Friday, 3rd of March, 2006

Postscript to my previous Dennett post: Some more Dennetty goodness over at Prospect Magazine, with an exchange between Dennett and the theologian Richard Swinburne. In a way it’s a bit unreasonable, but also quite apt, to put Dennett up against a theologian, since obviously a theologian is going to take the existence of god as the starting point for their argument. Here’s Swinburne (who unfortunately gets the last word, but then one of them had to):

I do of course agree with you that, if I am to persuade you that there is a God, I have to begin from a neutral position that presupposes no God and prove to you that I am right. I’m trying hard!

But the same applies in reverse—you have to begin from a neutral position that does not presuppose that there is no God and prove to me that you are right. And, to repeat, my worry about your book is that it advocates investigating the origins and consequences of the practice of religion with an atheistic presupposition.

This puts, in stark relief, one of the problems of debate between religionists and atheists; that is, you end up playing burden tennis. (Burden tennis: when the two philosophical combatants pass the burden of proof from one to the other, never agreeing upon whom that burden rests.) Naturally I disagree with Swinburne that atheists are required to begin from a “neutral position” that does not presuppose that there is no god. There is nothing in the observable universe to suggest to a mind uninfected by religion that there is a god. Am I ever going to convince a religious person of this? Probably not.
I do ever so wish that religious people would understand the same about me though: you have to give me a really good reason to even entertain the thought that there is a god at all before you’re going to convince me to begin to entertain the thought of considering your religion to be tenable. Without pre-existing faith, I have no reason to consider religious reasoning in the first place.

So I don’t think it’s a symmetrical relationship; I think the burden of proof rests firmly on the shoulders the purveyors of religion - but then I’m an atheist innit? But I’m not an evangelical atheist. I just want the religionists to:
a) not tell me that science has to stay off “their turf”, whether that’s the holy mysteries of the mind (and you don’t have to be a “religionist” (I’m loving this word today, sorry) to believe that consciousness is off-limits, but fie on you if you do), the existence of morality, or, hey, the existence of god;
b) not try and convert me to their particular brand of superstition; and
c) not smarmily, snidely, or straightforwardly suggest that I’m arrogant, an empty shell, missing something deeply True and important, not truly moral, or whatever else, because I happen to be an atheist.

Is that too much to ask?

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