Religion Irrational? Ask a Preeminent Logician.
by Steve PetermannEvery chance Dawkins and Harris get, they try to promote the idea that religion and especially personalistic theism are irrational. This is one of their key arguments for the New Atheism. Although the arguments on both sides of the isle should be taken at face value, often it is helpful to look to prominent thinkers for their opinion. Kurt Gödel is considered by many as one of the great logicians of all time. His incompleteness theorems shook the mathematic and scientific world because they claimed that any mathematical approach based on arithmetic to understanding the cosmos would always be incomplete. It even eventually convinced famous physicist Stephen Hawking that a theory of everything could never be found. So if Gödel is such a great logician and supremely committed to rationality, how is it that such a rational mind could, in fact, believe in a personalistic God and even the afterlife? This according to a very interesting article by Héctor Rosario.
An important aspect of Gödel's theology "“ one that has been greatly overlooked by those studying his works "“ is that not only was he a theist but a personalist; not a pantheist as some apologetic thinkers may portray him. To be precise, he rejected the notion that God was impersonal, as God was for Einstein. Einstein believed in "Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and actions of men" (Einstein, 1929). Gödel in turn thought "Einstein's religion [was] more abstract, like Spinoza and Indian philosophy. Spinoza's god is less than a person; mine is more than a person; because God can play the role of a person" (Wang, 1996: 152).
According to Rosario even Gödel's belief in the afterlife was rationally based.
Gödel expressed his belief in the hereafter in the following terms, "I am convinced of the afterlife, independent of theology. If the world is rationally constructed, there must be an afterlife" (Davis, 2002: 22). "His arguments were, as always, rationally based on the principle that the world and everything in it has meaning, or reasons. This is closely related to the causality principle that underlies all of science: Everything has a cause, and events don't just "˜happen'" (Casti & DePauli, 2000: 87).
So if a world class logician was a personalistic theist who even believed in the afterlife, what is one to make of the carte blanche claims of the New Atheists that religious belief is irrational? Now, in my opinion, there are religious beliefs that are irrational. In fact, prominent theologians throughout time have fought that irrationality. However, when committed logicians (of which there are many besides Gödel) support the rationality of some religious beliefs, the so called defenders of rationality will have to take them on before their rhetoric should be taken seriously.
March 10th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
Stellar find Steve. I salute you sir!
Godel was to math what Einstein was to physics.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — March 10, 2007 @ 1:43 pm
March 10th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
Michael Dummett is another one.
Comment by stunney — March 10, 2007 @ 2:06 pm
March 10th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
Dummett and Dembski. Come on, people! Whatever happened to someone with a name like, say, "Kurt Wise" The enemy camp already has a hard time refraining from juvenile attacks.
Comment by Douglas — March 10, 2007 @ 2:25 pm
March 10th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
In order to be an atheist one must believe that something came from nothing for no reason, life came from non-life, the personal came from the impersonal, reason came from unreason, consciousness came from unconsciousness, the moral came from the amoral, etc. I can't conjure up enough faith in so much stuff that makes no sense to be an atheist. Theism seems perfectly rational to me.
And there is abundant evidence that the universe was rigged not only for life, but for humanity and technology (see Denton's Nature's Destiny). This serves as evidence for a designer, and a straightforward inference to design seems perfectly rational to me. What seems irrational, a leap of blind faith, and an act of desperation to make the evidence fit something someone wants to believe, is inventing an infinitude of imaginary universes, for which there is no evidence and which are in principle undetectable, in order to make evidence for design go away.
Comment by GilDodgen — March 10, 2007 @ 4:41 pm
March 10th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
I'm no atheist, but I don't think this follows unless perhaps you qualify that (i.e. "In order to be an honest atheist" or something akin). The rest seems reasonable to me.
Comment by thechristiancynic — March 10, 2007 @ 4:54 pm
March 10th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
Yup.
Topped off by then lecturing theists about Ockham's Razor.
Comment by stunney — March 10, 2007 @ 6:38 pm
March 10th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
Thanks for the link. I previously blogged about Gödel's Ontological Argument here.
Comment by obrienr — March 10, 2007 @ 11:16 pm
March 11th, 2007 at 5:02 am
Steve Petermann asks:
Gödel was a great logician, but a commitment to rationality did not permeate his life, as these excerpts from the Wikipedia article on him show:
Regarding Gödel's theism, Rosario admits that
The same can be said of his beliefs regarding an afterlife.
And while the logic of Gödel's ontological argument may be valid (as one would hope), it's not clear that his premises are.
Rosario:
Gödel expressed his argument using formal logic, of course, but Wikipedia paraphrases it as follows:
It is the premise that "any Godlike object is necessarily existent" that is problematic. Kant's response to the Cartesian version of the ontological argument is just as applicable here: Existence is not a predicate, and therefore cannot be a criterion for certifying something as "Godlike".
Comment by keiths — March 11, 2007 @ 5:02 am
March 11th, 2007 at 5:43 am
Keiths:
It does not permeate the lives of many good scientists and non-scientists alike but so what? The focus is the man's work; not his personal picadillos. Are you aware that some very good scientists, who have argued for neo-Darwinism, have had some very irrational streaks evidenced in their personal life. Professionally, Godel was committed to logical and rational thinking. That is what matters.
Quoting from a Wikipedia entry:
"From axioms 1 through 4, Godel argued that in some possible world there exists God. He used a sort of modal plenitude principle to argue this from the logical consistency of Godlikeness. Note that this property is itself positive, since it is the conjunction of the (infinitely many) positive properties."
The term Godlikeness is rationally argued based on the plenitude principle. Keiths, you can deconstruct any philosophical argument by questioning a premise. That does not detract from its logical quality. It only confirms what we already know namely, that philosophical positions are not empirically based and thus open to question by negating a premise they are based on. I can do this with an argument for atheism as well. The broader point made by Steve Petermann is valid i.e. Godel's particular argument and other arguments advancing the existence of God are both logical and rational. Remember that next time you witness an attempt to debunk an ID position by comparing the intelligent designer to elves, fairies and other known fantasy figures.
Comment by Bradford — March 11, 2007 @ 5:43 am
March 11th, 2007 at 7:32 am
Bradford wrote:
I'm just pointing out that a distinguished source does not always make for a valid argument. For example, the only "argument" given in the article for Gödel's belief in an afterlife is his bland statement that "If the world is rationally constructed, there must be an afterlife." His argument for a personal God is that omnipotence would not be true omnipotence without the ability to play the role of a person. He apparently overlooks the fact that omnipotence does not require its possessor to exercise every capability at His disposal, as well as the possibility that God, even if He exists, may not be omnipotent.
Despite coming from a great logician, those two arguments (at least as presented by Rosario) are no more worthy of consideration than Gödel's beliefs about poison gas assassins.
Look at what Steve wrote:
You may as well ask
That is, of course, one of Fred Hoyle's less successful hypotheses, and the renown of its author was not a reliable indicator of its worth.
Sure, but premises are not all on an equal footing. "Socrates was a man" is pretty defensible as a premise; "Any Godlike object is necessarily existent" is much less so, as Kant demonstrates.
Sure, but you have to justify your rejection of a premise, just as Kant did. If you can't do so, and the logic of the argument is correct, then the argument stands.
Comment by keiths — March 11, 2007 @ 7:32 am
March 11th, 2007 at 8:21 am
keith,
I don't recall where Godel's personal "oddities" were formed as "arguments". And, his "oddities" seem rather less "odd" than some of Darwin's. Besides, given the times in which Godel lived and worked, and his fame and nationality, and where he lived, it would be quite rational to assume the Germans might have wanted him assassinated, and that doing so by poisoning him would be a "rational" way to do it.
Wasn't Germany eventually well-known for using poison gas to murder millions? Wasn't Godel in a position to do great harm to Germany, by his work, intelligence, and location in the United States? Even years after the war ended, there very well could have been Nazi supporters who still harbored grudges, especially against those they might have considered traitors to the "Mother-land". (My point being, keith, that Godel's supposed "paranoia" might not have been so irrational after all.)
Comment by Douglas — March 11, 2007 @ 8:21 am
March 11th, 2007 at 9:25 am
keiths,
Eccentricities and even mental illness are well know to be a common aspect of many great thinkers. One would be hard pressed to find someone who was "purely" rational. If fact, based on modern neuroscience, I don't think there is such a human being. The question is how rational a person can be in their work. Godel has surely proven that he has been supremely sucessful in this.
Although D&H are not anywhere close to the category of Godel as a logician, surely they also have irrational aspects to their personalities. Even their fellow atheists have called them on this. So if one is to seek the opinions of these flawed individuals, whose arguments should carry more weight relative to rationality, a preeminent logician like Godel or these New Atheist amateurs.
Comment by Steve Petermann — March 11, 2007 @ 9:25 am
March 11th, 2007 at 11:14 am
The issue is not whether or not Godel was right, but whether his arguments are rational. I would argue that the ability to enlist math and logic to contribute to the ontological argument gives support to the notion that Godel was being rational, even if he turns out to be wrong.
Kant is not the last word on the ontological argument. Not everyone thinks Kant's objection succeeds as an objection. Naturally, that is to be expected in a rational debate about something that is not trivial or obvious. The ontological argument has a long history, and every time someone claims to have properly killed it, it keeps coming back in new and interesting twists and turns. I don't think anyone could dismiss anyone in the debate as being irrational. On the contrary, you would have to be pretty darn intelligent to be able to participate in the debate and understand what is going on.
I think one could put Petermann's point about the rationality of theism in a much more general form, for example like this:
Theism, God, souls, afterlife, these have all been serious topics in the history of philosophy for thousands of years. So even if they all turned out to be wrong, there is still one thing we can absolutely say about them. That taking those positions comes no where close to being equivalent to a child inventing an invisible friend or making up some fairy-tale creature, as the atheists new and old seriously claim.
And that atheists would even make this claim as a serious argument calls into question their own rationality.
Comment by Brian Killian — March 11, 2007 @ 11:14 am
March 11th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
I can't believe there's a discussion of an ontological proof, and no one's mentioned the greatest jelly donut yet.
I'm furthermore a bit disappointed that Gödel is being misrepresented this way. Gödel himself didn't think his formulation of Anselm's ontological proof constituted anything new, and certainly didn't think it formed any proof of the existence of something in the real world.
And hasn't it been covered that nobody's saying that religious people can't be hard-headed skeptics, but rather that religious ways-of-knowing (authority, tradition, revelation) are pretty useless in science, and that religious people may be great scientists, but they do so by partitioning off the religious part of their minds and exempting it from critical inquiry?
Comment by grendelkhan — March 11, 2007 @ 1:09 pm
March 11th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
Brian Killian writes:
This is right on target and significant within the context of discussions about ID. One of the main talking points of ID opponents is the irrationality of the intelligent designer itself. Of course the argument is pushed primarily by EAs who attempt to associate fairies etc. with design. This blog entry reaffirms the long and distinguished philosophical history associated with ontological arguments.
Kant no more destroyed ontological arguments than Darwin destroyed Paley. In the latter example one must totally ignore the inability to apply selection to plausible scenarios for life's origin to think Paley was debunked. There is a bit of irrationality to the ID debate but it comes from the critics of ID who cherry pick "evidence" for irrationality.
Comment by Bradford — March 11, 2007 @ 1:12 pm
March 11th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
That argument cuts both ways. One cannot debunk imputations of design, intelligence or purpose by inferring that arguments against religion or the designer, count against ID.
Comment by Bradford — March 11, 2007 @ 1:21 pm
March 11th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
I'm furthermore a bit disappointed that Gödel is being misrepresented this way. Gödel himself didn't think his formulation of Anselm's ontological proof constituted anything new, and certainly didn't think it formed any proof of the existence of something in the real world.
There is no misrepresentation. As the source you linked to indicates:
The newness lies in the formalization and the point of the post is the emphasis on its rational nature.
Comment by Bradford — March 11, 2007 @ 1:26 pm
March 11th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
Hi Bradford,
You wrote…
However, I can ask how does the ability to learn (intelligence) help when there is nothing to learn from?
A purposeful, natural process, maybe.
But when you insist on talking about an intelligent designer, we all know you are making arguments for the existence of God. How is this not a religious argument?
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — March 11, 2007 @ 1:30 pm
March 11th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
I'm not making an argument for God when I argue that natural forces destroy genomic information needed for life in the absence of correction and repair mechanisms that were front loaded at life's outset. Why conflate an obvious empirical claim with your religious stance toward God?
Comment by Bradford — March 11, 2007 @ 1:35 pm
March 11th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
That jengaship has already been shanked:
This seems to treat existence as just another property of individuals, such as whether they are wearing red suits or have white beards. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) criticized the ontological argument by stating that existence is not a predicate. That is, existence is not a property of individuals in the same way that being short or red is. It is certainly true that we have to be careful here. If we can arbitrarily add existence as a defining property for an individual, there seems to be no limit to what we can prove to exist. For example, we might define a unicorn as follows:
Definition: A unicorn is a four-footed beast resembling a horse having a horn on its head and existing.
Thus unicorns exist. By definition.
However, this is a parody of Anselm's argument, and doesn't stand up under close examination. Any good mathematician will allow you (within reason) to define your terms any way that you like. So there is nothing wrong with the definition. Can we really show that unicorns exist using this argument? The answer is no. Our definition of a unicorn would only seem to imply that all unicorns exist, or equivalently, that for all x, if x is a unicorn then x exists. However, this statement is trivially true, because it is vacuously satisfied.
Anyway, the form of the ontological argument that we have used does not explicitly assume that existence is a predicate. It assumes that the modal status of an individual (the Eiffel tower, say, or the number 17) can be regarded as a property. A number between 16 and 18 exists necessarily, whereas the Eiffel tower exists contingently, and the distinction between the two can be regarded as a property of each.
Comment by obrienr — March 11, 2007 @ 2:46 pm
March 11th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
We all know that when you talk about the big bang, you are making arguments for the existence of God.
Comment by Brian Killian — March 11, 2007 @ 3:00 pm
March 11th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Douglas wrote:
And the children of those Nazi supporters could be monitoring this blog, deciding who to snuff out next.
Douglas, Gödel starved himself to death to avoid being poisoned. Does that not strike you as paranoid, or at the very least, somewhat irrational?
Comment by keiths — March 11, 2007 @ 3:05 pm
March 11th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Only if you take a remarkably open-minded position on what is meant by "God". For instance, please explain to me what the Big Bang has to do with (a) forgiving sins, (b) defining marriage, (c) establishing morality, (d) listening to prayers, (e) smiting the unworthy, and (f) creating a place of eternal torment for those who violated the rules defined back in (c).
You're left with essentially a really weak kind of deism, there, and deism hasn't been in style since the early nineteenth century. Plus, you can't get any exciting political ramifications out of deism.
Comment by grendelkhan — March 11, 2007 @ 5:24 pm
March 11th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
keith,
You are stretching the idea far beyond its breaking point. Avoiding the fact that Godel could have had very good reason to suspect there were some who sought to kill him isn't the same as showing he was being irrational; and exponentially exaggerating a possible rationale into sheer foolishness isn't going to win over many to your side. Sorry.
Yes. But perhaps by that point, he preferred to die than endure the torment of fear of being poisoned. At least in starving himself to death, he was in control. Note, though, keith, that I am not arguing that there were people out to kill him, nor that his reaction to perceived malice towards him was the most rational behavior in which he could have engaged. I am merely trying to point out that, given his unique circumstances, his behavior wasn't necessarily all that irrational.
Comment by Douglas — March 11, 2007 @ 6:15 pm
March 11th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
grendelkhan wrote:
grendelkhan,
My version of that is that there is a perfect ontological proof that is capable of convincing anyone that God exists. There has to be one; if it didn't exist, it wouldn't be perfect. I wonder why noone's found it yet.
I was saving that for later, to spice up the thread, but you preempted me by deploying the jelly donut.
Comment by keiths — March 11, 2007 @ 6:33 pm
March 11th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
Kurt Godel's Ontological Argument
Leaving the peculiarities of Godel's mental health to one side, what about Dummett, who held the position of Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford for 13 years quite recently. Or Liebniz. Or Newton. Or Pascal. Or Galileo. Or Swinburne. Or Plantinga. Or van Fraassen. Or Miler. Etc. Can any of these folks constitute a counter-example that would show that the argument-form
1. All theists are irrational
2. Person X is a theist.
Ergo, Person X is irrational
is unsound because its major premise is false?
Comment by stunney — March 11, 2007 @ 7:08 pm
March 11th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
stunney, nobody's saying that. The strongest claim being made by the likes of PZ Myers or Richard Dawkins is that theists do not shine the harsh light of rational thinking on their theism. It's pretty clear that one can be an excellent scientist on the one hand, and hold some pretty loopy beliefs on the other. (For example, think of Shockley's racism, Newton's alchemy, Pauling's Vitamin C megadosing…)
Comment by grendelkhan — March 11, 2007 @ 11:59 pm
March 12th, 2007 at 12:08 am
I dont think this is where they are coming from. My take is that their core posiion is that only that which can be emperically demonstrated is a rational postion.
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — March 12, 2007 @ 12:08 am
March 12th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Unfortunately for Dawkins & Co., this proposition cannot itself be empirically demonstrated.
Comment by stunney — March 12, 2007 @ 12:00 pm
March 12th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
Why ought we to think that a perfect proof of anything whatever must be such that it be capable of convincing anyone of what it proves?
Ontological perfection simply deals with ontological status, not with any putative unrestricted epistemic causal potential of arguments invoking it. Indeed, Aquinas' criticism of the ontological argument rested on his view that God's nature—that is, the nature of ontological perfection (as against the fact of its existence)— could not be intellectually grasped by finite minds.
One could put this by saying that the ontological argument invites us to think of God, and if we then hypothesize that the object of this thought doesn't exist, it tells us that we have not in fact succeeded in thinking of God. Whereas Aquinas tells us that we systematically can't form an adequate thought of God, the ontological argument tells us that if we could, then we'd understand that God must exist.
Anyhow, defining 'perfect' in this context to include 'having the property of being capable of convincing anyone' seems too strong as a definition given the likelihood of the existence of incorrigible irrationality, stupidity, self-deception, intellectual pride, etc.
Comment by stunney — March 12, 2007 @ 1:45 pm
March 12th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
Poor Dawkins Achieves Inner Circle of Hell
Because of his irreligion, Dawkins might be sent to the inner circles of Hell. How so? In his "Inferno" Dante proposes the pagan's (philosophers)afterlife is spent in "Limbo" because they at least believed in the immortality of the soul. (whew, my handle is platolives) But Epicurius, which did not believe in the soul's immortality is sent right to the 6th inner circle of hell. Can we surmise Dawkin"s stance is similar to Epicurius'? If he is a Platonist he would understand the immaterial attribite of presriptive information and especially that information is something other than itself. (Because it exists for the sake of something else, some goal or end)(See "The Enlightenment: The Making of the New Paganism" by Peter Gay, Norton Press.)
Comment by platolives — March 12, 2007 @ 5:52 pm
March 13th, 2007 at 11:30 am
I've always been bothered by the ontological argument because it is usually presented as a proof, and as a kind of self evident proof IMO it fails.
However, I do think it is possible to make the argument that a belief in some kind of eternally existing transcendent intelligence is logically possible and therefore rational.
Consider for example the following three propositions:
A. Something has always existed and is the cause of our present existence.
B. Scientific evidence suggests that this alway existing something transcends our present finite conception of space, time and the universe.
C. It is logically possible that whatever it is that transcends and caused our universe is intelligent.
In summary, it is entirely reasonable to believe our present universe was caused by a transcendant intelligence.
This is not a proof. It is only an argument for reasonableness.
Comment by JOHN_A_DESIGNER — March 13, 2007 @ 11:30 am