetorical question is asked of inerrantists: "What's the use of having an inerrant text, if your interpretation of the text is fallible?" Sometimes this question is asked by opponents of inerrance, and sometimes by those who think that those who accept inerrance don't go far enough—they should also accept an infallible exegetical authority. I've done this myself, as an argument for Catholicism.

But the argument implicit in the question is not a good argument without further work. It would be silly to ask: "Why do you care about having a calculator that makes no mistakes, given that you can punch the wrong numbers into it and read the answer off wrongly?" When using a fallible calculator, there are three sources of errors: the calculator, the data input, and the reading of the output. Surely it is a good thing to be able to eliminate one of the three, even if the other two remain.

Furthermore, there is the following advantage to having an inerrant text: progress in interpreting the text is apt to get us closer to the truth of the matter in the subject the text is about. But if the text is wrong on some point, it might be that the better we interpret it, the further from the truth we find ourselves (if we take the text to be authoritative). It is worth having this feature. We might be currently unable to tell what Scripture requires of us in some matter, but it is not unreasonable to devote significant effort into trying to figure it out—because it is likely true.

But let's go back to the rhetorical question and see if we can make it into any argument that can be defended. First of all, it's not clear how "What's the use of p?" even when met with no answer gives us reason to deny p. What's the use of the moon? I don't know, but my not knowing the use for it doesn't seem to significantly affect my confidence that it's there.

However, inerrance isn't like the moon. Inerrance is very unlikely without a miracle. And we might think that God doesn't work miracles except with good reason. So perhaps we could argue that if inerrance is of no use, God wouldn't bother with it. But that's going to be weak. How could we rule out all uses of inerrance? And in fact, surely there are some. The belief that Scripture is inerrant has inspired many people to obey various good commands in Scripture. Moreover, it is better be inspired by a true rather than false belief. So there is surely some use of inerrance. One might worry that the miracle is too great and the benefit disproportionately small. But I don't see why an omnipotent being can't do a great miracle for a small benefit (God helps me find lost objects sometimes—for all I know, he may even be miraculously transporting the lost objects to me, though somehow it seems more likely that he is simply directing my attention to the objects), nor do I see the benefit as small.

Still, there is, I think, some force in the argument of the rhetorical question. There are four sources of errors in information obtained from a text: errors in the original, errors in copying, errors in reading (decoding of words), and errors in interpretation. If it turns out that there are likely so many errors in interpretation that the benefit of lack of errors in the original is quite small, then there is something to be said for asking why God would have ensured a lack of errors in the original without ensuring an infallible method of interpretation. (If a measurement has two sources of error, one of the order of magnitude 0.001 units and the other of the order of magnitude of 0.020 units, a scientist would be unlikely to try to minimize the first error without trying to minimize the second.) But this would require a further argument that fallible interpretation would be quite unreliable—we couldn't just base the argument on the mere fact that interpretation is fallible. Moreover, I think this wouldn't so much an argument against inerrance, as an argument for an infallible method of interpretation (such as a magisterium or tradition or both).

Is it the case that errors in the interpretation of the Bible are so very common that there is something to the argument? I think it might be. Granted, there may be wide exegetical agreement on certain basic points. But if the point of inerrance is simply to preserve agreement on these basic points, we would not need full inerrance, but a more limited doctrine of preserving the truth in the basics (this point was made by one of our grad students in discussion today). So we might still argue: If we think God valued truth in such a way as to give us full inerrance in Scripture, we have good reason to think that he would also have ensured an infallible interpretative method, since that would serve the same value. This is an argumentum ex convenientia, an argument form well loved by medieval theologians.

So, yes, there is something to the argument in the original rhetorical question, but it would take significant effort to defend it carefully. I haven't put in that sort of effort in this post.

Babette's Feast

I showed Babette's Feast once again. I was this time struck by the nuanced critique of a religion of the word. The congregation to a large extent has a religion of the word—sometimes spoken and sometimes sung.

The word spoken, by itself, is not enough, even when it is the right word. Lorens, the young officer, is able to take the devout words and use them to rise socially. (I am reminded of Aquinas' remark that without grace even the Gospels would be dead and useless.) Still, the word when spoken in the right spirit can avail much: there is clearly much good in the congregation and its pastor, and the pastor's words are an occasion of grace.

Nor does singing the word suffice. Singing in and of itself avails little, as the episode with Papin suggests, but when the right words are spoken in the right spirit, again we see that much is accomplished for the sake of the community. But it is not enough.

The daughters of the pastor add good deeds to the mix. Much good is achieved. But all this, while very good, is not enough. The right word is spoken and sung, in the right spirit, and accompanied with good works. But the congregation's love still threatens to fall to pieces around old animosities. Even a religion of word and deed is not enough: one needs the love-feast, the eucharist, the sacrament.

Each of the three is essential. The pastor brings the word. His daughters continue to hold on to his word, trying to keep at alive in the community, and giving it flesh in their charitable deeds. But Babette puts it all together, integrating word and deed into sacrament. And now the congregants reconcile to each other, and unity is restored. But the word did prepare the way for this, and the reconciliation in many cases is accomplished through words. It is all needed.

Religiously-based legislation

Consider the following thesis: (*) In a liberal democratic society, it is wrong to introduce coercive legislation on religious grounds.

Here is a simple counterexample. Suppose that the vast majority of the citizens hear a voice from God, and see lots of corroborating miracles such as the clouds spelling out a disproof of the Riemann Zeta Conjecture and a proof of Goldbach's conjecture. The voice announces that prohibiting burning coal in large quantities would decrease cancer rates in 80 years by 80%. Let us suppose that a quick review of the scientific literature finds no evidence either for or against this claim. It seems that it would reasonable and not wrong to forbid the burning of coal in large quantities on the basis of this revelation, and to do so under pain of significant penalties, and, in fact, it might be wrong not to introduce such legislation. (Sure, one could do research on the question, but the long term nature of the research would dictate that one would have to act before the research was in.) Yet such a prohibition would be coercive legislation introduced on religious grounds. Hence, (*) is false.

Objection 1: Bite the bullet—the legislation would indeed be wrong.

Response: Suppose that the voice isn't from God but from an alien scientist where the aliens had a science thousands of years ahead of ours. Then plainly the legislation would be reasonable (assuming one could rule out ulterior motives on the part of the scientist). But the only reason to listen to the scientist is that its testimony is likely true, and the same reason applies a fortiori in the case of God. Hence, if the testimony comes from God, it is even more reasonable to introduce the legislation.

Objection 2: This isn't the relevant sense of "on religious grounds." The claim that stopping burning coal would reduce cancer rates is not religious in nature. Granted, the claim is epistemically based in religious claims—the revelation of God—but the claim is not itself religious.

Response: That may be. But if so, then the prohibition on religiously based legislation prohibits a lot less than is generally thought by defenders of the prohibition. For instance, this will mean that anti-abortion legislation based on a religiously based belief that embryos and fetuses are persons will not count as religiously based in the relevant sense, since the claim that embryos and fetuses are persons is not religious in nature—it is a metaphysical or ethical claim (or some combination of these). If metaphysical or ethical claims like this were automatically religious in nature, then civil rights legislation based on the conviction that members of some class are persons and should be treated as such would likewise be ruled out, which is absurd. So on this view, (*) is not violated by legislation based on metaphysical or ethical claims that are epistemically grounded in religious claims. Then, even legislation that prohibited homosexual activity on the grounds that it is immoral, with the claim of immorality being justified by means of the Bible, would not count as religiously based, at least as long as "immoral" was understood in a non-religious way. This defense of (*), thus, undercuts what typical proponents of (*) want to use (*) for.

Objection 3: In the example given, the divine-revelation justification is epistemically based in a good publicly available argument for the reliability of the revealer, based on obvious miracles. But that is an outlandish hypothetical case: the reliability of the revealer in real-world religions is not something for which one can argue in a publicly available way.

Response: If this objection is correct, the problem isn't with the religious basing of some legislation, but simply with the legislation's not being based on good publicly available arguments. Here, I inserted "good", because in fact apologists for all the major religions do publicly offer arguments for their religions, so if the objection was the lack of argument, the objection would be unsound. Rather, the objection has to be to the lack of good publicly available argument. To make this case, one has to be in a position to show that all the apologetic arguments for the different religions fail. That is a non-trivial task (and I think an impossible one, because the apologetic arguments for Catholicism as a matter of fact are successful).

It's worth noting that even though the principle that one shouldn't introduce legislation based on something lacking good publicly available arguments may be correct, it is not a principle we really want constitutionally enshrined. The consequences of striking down all laws whose introducers (or maybe the voters for which) lacked good publicly available arguments would be really scary by everybody's lights.