Speak Stiltedly and Wear a Yellow Shirt

Three cool links from R.J.: my blogger code (B5 d- t+ k s u– f i o x– e– l+ c+), a parody of an Apple “switch” commercial, and the Battleground God quiz. (If you want to take the quiz, do so before reading the rest of this entry, in which I pick apart two of the questions.)

You have been awarded the TPM service medal! This is our third highest award for outstanding service on the intellectual battleground.
The fact that you progressed through this activity without suffering many hits and biting no bullets suggests that whilst there are inconsistencies in your beliefs about God, on the whole they are well thought-out.

There are, in fact, no inconsistencies in my beliefs about God. Here are the two questions in question, and why my answers were consistent:

You’ve just taken a direct hit! Earlier you agreed that it is rational to believe that the Loch Ness monster does not exist if there is an absence of strong evidence or argument that it does. No strong evidence or argument was required to show that the monster does not exist - absence of evidence or argument was enough. But now you claim that the atheist needs to be able to provide strong arguments or evidence if their belief in the non-existence of God is to be rational rather than a matter of faith.
The contradiction is that on the first ocassion (Loch Ness monster) you agreed that the absence of evidence or argument is enough to rationally justify belief in the non-existence of the Loch Ness monster, but on this occasion (God), you do not.

I interpreted “Loch Ness monster” as a physical being, whereas God is non-corporeal. In general, statements about animals can be falsified, and statements about spirits, souls, and the like cannot. The people behind the quiz address this issue in the Battleground God FAQ, by saying a “Nessie non-existence sceptic” could argue that Nessie is a mystical being herself or otherwise undetectable to the senses. However, the question did not ask about this souped-up, undetectable Loch Ness monster, but about the Loch Ness monster simpliciter.

It is generally understood that the notion “God” refers to a non-corporeal and undetectable being, whereas notions like “Nessie” and “Sasquatch” refer to postulated physical but elusive evolutionary throwbacks without mystical, inexplicable powers of concealment. Until such mystical powers are explicitly added to the definition of “Nessie,” I am in the right with my answer. Had the question been about standard non-corporeal beings such as ghosts, I would have given the opposite, officially correct, answer. Likewise, had the question clearly been about the Nessie non-existence sceptic’s mystically elusive Nessie, I would have given the opposite answer. So the quiz fails on this question.

The second question is a bit murkier, and has to do with the distinction between the external world and the realm of moral judgments:

You’ve just taken a direct hit! Earlier you said that it is justifiable to base one’s beliefs about the external world on a firm, inner conviction, regardless of the external evidence, or lack of it, for the truth or falsity of this conviction. But now you do not accept that the rapist Peter Sutcliffe was justified in doing just that. The example of the rapist has exposed that you do not in fact agree that any belief is justified just because one is convinced of its truth. So you need to revise your opinion here. The intellectual sniper has scored a bull’s-eye!

The intellectual sniper missed again. Of course the example of the rapist exposes that I don’t agree that any belief is justified by conviction, because I don’t. My answer to the earlier question had to do with, and I quote, “one’s beliefs about the external world.” That question is actually misstated in the analysis above. The original statement was “It is justifiable to base one’s beliefs about the external world on a firm, inner conviction, even in the absence of any external evidence for the truth of these convictions.” It did not mention evidence for the falsity of the conviction. The second question was, on the contrary, about the rapist’s beliefs about whether he was doing the will of God. This is not a belief about the external world, but rather about the mental state of God and the moral justification of the rapist’s own acts.

It is one thing to believe that God exists. That is a belief about the external world, i.e., a belief about those things that exist, physically or spiritually, in or around the universe. It is another thing to believe that God wants you to act in a certain way. Beliefs about what God wants you to do are not beliefs about the external world - they are beliefs about God’s will. God’s will is not a part of the external world, any more than your will or mine is. So the rapist’s beliefs were not about the external world but about God’s internal world, and therefore not justifiable.

To put it another way, one can be justified in believing that a cabbage is an artichoke, lacking evidence to the contrary, but one cannot be justified in believing that someone else believes a cabbage is an artichoke, lacking evidence to the contrary. Your own beliefs are, in some sense, your rational property - you build up your own picture of the world in any consistent way that comes to mind. Other people’s beliefs are not your property, however, and you are never rationally justified in believing, with a firm, inner conviction, what you have merely postulated about another mind. It is the other person who is the final arbiter of their own beliefs; you can have no rational grounds for conviction about a second-order belief. Building up your own determinative pictures of other people’s minds in your own mind is solipsism, not reason.

I’m sure nobody wanted to hear all that, but I enjoyed it.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 7th, 2002 at 8:06 pm and is filed under Quizzes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.