This life's dim windows of the soul,
Distorts the heavens from pole to pole,
And leads you to believe a lie,
When you see with,
And not through the eye.
-William Blake
Tina Farnworth- According to her Google+ Profile is: Married Mum of 2 teenage boys, passionate about atheism, Life, the Universe and Everything!!
It is a beautiful piece of photographic art isn't it! But I wish to challenge the thinking behind the message.
Lets look at what is assumed in the words that go with the beautiful image. First up we have a moral imperative. Whenever the word "should" is used we should instantly be aware that some moral claim is being made. I just used the word myself in the previous sentence. My reason for using it is because even when people argue against morality in general, they are using a moral argument. People don't always recognize a self defeating argument when they see one. You "should" be aware because we have a moral responsibility to know and verify claims as true or not.
- The argument against any sort of morality, stating (as some do) that:
"morality is simply a man made convention that ought to be dispensed with",
is a self defeating argument.
In such a case the one promoting it cannot use the word "ought" or "should" because the existence of the moral reality they are trying to defeat is implied and assumed by the use of those words.
So we- like the self confessed atheist Tina Farnworth- all agree we live in a moral Universe.
When these words are used there is an assumption being made that one state of affairs is better than another, a moral standard is being presupposed. One can only appeal to those words as meaningful if a moral standard is assumed.
- Now if that moral standard was completely relative then it's like trying to stand on shifting sand that is being swept away, first by a wave from this direction and then by another from a completely different direction, it completely undermines any moral standpoint. One cannot stand at all in this state of affairs.
Once it is pointed out- it is easy to see the following relativistic sentence is inconsistent with itself. If I make the judgement:
"You should not say this is right or that is wrong"then if that statement is true - to be consistent, neither should I make the statement:
"You should not say this is right or that is wrong"This is because I am specifically doing what I am at the same time denying or prohibiting. It belongs to the same class of statements like:
"I cannot speak a word of English"It is self defeating. In fact relativism makes it impossible to make any meaningful statement about right and wrong with any sense of authority. Of course the problem with moral relativists is that they always try to sneak in absolute statements otherwise they could not argue their case.
Even when someone says we should stop all talk of morality or all talk of absolute morality this assumes a standard of absolute morality. If, as many do today, there is a concerted push to make all morality relative, then the argument dissolves itself. C.S. Lewis in another context used the illustration of a knot in a rope. The rope is threaded this way and that way until at the last turn of the rope it is given a quick pull and the whole knot disintegrates and disappears, defeating its own purpose.
This is necessarily so because if one presupposes that everyone should "live their own truth" and not force it on others we would find life intolerable even impossible. This is what it means to make morality "relative". You see if you agree that "all morality is relative" you have just made an absolute claim with the word "all". When you assume a morally relative world- I might respond and say "Good, I want to bring an absolute system of morality into the world and this is my reality" and if you are a consistent moral relativist then you have no grounds to argue meaningfully against it. Thus it makes itself impotent. Relative morality reveals itself as deficient as a moral basis for living.
This is easily demonstrated in actual life: Suppose, at the local bookstore you purchase a book called "Moral Relativism- The Right Way to Live" by A.N Idiot. It cost $20 and you hand over a $50 note to the assistant. What would you do if he only handed you $5 change? Of course you would protest!
"You haven't given me the right change" I hear you say.The assistant with a very frosty look shoves the book and your meagre change towards you and says:
"Read the book honey- this is my reality, this is my truth, this is my morality and don't come in here trying to force your absolutes on me!"
- Moral relativism doesn't work, the alternative is objective or absolute morality. To be objectively true- it is true for all people, for all time, in all places.
- We agree with Tina that we live in a moral world.
- Tina has made a moral claim with regard to religion, and we need to know if it's true, if its good.
- We have ruled out moral relativism in this moral world.
- That means, if her statement is true, it must be objectively true because we have ruled out moral relativism.
- If it is objectively true- then its true for all time, for all people, in all places- it is a universal law. It doesn't depend on us for its reality.
- A universal law can only be accounted for by positing a universal law giver- God.
But that is whom she is trying to disprove isn't it?
The argument from morality leads inexorably to the existence of God.
Ok so I have spent quite a lot of your time in order to convince you that she is making a moral claim, and how to evaluate that, but I have yet to address what those words are actually saying in her picture, what the actual claim is.
We have looked at the word "should" and all that it implies.
Now look at the word "indoctrination". Ooh yuck. This word in the post-modern context implies a lot, and from this perspective it's all bad. It's about a repetitive, systematic brainwashing technique about as good for you as Hitler's propaganda war that National Socialism was good for Germany. In the good old days this word simply meant to teach something until the idea was firmly grasped and made part of ones paradigm, ones overall way of looking at the world. Speaking of which isn't that exactly whats happened with this word?
Now a-days this word "indoctrination" is almost exclusively used pejoratively (in a negative sense). That is, we have been indoctrinated against the word "indoctrination" and words associated with it like "doctrine". It is now (with many of its family) a wax monument in the Hall of Shame of English Words. When one has been indoctrinated it simply meant that one could take it for granted and move on, which is a good thing if what we tucked away in our brain was true. Now we see it in the same light as the way the media put "spin" on things.
Now isn't that a co-incidence! From where I sit- this word-picture, with all its appeal and emotiveness, the beautiful baby, the mystery and glory of the universe, the strong arm upholding the adorable little treasure, all the connotations in the language- is actually attempting to indoctrinate us isn't it?
I find this use of the innocence of children to politicize a cause as disturbing. As disturbing as that photo of Michael Jackson. In this case the babies face is covered. Was it to spare the infants innocence from some harsh reality? We understandably shudder at this and it is as repugnant to us as much as we are moved empathetically by the other photo above. But do the sentiments expressed in the above really match up to the claims implied?
At the very least, and I suspect all too commonly, it is simply affirming what many already believe.
Well let us give Tina Farnworth the benefit of the doubt. Lets just say she would rather all children made their own minds up about reality. The picture gives a cogent hint as to what she intends, that is- they should only look to nature for all of reality.
But is a completely natural way of looking at the world an unbiased view of reality?
"Naturalism commonly refers to the viewpoint that laws of nature (as opposed to supernatural ones) operate in the universe, and that nothing exists beyond the natural universe or, if it does, it does not affect the natural universe. Adherents of naturalism (naturalists) assert that natural laws are the rules that govern the structure and behavior of the natural universe, that the universe is a product of these laws." (Wikipedia- emphasis mine)Naturalism does not disprove the existence of God it simply makes the assumption that God doesn't exist, then forms a view of reality that accommodates this presupposition. This then, can hardly be called a neutral worldview or an unprejudiced worldview without bias. That is the point of Blake's poem, if you look at the world the way a child does, presupposing that that which one beholds is all there is, and nothing else exists- then that is hardly an unbiased position.
In order to gain an undistorted view of reality what we see must be interpreted by a mind conditioned by truth and a conscience, both of which are not part of the material world. If what Tina implies is true, (that what the child sees is all there is to see), then why does Tina appeal to truth? There is no need for truth in a strictly materialistic world view, neither is there any explanatory power in that worldview for the existence of truth which she nonetheless believes in and appeals to.
Is it possible to bring any child up in a completely neutral way- in some sort of moral vacuum? Would it not presuppose that the parents also would have to be completely neutral?
The view of the infant gazing out at the wonder and beauty of the Universe is by any account beautiful. And so is the idea of growing up without bias. But who believes for a moment that the child is going to be left to itself to form its own ideas about reality? The view that the caring parent is all but out of the picture, leaving the child to form a completely natural view of reality even if it is possible does not guarantee a freedom from bias.
"Two things fill me with wonder, the starry sky above and the moral law within."
The naturalist or materialist account does not give an adequate explanation for consciousness, for moral law, for truth, for the intelligibility of the universe even for the capacity to think!
Greg Cootsona in his blog- The Right Rhythm says:
[C.S.] "Lewis, who in many ways gloried in moving against the grain of the culture, readily argued for the irrationality of materialism. I use “irrationality” advisedly because Lewis argued that materialism did not allow for rationality and thus obviated truth as well. In materialism, things just are; they are neither true nor false. And I mean this literally—Lewis concluded that, if we take nature to be all that there is, there is no place for rational thought. That is why naturalism defeats itself. It cuts off the very branch on which it sits." (emphasis mine)
From a previous blog post of my own quoting Lewis out of his book Miracles:
"It would be impossible to accept naturalism itself if we really and consistently believed naturalism. For naturalism is a system of thought. But for naturalism all thoughts are mere events with irrational causes. It is, to me at any rate, impossible to regard the thoughts which make up naturalism in that way and, at the same time, to regard them as real insight into external reality. Bradley distinguished idea-event from idea-making, but naturalism seems to me committed to regarding ideas simply as events. For meaning is a relation of a wholly new kind, as remote, as mysterious, as opaque to empirical study, as soul itself.
Perhaps this may be even more simply put in another way. Every particular thought (whether it is a judgement of fact or a judgement of value) is always and by all men discounted the moment they believe that it can be explained, without remainder, as the result of irrational causes. Whenever you know what the other man is saying is wholly due to his complexes or to a bit of bone pressing on his brain, you cease to attach any importance to it. But if naturalism were true then all thoughts whatever would be wholly the result of irrational causes. Therefore, all thoughts would be equally worthless. Therefore, naturalism is worthless. If it is true, then we can know no truths. It cuts its own throat.
“The validity of rational thought… is the necessary presupposition of all other theorizing.”
"There is no reason, at this point, to bring in either Christianity or spiritualism. We do not need them to refute naturalism. It refutes itself. Whatever else we may come to believe about the universe, at least we cannot believe naturalism. The validity of rational thought, accepted in an utterly non-naturalistic, transcendental (if you will), supernatural sense, is the necessary presupposition of all other theorizing. There is simply no sense in beginning with a view of the universe and trying to fit the claims of thought in at a later stage. By thinking at all we have claimed that our thoughts are more than mere natural events. All other propositions must be fitted in as best they can round that primary claim.
Holding that science has not refuted the miraculous element in religion, much less that naturalism, rigorously taken, can refute anything except itself, I do not, of course, share Professor Price’s anxiety to find a religion which can do without what he calls the mythology."
Again from Greg Cootsona: Some, even within the naturalist and therefore atheistic camp, saw the problems inherent in arguing that “the mind is what the brain does.The famous geneticist and evolutionary biologist, John Scott Haldane wrote this:
"It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms."
If I give an illustration I hope what is being discussed above might easier to grasp. To the naturalist who believes that everything can be explained in terms of the material, that only matter exists, she is left with this enormous gap in in its explanatory power with regard to the mind. It can explain thoughts as electro-chemical properties in the brain in exactly the same way paper and ink explains a book, but is left in an absolute quandary with no reasonable explanation for what that paper and ink equates to in terms of meaning and value. It cannot explain the immaterial because of course it has cut off its own branch, in terms of its self imposed restriction to the strictly material explanation- it cannot even account for self-conscious thought.
This serious disconnect between the physical organ the brain, and the explanation of self-conscious thought has been observed for quite some time. In an article submitted to Academia, "You Are Not Your Brain", Greg Nixon (Assistant Professor in the School of Education at the University of Northern British Columbia writes:
The hard problem, however, is how and why there is conscious awareness at all. To this point, neuroscience has been no help in explaining this: “The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience” (Chalmers, p. 200). This difference – the explanatory gap – was adroitly noted as far back as 1879 when psycho-neurologist John Tyndall conceptualized the impossible rift:
The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously; we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass, by a process of reasoning, from one to the other. (John Tyndall)
When William Blake penned the words at the top of this post he was referring to the self deception that takes place within every human being that does not learn to distinguish between what her eyes or senses are telling her in their raw state and how we must learn to interpret what we see with a developed conscience. As with a garden, so with the mind, if we do not cultivate it, it will according to its own nature develop useless weeds.
Plato seemed to be speaking against a naturalist view of reality over a fifteen hundred years ago with these words:
Plato: "Every seeker after wisdom knows that up to the time when philosophy takes it over his soul is a helpless prisoner, chained hand and foot in the body, compelled to view reality not directly but only through its prison bars, and wallowing in utter ignorance. And philosophy can see that the imprisonment is ingeniously effected by the prisoner's own active desire, which makes him first accessory to his own confinement. Well, philosophy takes over the soul in this condition and by gentle persuasion tries to set it free. She points out that observation by means of the eyes and ears and all the other senses is entirely deceptive, and she urges the soul to refrain from using them unless it is necessary to do so, and encourages it to collect and concetrate itself by itself, trusting nothing but its own independent upon objects considered in themselves, and attributing no truth to anything which it view indirectly as being subject to variation, because such objects are sensible and visible but what the soul itself sees is intelligible and invisible."
How do we define religion? (Another word which- for many- leaves a bad taste in the mouth.)
Now I know most people associate "religion" with the idea of a supernatural realm and a super being that is greater than all aka- God. However any world view which seeks to answer the same questions that are asked (and answered) by religion are reasonably said to be- if not religious in nature, then at the least- semi-religious or as Alvin Plantinga puts it: "Quasi- religious"
“Naturalism – the thought that there is no such thing as the god of theistic religion, or anything like god. Naturalism is an essential element in the whole naturalistic worldview, which is a kind of semi-religion. It’s a quasi-religion, or it’s like a religion in the sense that it plays one of the most important roles that a religion plays. Namely that of answering these fundamental human questions. Where do we come from? What fundamentally is it to be a human being? What’s real in the world? What is our connection – how are we related to the animal kingdom and the rest of god’s creation? And so on. These are questions that are answered by religions (Christianity) but also answered by naturalism.” [7:28]In short then whether one is indoctrinated into the theistic form of religion or whether one is indoctrinated in the quasi-religion of Naturalism, one still ends up making conclusions about the world and about reality that rely on metaphysical statements. One is therefore indoctrinated one way or the other whether by the natural tendency of all human nature to view nature as all there is as in Naturalism or whether one is taught the ways of theism or other religions.
The idea then of neutrality when it come to a world view is a myth!
Besides all of this even an atheist will not agree with the view of naturalism-
The eminent philosopher Thomas Nagel would call it [naturalism] something else: an idol of the academic tribe, perhaps, or a sacred cow: “I find this view antecedently unbelievable—a heroic triumph of ideological theory over common sense. ... I would be willing to bet that the present right-thinking consensus will come to seem laughable in a generation or two.” Nagel is an atheist; even so, however, he does not accept the above consensus, which he calls materialist naturalism; far from it. His important new book is a brief but powerful assault on materialist naturalism.
Nagel has endorsed the negative conclusions of the much-maligned Intelligent Design movement, and he has defended it from the charge that it is inherently unscientific. In 2009 he even went so far as to recommend Stephen Meyer’s book Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, a flagship declaration of Intelligent Design, as a book of the year. For that piece of blasphemy Nagel paid the predictable price; he was said to be arrogant, dangerous to children, a disgrace, hypocritical, ignorant, mind-polluting, reprehensible, stupid, unscientific, and in general a less than wholly upstanding citizen of the republic of letters. (by Alvin Plantinga reiviewing Nagel's book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False
To summarise then:
- Any moral argument leads to God.
- Naturalism which is really the philosophy of appearances does not guarantee neutrality.
- Naturalism is a quasi-religion.
- Naturalism assumes the non existence of immaterial realities it doesn't attempt to disprove them, therefore revealing a systemic bias.
- Naturalism which is the position most atheists hold cannot validate or explain human thought.
- Naturalism is self defeating.
- A picture can represent a thousand words, but is it true, or is it indoctrination?
I will hereby admit defeat, as I look back at all that I have written I must admit her picture looks far better, far more appealing than the screeds of words and time that I have lavishly squandered on something that looks so unattractive and uninviting. We live in an age where soundbites and headline grabbing images are the only sort of thing that people are willing to spend their time on. The appearance is the message- there is nothing deeper than this...And people are merely life imitating art.
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