I can’t recommend the debate—surely too strong a word; let’s instead say the sit-down—between Ross Douthat, a New York Times employee, and Stephen Pinker, an academic, except for one thing. It is a fine illustration of argument with hidden or tacit premises. Which, astoundingly, neither of the sit-downers were even aware of.
Here’s a two-minute clip, with the link below it to the very-much-longer-than-two-minutes video. I’ll summarize:
Pinker: “The more religious the society, the worse the problems are.” (He used his fingers to point at each word in the air as he said it. Why, I do not know.)
Douthat: “No way, dude. USA! USA! USA!
I might have misheard Douthat, but it’s close. It is a word-for-word quotation from Pinker, though. Who does not see that he has assumed what he wants to prove, and therefore that his argument is viciously circular.
He did not miss that some religions are good and some bad. A bad one is the one where they marched people by the thousands up some steps and hacked their beating hearts out of their chests with dull stone knives. Don’t mistake that for the Enlightened French Revolution, and its many later Enlightened emulations. They didn’t use stone knives there, but, thanks to Science, sharp steel ones (later, blunt lead ones). And it was heads, the seat of reason, they hacked off, not hearts, the home of the soul.
Pinker instead points to Scandinavia as a pleasant place to spend one’s time trying to have as many self-inflicted orgasms as possible in front of small screens before the MAID van comes to pick you up and try to salvage what’s left of your organs (an allusion I borrow from Stove). He contrasts Scandinavia with Afghanistan, which he implies is a nasty place to live.
And I’m with him. I’d rather live in Sweden myself, if forced to choose. But that’s because I like herring sandwiches and could never bring myself to be fond of goat cheese, which I assume is daily fare in Afghanistan.
No. What Pinker missed was that if a religion is true, then living by its tenets is best. And that if none of them are true, which he assumes, then it does not matter which way you live. All ways are equally bad. Or, rather, they are all equally nothing. There is no consequence that follows from all religions, including the ones we have not yet thought up (Scientology is losing its luster), being false, except that nothing matters.
Pinker (and Douthat) never bothers to define or defend his notion of The Good. He assumes we all share, or ought to share, whatever notion he has planted under his I’m-A-Scientist wig. Whatever these notions are, even if some of them are in fact the same as some that you or I hold, they are all his opinion, and nothing but his opinion, if all religions are false.
His life, the life of anybody, the life of the species, the life of the planet make no difference if all religions are false. His pain, his health, anybody’s pain or heath, the pain or health of any beast are irrelevant if all religions are false. Everything is irrelevant. You may say pain is bad; yet others disagree, and some enjoy giving it. On what authority do you say they are wrong? Even the supposed authority of fifty-plus-epsilon coming to agree is nothing, because there is no justification for saying a majority, or even old-fashioned might, makes right.
Whereas is one religion is true, and the others not, or if some are only approximations, to varying degree, to the one true religion, then it is your duty to find it. And draw moral authority from it. It is a fallacy to suppose this is an impossible task: the One True Spartacus Fallacy. That would be if Crassus concluded there was no one true real Spartacus because hundreds of other men claimed to be the one true real Spartacus. Or if Crassus said, “Oh, well, there are too many for me to bother checking any of them.”
Pinker should know this as a scientist, because scientists are always proposing new theories for the one true theory of the universe. He would not dismiss all science because there have been many false theories, or because best theory we have is incomplete. He would scoff, and probably even giggle—anybody with hair like that would giggle—and dismiss the idea that there can’t be real science because there has been a lot of fake bad lousy misleading and fraudulent science.
And that brings us to the Only Metric That Matters. Pinker would enumerate some thing, I don’t know, perhaps lymphomas, and said that the best society is the one that minimizes it. Or the one that maximizes smiles. Whatever it is will be wholly arbitrary and subject to dispute. But if the religion I say is the one true religion really is the one true religion, then the only metric that matters is how many souls make it to Heaven. Everything else, however you paint it, would be superfluous.
If you say that is wrong, then it is your job to find the One True Religion and discover its supreme metric. If you say they are all by necessity, then raw complete uncountable unmeasurable nihilism is the only answer.
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What does it mean to say that “a religion is true”? IF? does this imply there are fake religions?
How do you know that “if a religion is true, then living by its tenets is best”? I don’t agree with this statement. I have always seen Pinker as a humanist. I grew up with a strong humanistic education and have lived among Catholics. In my experience, humanism generally does a better job than religion in shaping a person’s ethics and moral values, which may have to do with the kind of society we live in. I also believe humanists tend not to oppose religion.
I have to admit I don’t understand the logic (or beliefs)) behind many statements here. What people didn’t say or may have assumed doesn’t constitute valid criticism at all.
“…the only metric that matters is how many souls make it to Heaven…”
This metric is tough to measure. There’s a great deal of (Earthly) uncertainty about it. Will Pinker get there? Will you? Will I? Pinker isn’t even making the attempt, but we still can’t say for sure.
Pinker’s Problem is materialism, a sort of metaphysical dead end. Morality aside, his view is pointless. The religious view has a definite though uncertain purpose, and morality in that context cannot be set aside.
Humanism might be a better guide, if you are a high-IQ Greek philospher like Aristotle, or even Nietzsche. But for the vast majority of people, of average intelligence or lower, Humanism (and Pinker) are utterly irrelevant, and the Humanist rant are really pernicious. As Nietzsche noted, some people need priests, and others need to be priests.
Anyway, Roman Catholicism is the only True Religion and the only Path to Salvation. I know so, because the nuns told me so.
As it happens, Stephen Pinker and I were at the same university, around the same time. No, I don’t recall ever meeting him though, in general, I consider him a pretty smart fellow.
In today’s post, the Pinker you portray reminds me of Felix Adler; the founder of “Ethical Culture”. Would they suggest that moral validity is determined by consensus, that it takes an ethical village to supplant a God?
“How many souls make it to Heaven” is an attribute that can’t be expressed with variable data.
“What does it mean to say that “a religion is true”? IF? does this imply there are fake religions?”
Yes.
How do you know that “if a religion is true, then living by its tenets is best”?
Because it is true.
Jumping off a building from a certain height at a certain speed towards a certain hardness of surface can kill you.
Whenever religion upholds all kinds of truths just like that, you’d best heed them.
I don’t agree with this statement.
Well, laa dee daa!
In my experience, humanism generally does a better job than religion in shaping a person’s ethics and moral values, which may have to do with the kind of society we live in.
I don’t agree with this statement.
In MY experience, the TRUE Religion wipes the floor with every other religion including humanism, which is also a religion, albeit one for nuts and swine, an apt description of a great swath of current society.
I also believe humanists tend not to oppose religion.
Demonstrating how untrustworthy humanism truly is. If humanism had any legitimacy, it would oppose all religions which are false. But it doesn’t, because it cannot actually tell us anything.
I have to admit I don’t understand the logic (or beliefs)) behind many statements here.
Proof that humanism didn’t do a good job shaping you to be anything other than being in possession of the undefinable feelings of a humanist.
What people didn’t say or may have assumed doesn’t constitute valid criticism at all.
Sure it does. There are fallacies of omission, and numerous fallacies where assumptions are assumed as the very proof needed to circularly prove the assumption one is asked to prove.
Such as a statement that says, “In my experience, humanism generally does a better job than religion in shaping a person’s ethics and moral values, which may have to do with the kind of society we live in.”
But one lap around your comment demonstrates that humanism didn’t even do a general job, far from a better job, than even other false religions, in shaping your faculties of rational thought, forget about any ethics or moral values.
For example, where do you stand on objective acts of sodomy, JH? Does it happen to be whatever closely approximates what current “society” at least tolerates in practice?
““How many souls make it to Heaven” is an attribute that can’t be expressed with variable data.”
We can at least painfully draw an answer from all available data, the trend, that the exact number is far far fewer than we’ll ever be comfortable hearing. Almost despairingly so…
Our only mission in life is to ensure as much as possible that we are part of that number, to whatever post decimal point place of a percentage that may be. Even Purgatory will be a great consolation prize!
FOR CERTAIN, JOHNNO, JESUS IS
LORD, AND NO OTHER!!!
GOD BLESS, C-MARIE