William Kingdon Clifford and death

Given that I consider myself an atheist - and consequently don't believe in an afterlife - a friend scoffed when I said that I'd come to terms with my mortality and my inevitable death. I know that this struggle is one reason that some people cling to faith, but I don't see the point in fretting about the inevitable, on top of which, it's not like you're going to care once you're gone !

Anyway, it turns out that a 19th century mathematician whose work forms the basis of my post-graduate studies held similar views, and I had no idea until yesterday. William Kingdon Clifford on his deathbed chose the following epitaph for his tombstone;

I was not, and was conceived.
I loved and worked a bit.
I am not, and grieve not.

After reading that epitaph I was intrigued and did a little more reading. It turns out that his views on faith and justified belief are very much my own too. I had no idea I'd like his philosophy as much as I do his algebra !

"It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence" - William Kingdon Clifford.

Dogma

I think most outspoken atheists have been asked, at some point, why they care about how others arrive at their beliefs. If you're lucky the question will be a legitimate inquiry aimed at understanding your position, if you're unlucky you might get the patronising "Why are you so angry at God ?" or something similarly dull. The fact is, what people believe determines how they behave, and that affects all of us. It follows that belief becomes everyone's business, or at the very least fair game for criticism by others.

So here is the fundamental problem: any beliefs derived from faith necessarily constitute a dogma. In other words, the fact that you need faith to accept an assertion implies, by the very definition of faith, that any conclusions or beliefs that you form as a result of the assertion, constitute dogma - a set of unquestionable rules that can't be taken on merit, only on faith.

My first gripe with dogma is that if you accept that your beliefs inform your actions (I don't know how you could deny this), then it stands to reason that you should want to hold as many true beliefs as possible - and by implication, as few false beliefs as possible. To try to ensure this you need to be able to defend your beliefs intellectually - to present your reasoning as to why some belief is justified or true. It's not possible to do this with dogmatic beliefs as dogma, by definition, is a form of argument from authority - a logical fallacy.

The second reason is almost sinister - dogma relieves the individual of responsibility for their actions. After all, dogma is taken as incontrovertibly true, and consequently it's not up to the individual to defend it or explain their actions that are taken in accordance with it. By following a system of dogmatic belief you become the Nazi SS officer or Apartheid policeman who was "just following orders", you're no different from the Aztec priest who sacrificed innocents because "the gods demanded it". The only difference will be the degree to which your particular dogma prescribes actions that are harmful or immoral. Despite what many of the faithful would have us believe, we're moral beings in spite of dogma, not because of it (or most of us are anyway).

Finally, and this is more of a personal view about dogma rather than a concrete argument, I find it absurd that anyone would try to cram a suitable set of responses to life's variety into a rule set as mundane as the 10 commandments¹, for example. What's wrong with using your head and rationally evaluating situations as they arise ? Is it really always wrong to lie (bear false witness) ? Is coveting your neighbors possessions wrong when it motivates you to excel rather than steal ? Personally I far prefer people take on a maxim like the golden 'rule', or "do no harm", and apply it intelligently to situations as they arise.

At the risk of being accused of resorting to rhetoric - but hopefully to illustrate some of the points I'm trying to make about dogma - consider the following; When you see people fighting the latest vaccines - are they using rational evidence or dogmatic assertions ? When people fly aircraft into buildings are these rational actions or ones driven by dogmatic systems of belief ? When you hear about people punting garlic and potatoes over ARVs for treating HIV are supporting their claims with rational evidence or are they making dogmatic decrees ? When the Vatican maintain their stance on condoms in the face of the seriousness of HIV are they following dogma or reasons ?


¹ An interesting aside - Catholics and protestants have slightly different versions of the ten commandments based on different ways of dividing up the verses. Catholics don't recognize the prohibition against graven images and rather divide the 10th commandment in two, thus separating a mans property into his wife and his possessions (women as property - how terribly progressive).

Christ's own versions of the ten commandments are different in the 3 gospels in which they are given (Matthew, Mark and Luke), and in fact only include 6 or 7 commandments, depending on which gospel you're following.

The 10 commandments given in Exodus are different too, and predate the others (they're also the only ones actually labeled "the 10 commandments"). So on top of everything else dogma is both confusing and contradictory.

(www.ironchariots.org)

An Introduction

One of the biggest problems with arguments of this sort is that it's easy to talk past someone because of slightly different meanings that the different terms hold for individuals. To try and nip this problem in the bud, I've put down some of the terms that would normally cause problems in a debate of this sort, and I'll keep the list updated as necessary.

theist: someone who holds a belief in the existence of a god or gods, esp. belief in one god as creator of the universe, intervening in it and sustaining a personal relation to his creatures

atheist: anyone who is not a theist (note that the belief that there is no god is not necessary for atheism although a minority of atheists may hold this belief)

dogma: a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true

faith: strong belief in god and in the doctrines of a religion, or a non-religious doctrine or entity based on inner conviction rather than inductive reasoning or empirical evidence

I haven't bothered to supply a definition for agnostic since the term agnostic, in the sense that most people use the word, is covered under my definition of atheism. I've never found the term agnostic to be terribly useful, after all we all are technically agnostic about infinitely many things. I'm a fairy agnostic - I can't disprove the existence of fairies - but I don't think that it's necessary to apply this label to myself. Similarly I'm agnostic with regard to the existence of Shivambu Street in Nairobi - I doubt there's one, I just made it up, but it's not knowledge that I claim, and in that sense I have to consider my self to technically be a Shivambu Street Agnostic. See what I mean about the uselessness of the term agnostic ?

Whether you like the rest of my definitions or not isn't really all that important, what is important is that the definitions above are what I mean when I use the terms in question in the posts on this blog.

Having dealt with the terminology, the next thing to clear up is related to the burden of proof. Some atheists are critical of 'new atheists', like Dawkins, being willing to engage in debate regarding the legitimacy of belief. They feel that by engaging in debate you implicitly lending some credibility to your opponent. I want to be clear that what I'm trying to do here is to put together a coherent intellectual defense of my own position - that the only way to any truth is through inductive reasoning and explanations that are inherently good (more of that in later posts), and that what you believe to be true matters.

I'm not trying to disprove the existence of God, or the efficacy of alternative medicines or to debunk any other dogma. I don't need to. The burden of proof lies with the people who make those claims and nothing that I or any other counter-apologist says can change that. If you want to make the claim that God is a real entity for example, it's up to you to provide the evidence to support your claim.

It's always necessary to place the burden of proof on a claimant. It's the ONLY way to build a useful model of reality. If we were to accept even one claim as true without evidence, on what basis could we reject another claim that lacks evidence ? If we accept all claims until they are disproved we'd live in pretty confusing world indeed. Noone can disprove beyond doubt the existence of Leprechauns, or faires, or wizards, or the river Styx. In short, when considering any claim, the proper default position is that of the sceptic, not the claimant.

Motivations

The purpose of this blog is to try to solidify my own thoughts in regard to the conflict between faith and reason. I'm hoping to consolidate my arguments for reason over faith that have been developing in my head over the years. Hopefully the reasons why I feel that I need to solidify the arguments in defense of my position will become apparent to readers as I write. Please feel free to throw any challenges, and objections to my arguments at me in the comments section. You'll either help me clarify my argument, help me strengthen an argument, or help me toss out an argument that is flawed. Feedback of an editorial nature is welcome too !

The faith vs reason conflict is broad and cuts across many social spheres from the religious right (faith) vs the 'new' atheists (reason) to homeopathy (faith) vs conventional medicine (reason), to creation (faith) vs evolution (reason). Most of the visible conflict though is in the domain of religion and science rather than politics, mysticism or sociology and so many (quite probably most) of my posts will reflect this.

Please note that as I consolidate my position I'll probably tweak the arguments in the various posts, so they may change a bit with time.