Rene Girard is very good on Nz because he manages to out-psychologize the great psychologizer. I have a paper on this that I wrote some years ago, maybe I will dig it up and present it to the USU Philosophy Club this year.

I suppose the trouble is that “evidence” and reasons and psychology are all tumbled up together. We, the questioners, are also in question in asking the questions. There is no naked or psychologically neutral place for us to stand and see. But I don’t think this justifies a complete reduction of belief to psychology, it just means that you can’t work out the truth of beliefs without also thinking about psychology. I always think of Plato’s Republic – philosophers need to have a certain psychology in order to even begin to think about substantive truth claims, much less actually come to actually understand. Here might be the point in this case: the reasons for theism may only look like good reasons to the person who has already had a “psychological conversion” (metanoia is the word used in the allegory of the cave). In other words, there might be really good reasons for theism, and you just can’t see them because of your psychology.

But you’re right, and my psychological argument works only if there really is no independent evidence for taking theism to be true. For if there isn’t, then the only reasons for being a theist are the psychological ones, and that pretty much seals the fate. (Notice my deft sidestepping of the matter of ‘faith.’ Doh! Stepped in it again!)

Unless Michael is right, that is, and someone can somehow retain theism solely for the ensuing benefits while acknowledging its utter groundlessness. Tall trick to pull off, I think. We sometimes talk about heuristic beliefs, but are there any, really?

I *think* Nz does often reduce beliefs to psychological motivations, and then praises the motivations to the extent that they are life-affirming. He needs truth in order to sort these motivations out, but doesn’t value the object beliefs on the basis of their truth.

I was recently reminded of an interview with Alvin Plantinga where he notes that the arguments for God’s existence are not that compelling to him, but that it really just “seems” to him that there really is such a God. I have occasionally remarked on the need for a baptism of the imagination to fight off reductionism. I see the line between myth and truth as being quite fuzzy. I think Christianity is a myth, but it just “seems to me” that it is a true one. Tolkien is really good on this relationship between myth and truth. We all know the famous story of Tolkien and CS Lewis. Atheist Lewis told Tolkien that myths were “lies and therefore worthless, even though breathed through silver.” Tolkien replied that myths “are not lies” and are in fact the best and sometimes the only way of expressing deep truths that would otherwise remain inexpressible.

Here is a question: what psychological fact about you (or Nz) leads you to insist on completely reducing beliefs from truth claims to mere psychological motivations? Once we have an account of your psychology sorted out, can we then “discount” your psychological reductions as simply arising out of your own psychology? That would be tidy. Theists and atheists alike could simply nod at your cute little idiosyncrasy and move on.

I think the root of my agnosticism shows in my intuitive response to your question: it would be terribly weird, yes, but how can I trust my intuition? When I first read St. Thomas Aquinas, I had the sense that he was building beautifully intricate bridges to nowhere. We take our understanding, which seems to work pretty well most the time on our plane (or maybe not). Psychologists, using their theories (which work well most of the time, as theories are wont to do), come up with explanations of why theists believe what they believe. Is a psychologist’s explanation of why a theist believes equivalent to a clear understanding of the theist’s motives? It seems to me that it is not. The only thing weirder than a dancing demon is a psychologist without an explanation for a psychic phenomenon.

Since psychologists are bound to come up with some explanation, and since their explanation is bound to be a natural one, it doesn’t seem to me that their explanation counts as evidence one way or the other.

When you look at any individual theism, it’s reasonable to say it’s probably untrue, as it has to compete with all the others. It’s the same intuition that tells me any given lottery ticket is probably a loser (although I am yet hopeful). Atheism seems a way out of this, since it is a way to mark “none of the above.” But it still seems like one option among others, and so I find myself wondering if I’m not just as bad off with atheism as with any other bet? Probably, (here’s where the agnosticism comes in), REALITY is something so weird, so foreign, and so out of my ken that I’ll never conceive it (and I probably can’t).

Questions and rambling: If string theory and Zoroaster give the same result (at least to people that are illiterate in the natural sciences), that is they both provide a coherent framework for the existence of the universe, shouldn’t we simply follow William of Ockham and go with the one that is easier to remember?

I would agree that deciding between Zeus and Zoroaster is difficult (and I am confining myself to religions containing a Z-name character) but then don’t we have a bit of a sorting problem there? We don’t have to impose homogeneity to questions of origin and related answers. The rank assigned depends on the chosen measure.

If I believe that burning my hand on a rock that I took out of the fire is because I upset the fire demon that owns that rock, modern physics does little to improve on the lesson: don’t touch rocks in the fire. The goal of my understanding has to be slightly different if I want to realize the benefit from careful study of the physical properties of heat. Again, heterogeneity in goals (or metrics).

What I fear is the hubris of my own desire to substitute science for the literary abstractness and simplicity of parable.

It would take thousands of articles in social science journals to explain what is summarized in the story, “The Good Samaritan.” While this does not provide support for the notion of the Christian God it does offer some defense of the people who simply behave “as if” there were such a being. Some of the best “as if” believers are the ones that no longer care to make the distinction between fable and reality.

Were I simply to believe that I could catch demons in my hands, this is only valuable should it result in some end defined subjectively. For us, the notion that you have not captured a demon serves to illuminate both our rhetorical aims. This is that mystery should be rejected when faced with demonstration. I guess I don’t see a distinction between the claim that there is no demon and the one that says there is given that we appreciate the competing goals implied by the respective affiliation. Were tolerance extended symmetrically and innocents not hurt in the process, there might be something to believing in demons.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/07/30/illinois

Basically, the teacher will probably keep teaching, but there will be an end to the state university paying the salaries of scholars appointed by the Catholic Church.

Cheating is more prevalent then I thought it would be at the college level. I’m pretty disappointed about it.

My brother who went to school in bio-chem had a lot of students that would cheat in his classes in order to preserve a pristine GPA before they applied for medical school. He felt especially bothered when he thought of them as the next generation of medical doctors.