Has Peter Boghossian Disqualified Himself from the Adult Table?

Richard Carrier has written a brilliant article addressing yet another astoundingly ignorant statement made by Peter Boghossian, this time on the issue of gay pride. Last year on Twitter, Boghossian expressed his inability to understand how one can be proud of "something one didn’t work for." As if this weren't evidence enough of the man's right-wing politics, he followed up in response to a wave of criticism directed at his tweet by saying: "Questioning that one can be proud to be gay is a leftist blasphemy."

Boghossian is quite fond of telling others how to think and feel, and denouncing them as not even worthy of being taken seriously when they don't meet his standards. He says in two other recent tweets:

Feminists will be taken seriously when they spend at least as much time criticizing abuses of women in the 3rd world as they do in the 1st. 7/30/14

As long as philosophers like Derrida and Zizek are taken seriously, the discipline of philosophy won't be taken seriously. 3/10/15

Carrier points out in his post that Boghossian has a bad habit of not listening to his critics. As the examples above indicate, he speaks in radically divisive tones, and then either goes silent in the face of objections, or reiterates his views with yet more party-line rhetoric. This is quite unbecoming for a philosopher, especially one who emphasizes critical thinking and doxastic openness, as Carrier seems to agree:

Good naturalism, good philosophy, and thus in fact good atheism, means finding out how reality works first, before declaring notions that reinforce the attitudes and ignorance that perpetuate social injustices like homophobia and anti-gay bigotry. Which means if this kind of failure on Boghossian’s part is typical, then it means professor Boghossian is a really bad philosopher.

This appears to suggest that Boghossian does a lot of opening his mouth before he thinks. He tends to draw the lines and point the finger prior to the actual conversation, certainly before things have been anywhere near as resolved as he takes them to be. Let's look at three other prominent examples of this:

1) In his Manual for Creating Atheists, Boghossian recommends that we, "Stigmatize faith-based claims like racist claims," and, "Treat faith as a public health crisis." He suggests a line of children's comics and TV shows starring Epistemology Knights and Faith Monsters. Notably, his book is devoid of any talk of actual philosophical epistemology, so his advocacy of demonizing religious belief at the outset is problematic for its close resemblance to sheer, uncritical propaganda.

2) In his debate on Unbelievable with Tim McGrew (a distinguished Christian philosopher), Boghossian upheld his definition of faith as "pretending to know what you don't know," against the understanding of Christians familiar with the literature, like McGrew, and against an overwhelming consensus poll taken by the show. Of course, Unbelievable is a Christian podcast, but the poll included atheists as well, and more bothersome is that Boghossian really didn't try to defend his definition at all on the show, aside from broad sweeping generalizations about its use - which the poll quickly put to rest. Interestingly, Peter also shied away from endorsing on the podcast his own characterization of faith as "an unclassified cognitive illness disguised as a moral virtue."

3) Last year, Boghossian came under fire for tweeting the following: "Being published in the philosophy of religion should disqualify one from sitting at the adult table." The fallout from this was fairly significant, as multiple voices (including my own) spoke up to disagree with Peter, who almost entirely neglected to respond to criticisms, save for sharing his general thoughts with his pal and self-professed 'bulldog' John Loftus (one may wonder how eager Loftus will be to defend his friend on these recent remarks).

It's been over a year now since I wrote my review of Boghossian's book, and I've had plenty of time to mull over its aims and arguments. I feel that many of the reservations I had while reading through it have been not only confirmed by Boghossian's subsequent behavior, but have been trumpeted loudly in a manner I wouldn't really have anticipated. The whole project frankly seems to be that of a person who is not interested in dialogue, who cares nothing for critical thinking except where it will bolster his own side, and who clings to his own doxastic closure with pride (which he did not work for) as a means of ridiculing and manipulating others into agreeing with him. Don't get me wrong, Boghossian will say he favors the objective route, but his actions and comments increasingly seem to conflict with his verbal assurances.

This is not the sort of model we should be encouraging in the atheist community. Just as there can be "wolves in sheep's clothing" among the religious - people who talk the talk without walking the walk - there can also be those among the non-religious who speak in a way that sounds appealing to us, yet behave in inconsistent ways that may reveal a lot about a person's character. I do not intend to imply that Boghossian is willfully dishonest or anything of the like, but there is a danger in embracing people as role models based primarily on how they sound to us, the familiar language they use, and so on, especially when atheists are already not the most beloved figures among society. Again, that's not to say we should be striving to win some popularity contest, but there is truth to what Boghossian, Dawkins, and others have said about the need to speak up against problematic voices within one's own community.

John Loftus once said to me, in discussion of Boghossian's controversial tweet over philosophy of religion, that he hates to see division among atheists. In fact, I do too. I hate to see atheists attacking each other for political differences. I hate to see atheists not utilizing the tool sets they've developed in thinking about religion to also think about other things, like sex and gender, race and sexual orientation, culture and history, and much more. I wish we could talk about the variety of diverging ideas among us with civility and respect. But Boghossian is not just polarizing the religious and the non-religious, he is divisive to atheists, and his rhetoric often dispenses with civility and respect. Who is he helping with all his language about "the adult table" and being taken seriously? It certainly isn't causing many believers to take him seriously, and even many atheists are finding it hard to do so.

As Carrier says at the conclusion of his article, "Ending religion will do us no good whatever, if all we do is replace it with an atheism that’s just as bad." Our goal shouldn't be to win at any cost. In retrospect, perhaps the title and intent of Boghossian's book should have given it away that this is his aim. He wants to convert the irrational and make them rational. We have a serious problem, though, when the "irrational" are simply defined as those who Boghossian says are not to be taken seriously. As it turns out, that group includes a lot of people, and is growing more and more to look like it consists merely of all those who disagree with Peter about things that are important to him. A Manual for Creating Atheists is starting to look a lot like A Manual for Creating Egotists.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who's the Most Rational of Us All?

I began having serious doubts about my Christian faith eight years ago, and eventually came to renounce it shortly thereafter. A brief period followed during which I called myself an agnostic in the colloquial sense, feeling more like a fish that had just found its way out into the bigger sea than like someone who was prepared to reject theism altogether. All I knew was that I could no longer believe as I once believed, and I had to head out into the deeper waters to see what else might be waiting.

I've always felt like it took me a very short time to become an atheist. It wasn't overnight, it wasn't part of any emotional tragedy, nor was it the result of reading any particular 'god-hating' unbeliever. It did come on the heels of a lot of inner reflection, however. The doubts that crept in were not about how god had failed me, but were rather focused on failures in my own thinking, reasoning, and process of belief-formation. Looking back now, it's not so surprising that things happened this way, considering the increasing interest I had in skepticism of the paranormal at the time.

Nonetheless, to this day there remains a part of me that sees that agnostic period of my life as almost embarrassingly cursory. Sure, I spent time reading on other religions, talking to people with different views, and I still interacted with my Christian friends and family on a regular basis, but there was no 'spiritual journey' to get in touch with the divine, no visitations to various places of meditation and worship, nor did I even crack open another religious text to pour over its teachings. It was a quite limited standpoint from which I became an atheist.

Of course, there are plenty of people who are born into their religion having never had the chance to consult alternatives prior to their decision (if it's appropriate to call it that). There are also plenty of people who change their beliefs without embarking on some grand path to enlightenment. I've always had a tendency towards the epic and the elaborate in some sense, admittedly, but reminding myself of these things usually doesn't put my mind at ease in the way I'd like. After all, a fool in good company is still a fool, isn't he? Even so, we seem to possess some recognition that one doesn't need to explore every avenue available, or even jump through a majority of the hoops, to be reasonable in settling upon a certain belief.

Instead of chasing this thread and trying to learn more about what reasonable belief means, when I became an atheist I took the tactic that a number of young atheists have taken: I insisted that we have all the evidence on our side, so not being on our side is just being irrational. Unfortunately, this position is strongly alluring in a way similar to when certain Christians cling to the badge of faith as if it's a get-out-of-jail-free card. If you don't have faith, the world is cold, lonely, and unpredictable; if you don't have evidence, you run the risk of believing lies and hurting others by endorsing lies. For some such atheists, the immediacy of their experience digging into the problems behind creationism, biblical inerrancy, and religious moral authority just appears to make their conclusion inevitable, like some such Christians may find their own conclusion inevitable based on the immediacy of the joy and personal fulfillment they experience from their faith.

Despite the conviction I voiced as a young atheist about the irrationality of all religious belief, I was still very aware of how I used to see things when I was a Christian, particularly when my conversations with theists touched on common themes. I noticed how often arguments came down to questions of how to interpret evidence rather than questions of what to admit as evidence. I saw just how much our interpretations vary depending on our worldview. On rare occasions, I might even realize that there seemed to currently be no advantage held by either side. Yet still I contended that the preponderance of evidence pointed only to atheism being the rational conclusion, while my theistic opponents persisted in contending that only theism was the rational conclusion.

As I started learning more about rationality, it started to dawn on me that things were not as simple as I had assumed they were. Declaring something rational is not to say it's true, nor is it simply to say that the preponderance of evidence is in support of it. Rationality has as much to do with beliefs as it has to do with arguments and evidence. For Bob to be rationally justified in believing that Ed caught a 200 lb marlin is just to say that Bob has reason to believe that it's true Ed caught a 200 lb marlin, whether or not Ed actually did haul in such an impressive catch. What makes it a reasonable belief for Bob may be that he knows Ed is a skilled fisherman, he knows that Ed owns some quality fishing equipment, and he knows that Ed likes to go fishing where there is a large population of marlin. However, Joe could reasonably believe that Ed did not catch a 200 lb marlin if he knows that Ed's boat has a broken motor, yet if Bob is unaware of this fact, Bob would also continue to be reasonable in believing in Ed's catch.

The example of Bob, Ed, and Joe is a simple one, but it illustrates the point that rationality can be a sticky subject because it involves considerations about what a person knows, what they believe, and what evidence is accessible to them, among other things. Naturally, the answers will vary in many situations, and so when asking if something is rational, it may be useful to ask rational for whom? This seems to be a major oversight in many arguments had over what the rational choice is from certain political, social, religious, or historical standpoints. Even when the implication is that some decision is the rational choice for all persons, there is a hefty burden of proof to be met to show that this is the case, especially if said decision is taken to be the only rational choice.

Graham Oppy reminds us that not only is there a large and growing body of psychological research showing that none of us are perfectly rational agents, but "even if we were perfectly rational, and had accessed the same full body of evidence, it might still be possible for us to disagree provided that we accessed the evidence in differing orders (and provided that our finite capacities ensured that we could not 'store' - or access - the full body of evidence all at once)." [1] There is no reason to think that such disagreements must necessarily imply irrationality on one side or the other. Neither does it seem objectionable to suggest that two of us viewing the same piece of evidence could come to opposite conclusions and nevertheless both be rational in our beliefs.

Sadly, many voices continue making blanket generalizations about the rationality and irrationality of theism, atheism, of all theists, and all atheists. Biologist Jerry Coyne has declared "theism is irrational because it isn't true," [2] whereas Dinesh D'Souza, Ken Ham, and many other Christian apologists have made similar charges against atheism. Of course, Coyne's comment would commit him to the difficult claim that it was unreasonable for the ancients to believe in geocentrism before the Copernican revolution, but all such accusations of irrationality seem hasty for the reasons already mentioned above.

I have always had my reservations about discerning what another person ought to know, what they ought to conclude based on what they believe, and what evidence should be accessible to them. Frankly, we do so poor a job of this with ourselves sometimes that it can appear pretty arrogant to tell someone else what they're doing wrong. When someone voluntarily engages with us, making arguments and proposals, though, that is a different story. When someone tells me what they believe and why, I respond in really the only way that I can: I tell them what I believe and why, and I may do it by showing them where I disagree with their thoughts on the matter. It may be that they have drawn some irrational conclusions, but finding this in one theist, or in a thousand, is no grounds for hastily declaring all theists to be irrational.

Obviously, this need not mean we adopt a relativistic approach to the issue of god's existence. Keith Parsons writes,

It seems quite possible for an atheist to regard theism as entirely unfounded (i.e. groundless), yet to concede freely that theism is a rational belief for many people. In other words, atheists can admit without hesitation that religious experience is coherent, persistent, and, for many, compelling. Persons who believe in God on the basis of such experiences can therefore be regarded by atheists as perfectly rational. (Of course, the atheist would deny that the occurrence of such experiences shows theism to be true.) [3]

Is there not a sense of freedom in this? I spent years of my Christian life feeling shackled by doctrines like hell, original sin, and 'born again' theology. Try as one might to escape it, there is a very potent division of the world into believers and unbelievers, saved and unsaved, in Christianity. It affects the way you see the people around you (not always in a bad way, to be fair), and perpetuates an 'us and them' mentality. Likewise, atheists who divide the world into rational and irrational beliefs and associate them very broadly with those of religious and non-religious persuasions also color the people around them and perpetuate the 'us and them' way of thinking. There are the redeemed and the damned, the delusional and the sane.

It may be common to hear atheists and theists alike say they don't think holding a particular view makes anyone smarter, but this is cold comfort. The problem with throwing around labels like 'rational' and 'irrational' isn't just one of negative connotations regarding intelligence. As Parsons also observes, the charge of irrationality is a charge of moral failure as well: "It is a way of saying that someone has formed a belief irresponsibly or dishonestly - through self-deception, say, or perhaps by ignoring easily available contrary evidence. To call someone irrational is to say that he has settled for a belief that he knows, deep down inside, not to be the most reasonable one." [4]

This is quite the bold claim to make of someone else, especially someone you may not know personally. However, with all that we've seen on how rationality takes into account one's own beliefs, their access to evidence, and so forth, it does seem that to charge someone of being irrational is to charge them of violating their own beliefs, disregarding evidence they know to exist, and being generally disingenuous in their own personal collection of data and process of belief-formation. Unless one accepts libertarian free will, there seems to be a further question of to what extent a person even could 'gerrymander' their own beliefs in this fashion.

I no longer find it intellectually or morally responsible to hold the view that theism or all theists are irrational, and, as I said, I feel this is a freeing recognition. It does not mean that I will not try to persuade others to my views, nor does it mean that I think all theists are rational in what they believe. Rather, I see it as undoing the vestiges of prejudice lingering in an unhelpful and unreasonable brand of rhetoric. I don't need to worry that the world is going to hell anymore, either literally or figuratively, and I no longer need to reach for the favored psychological "explanations" for why intelligent people persist in religious belief.

Now, when someone asks me why I'm not a Christian, I will simply say I've found reason to doubt that it's true. But it doesn't mean you're irrational for believing it, or that I'm rational for disbelieving, or that we can't have an engaging conversation about our separate views.


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Sources:
1. Graham Oppy, Arguing About Gods (2006), p. 7.
2. Jerry Coyne, Remarkably stupid remarks by sophisticated theologian. (2011) Retrieved Aug. 24, 2014.
3. Keith Parsons, God and the Burden of Proof (1989), p. 36.
4. Ibid, p. 32.

The Value of Reason

I'm often disappointed to see how little people understand the concept and use of reason. Reason is typically seen as the buzzword of intellectuals who engage in debate and lay out formal argumentation in books or articles. Yet we all utilize the tool of reason on a daily basis, in ways that most of us probably are not aware of. Even when you view a painting in an art gallery and think to yourself, "I like this. It would go well in my living room," you are reasoning that purchasing the painting would be beneficial in the enjoyment it would bring to yourself and to your guests, perhaps. Reason is how we make sense of things in our world - it's how we make choices, how we verify information, and how we communicate to others why we have made a particular choice and why we do, or do not, accept certain information.

Aside from reason there is no other method for assessing truth that has shown to be reliable. Personal experience is sometimes suggested, but we all interpret our experiences, and these interpretations are always made from reason. They may not be reasonable, but they do use reason, even if incorrectly. This is why many miracle claims are accompanied by reports of the numbers of people present, the slant of those involved, the improbability of the event, and more. Even believers in the supernatural recognize that reason is a vital part of making a persuasive argument to others. Asking us to believe without reason is far less likely to result in a successful conversion than providing bad reasons to believe.

Recently I talked to an individual who said that he believes that there is more truth out there than what we can find through science and reason. There are also truths in religion, poetry, and metaphor, he said. I don't say that science is all there is because, for one reason, I know that science misses the significance of things like poetry, music, literature, and other media. I do believe there is some truth in religion, as well as poetry and metaphor, but there is still one step left out, which is how one finds these truths from such sources. Again, the only reliable method is reason. Using reason, we can take a story like Jesus and the adulterous woman, or Shakespeare's thoughts on mercy in Act 4 of The Merchant of Venice, and we can apply them to our lives and to the facts of the world at large to find their meaningfulness and, in that sense, find truth.

How else is one to find these truths? One has to first understand the passages before they can be appreciated, and part of appreciating them means uncovering how they relate to us. Since reason is how we make sense of things in our world, we use reason to interpret passages of scripture and poetry, just as we use it to interpret personal experiences. Any time you try to figure things out, reason is involved. The funny thing is that this person, in trying to persuade me of his belief that reason and science are not "all there is," was forced to use the only tenable method he has: reason. And in fact, all of our beliefs are dependent on reason.

Since we can't believe what we know to be false, we must think something is true if we believe it. In order to regard something as true, we have to have some basis for considering it true, whether personal experience, evidence, hearsay, loose connections, or whatever. We don't just suddenly and arbitrarily decide that something is true, we figure out that it's true (even if we're mistaken). By good use or bad use, we have come to hold the beliefs we now hold thanks to reason. This may be one of the most powerful realizations in understanding the place and value of reason in our thinking. Even the belief that reason is limited requires reason to be sustained.

The Media is Anathema to Critical Thinking

One of the big stories to gush out of online media today is that of a 1928 film clip depicting what some are suggesting is a woman talking on a cell phone. In numerous news articles, the figure is called a 'time traveler'. This has to be one of the most noteworthy cases of blatant disregard for critical thinking that I've seen from major internet media sources. Viewing the footage, you can see that the individual is holding something up to her head and talking... and that's all. The quality is grainy and dark, like most film shot in the '20s, so there's no telling what's in her hand. And this has led to speculation about time travel?

Has no one thought to ask how a time traveler would get cell phone service back in 1928? People have already suggested that the woman may actually be carrying an ear horn, or early hearing aid device, but you probably won't find that in news headlines. Since the footage is from the premiere of a Charlie Chaplin film, perhaps the woman is pulling a prank. Some have even surmised that the figure is actually a man dressed as a woman. Or maybe she's just covering her ear because it hurts, because it's gotten cold (she is wearing a pretty hefty coat), or she doesn't want the camera on her face.

Whatever the explanation, once again the media has blown an extremely trivial and unimpressive discovery into something paranormal. You might ask, 'it's only the media, why do you care?' I care because while I've noticed how many people tend to distrust the media on natural explanations and government affairs, they seem to exercise far less critical thinking when the reports involve unexplained phenomena. Another recent example is the so-called UFO spotted in New York on October 13th. A couple days after the sighting, the circular floating objects were suggested to be... you guessed it: balloons, which had gotten loose from an engagement party for a teacher at a nearby elementary school.

However, in the Associated Press' video on the incident and explanation, interviews with a few witnesses show that people aren't buying the balloons theory. Why? No one really offers a reason, they only seem to prefer believing the fantastical story to the mundane one. The craziest thing is that close-up footage of the UFOs in the AP video shows what looks startlingly like a cluster of silvery balloons. But if that's "the official story", we can't believe it, and the media went to great lengths to remain impartial on the issue.

I think the media realizes that most of our world still prefers magical thinking to rational thinking, and in that saddening fact they find a way to climb in their ratings.