A Christmas Gift for Tom Brown

Hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas-or Kwanzaa as the case may be; or if you're Jewish I guess you already celebrated Hanukkah, but at least you got a day off work; and then again I remember a lot of Jews in my neigborhood in Long Island who'd put up Christmas lights anyway just to join in the festival atmosphere.

I figured I'd give my best reader Tom Brown-I say this based on his number of comments; if you want recognition as a reader follow his example! LOL-a present and jump into a weighty debate over the existence of God. 

So I watched the debate between the theist William Lane Craig, and Tom's hero, the atheist Sean Carroll. 

Like Tom, I'm an atheist though it seems to me Tom is almost an fundamentalist atheist if that's such a thing. It''s not that I don't agree with him but I'm more focused these days on Democratic victories which require the votes of lots of people who do need what Cornell West calls 'God Talk' for inspiration and strength, etc. 

You have the African American civil rights movement for starters-there are others. In general Americans are very religious. This appears to be becoming less so, and the Dems are the party of the secular whereas the GOP is the God party. 

UPDATE: However, I am, of course, totally opposed to the 'equal time' teaching of 'Creationism' alongside 'evolution' in schools as they are increasingly doing in some Southern states. Of course, as usual, this is a Federalist issue. What can we do if state legislatures down there want to do this? The only answer would be federal guidelines but meanwhile 'common core' has just suffered some real setbacks. 

Still, even though more Americans are calling themselves nonbelievers I'm not sure all of these are really atheists or even agnostics. Most people I meet say they don't believe but then it turns out they certainly do believe in God just not established religion which is not the same thing at all. 

I'm if anything the opposite-I don't believe in God but I do believe in the church. It can and often has moved mountains. 

For me the main interest in religion is as an ongoing social institution. 

The Craig-Carroll debate is about cosmogony. The theist Craig claims that cosmogony actually further buttresses belief in God. According to him, it increases the evidence that there is a God. Carroll had a great line at the beginning of his portion of the debate where he said if God drops the ceiling on him during his debate, then he'd consider that some real evidence that maybe He does exist. 

I do think that Craig's claim is much too strong-that cosmogony increases the evidence of God. But it's a pretty good trick. It's like Scott Sumner and the old status quo in Neoclassical econ prior to 2008. What happened doesn't prove it was wrong, it proves it was right. 

Both Sumner in economics and Craig in theism sort of use a very clever form of reactionary argument. 

I say very clever as depending on the audience, Craig's argument is probably very effective even if too strong. At the end of the day, what is the goal of both these debaters? I guess you'd have to say that Carroll wants to end belief in God and Craig wants to protect belief from Carroll.

But of course belief in God likely won't be destroyed over night-nor will it be restored to the security Craig believed it had in the past. 

What both are really trying to do is move the Upton Window-Craig towards strengthened belief, Carroll towards weakened belief. From that standpoint, Craig's argument that cosmogony actually strengthened belief is while way too strong a claim-and so obviously false on its face-probably effective from the UW perspective. 

Again, it depends what audience you're considering. Is it just for technical cosmogonists the fight is being waged? I'd say that's not the real target for either gentlemen. They both hope to influence the larger public. But how much of the larger public watches cosmogonist debates? At best it may 'trickle down' intellectually speaking. 

When you think of people watching this debate how many would actually change their mind? That'd be an interesting question. If it's like most questions-and I suspect it is-then those who believed in God going in feel stronger now, those who didn't also feel stronger now. 

But Craig may have been at least relatively successful for the moment at least in that all he has to do is raise doubt in the interested layperson. These are fairly complex arguments for those unfamiliar with cosmogony and for such folks the debate may well have sounded like a wash-opinions differ. 

 The real trouble is that the people who believe in God don't do it because they looked at the arguments pro and con of cosmogonists, but rather for emotional or metaphysical reasons-to give themselves a feeling of hope and clarity for their Being in the World(Heidegger).

So Carroll's arguments won't be able to take away the need to believe in God. 

As far as convincing folks to give up belief in God, as I've related previously, it happened to me. I was raised in very religious background-Seventh Day Adventists-who are very strict and this just happens to be Ben Carson's religion to say nothing of David Koresh; in fairness he wasn't in the church by the time he was in Waco but had started a cult built around his own special relationship with God.

Yet reading Nietzsche weaned me off such belief. Don't get me wrong, by the time I read N I was far from a practicing Adventist-I hadn't been so in my adult years. But I still did hold to a belief in God. Nietzsche weaned me off-I wouldn't say convinced me to.

All I know is that I was reading him and found his attacks on Christianity and belief pretty bracing but that didn't bother me. I figured if belief in God is a worthy thing it should be able to withstand counterarguments. But then at some point I suddenly realized I didn't believe anymore. 

The best cosmogony arguments in my opinion can be found in Nietzsche. '

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003IHW00U?keywords=nietzsche&qid=1451126034&ref_=sr_1_8&s=books&sr=1-8

Particuarly in the start of book three in Gay Science. 

Ok, so you might say my own example provides hope-Nietzsche was able to help me give up God. Yes but for me, it helped that he sort of had my religious background. He came from a very strict Lutheran background-his father was a Lutheran pastor, etc. 

But that's the difference between Tom and me-he grew up with a father who wasn't a believer. For someone from a true believer background, probably only someone from the same could really reach me. But Nietzsche does a lot more than someone like Carroll does-a simple argument that there is no evidence for God. N speaks to the religious need. 

Sure we can argue that science provides no evidence of God, or even disproves it, but this is an intellectual argument and the need to believe is not an intellectual need. 

It''s not as if people start believing based on reading Craig. Believers haven't read cosmogony and concluded 'I believe there is evidence for the existence of God.'

Don't get me wrong, it was a good debate, and I think maybe Carroll can have some impact on the Upton Window at the margins maybe. But at the end of the day, it's one thing to make an argument based on lack of evidence or evidence against the belief in God, quite another to speak to the need for this belief. 

What is of interest in God Talk for me at this point isn't really God-it's man. It's all about us and what it means for society. There are lots of other angles you can take this debate on. What about a utilitarian argument? What is the social benefits of believing in God vs not believing? I mean beyond the obvious outlier of stuff like Creationism which many believers don't believe in.

That was sort of what the Al Sharpton-Christopher Hitchens debate was about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPYxA8dYLBY

That debate was also hilarious. 

Also the question of ontology-what does belief or lack thereof do to our sense of Being in the World as humans?