JT Eberhard: Redefining Truth Alright
Posted in JT Eberhard on | 2 minutes | 9 Comments →
Regular readers may remember the little fiasco with JT Eberhard from last year. After vowing a systematic takedown of his arguments, I pretty much took to ignoring the guy, but now that I’m playing around on Twitter and following his tweets I get a constant stream of illogic—and it’s time to do a little something about it.
In his post Redefining Truth, JT writes:
Just try to think of a position for which we once had a religious answer, but for which we now have a scientific answer. This is easy. Now try to think of a question for which we once had a scientific answer, but for which we now have a religious answer. Quite simply, there are none. So much for revealed truths being immutable.
Typical atheist / science-thumper schtick, I know, but JT spends a lot of time pushing this sort of nonsense on unassuming high school students. Honestly, this sort of naiveté depresses me. Since most people aren’t critical thinkers, they just accept stuff like this as true, perhaps even profound, but, it’s not. It represents muddled thinking at best.
Here’s an equally interesting schtick of my own: try to think of a position for which we once had a scientific answer, but we have since had one or more completely contradictory scientific answers. You see? JT is trying to erode faith in the “immutable” truths of religion, but in order to do so, he has to unscientifically imply that the “truths” of science the very same type of “Capital-T” truths. The fact that we have a “scientific answer” for question X doesn’t make the answer true. It doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, unless you accept JT’s false dichotomy that science and religion are incompatible. That, of course, is just more illogic.
So there you have it. Another quick installment in the illogic of JT Eberhard.
Fabio García
says...“JT is trying to erode faith in the “immutable” truths of religion, but in order to do so, he has to unscientifically imply that the “truths” of science the very same type of “Capital-T” truths.”
I fail to see the implication.
dale
says...fabio, maybe there’s a typo or missing word or two in your statement, but i don’t fully get what you are saying. can you please clarify?
dale
says...passive acceptance of what others say, without engaging in your own critical evaluation of the presentable evidence, no matter whether materialist or spiritualist, is nothing more than laziness and dumbs down the general point of view, and it doesn’t add anything to the debate at all.
scientific laws are not set in stone, so how could anyone use them to “absolutely prove without a doubt” that there is no god? that doesn’t make any sense from a logical and objective, let alone scientific view.
on a side anecdotal side note, i’ve always found humor in the fact that in the past, scientists have performed controlled lab experiments in which they have recreated similar situations to the expected original conditions of the beginnings of the universe, and then they create life from it, though very simple single cel organisms, or just amino acids. and then, they say that life could have came into being without god, even though they themselves “played god” by definition in their performing said experiment.
but, to give respect to the scientific point of view, religious people need to avoid intellectual laziness as well. too many “believers” have hardly read a holy book on their own and haven’t dug deep into the why’s of their own faiths. when i say this about scientists, i’m not saying this about atheists. atheists are more often than they would like to admit basing their beliefs on emotional motives. i’m not saying all, as i know that there are genuine disbelievers. but, to completely dismiss something as non existent before you have full proof that it in fact does not…that doesn’t sound very scientific to me. it actually sound like faith, which goes with religion.
we should start considering atheism as a religion, and not an end result of scientific observation. science is only a tool, and who knows, maybe a spiritual person might use science someday to prove the existence of god or any sort of spiritual existence beyond the physical reality we now know and accept.
cl
says...Fabio,
Thanks for stopping by. Today’s post ties into this and might shine a little light.
Dale,
I actually Tweeted that to Dawkins two days ago. Didn’t get a response. It’s weird to me that so many atheists don’t / can’t see these sorts of things. Another thoughtful comment from you, my friend.
Fabio García
says...Dale:
What I meant is that I don’t understand how JT’s argument implies «that the “truths” of science the very same type of “Capital-T” truths.»
CL:
Unfortunately, it didn’t. I’m still as blind to the implication as ever.
cl
says...Fabio,
Let “X” denote a religious claim. Let “Y” denote a scientific claim.
JT is saying something like this: “We always thought X was True, but then Y came along and now we know Y is True.” He’s simply replacing one “Capital T” truth with another, of his preference.
Fabio García
says...I’m not sure this is what he’s claiming. Indeed, his argument doesn’t looks like it’s about truth at all, much less capital-T “Truth”. He seems to be just making the observation that whenever explanation X has been replaced by explanation Y, it is never the case that X is scientific and Y is religious. Upon closer look, the argument has its issues, but attempting to establish scientific truth as absolute is not one of them.
cl
says...Hi Fabio.
It does to me. Consider:
How is JT *NOT* claiming “now we know Y is true,” where “Y” = the claim that people can’t rise from the dead?
…and that’s the false dichotomy. For example, the scientific hypothesis that the universe began in a hot flash of light does not replace the claim the God said let there be light. They’re complementary.
There are really myriad problems with this argument, first among them is JT’s utter lack of sophistication. He doesn’t even take the time to parse out a principled distinction between a “scientific” claim and a “religious” claim. Then he just smears people as “loons” when they criticize him. And yet, this is the sort of stuff that passes for “critical thinking” in the average atheist circle these days.
Here’s an old article of mine on the same subject: False Argument #13: The Triumph of Natural Explanations
Fabio García
says...One would think the distinction between a scientific explanation and a religious explanation is fairly clear. A scientific explanation is one at which we arrive through the scientific method. A religious explanation is found by religious revelation instead.
That post you linked to illustrates one of the argument’s problems quite well: even if you found natural, god-free explanations for every single phenomenon, that still wouldn’t show that there is no god. But it would make the concept useless and irrelevant, which is pretty much the same thing.
And that argument you cited by JT is another argument altogether. The one from your original post is that scientific explanations have consistently replaced religious ones, therefore religious “truths” really deserve no credit (this is problematic, if only because it’s an inductive argument).
On the other hand, the one you quoted in your last reply is that, when science and religion contradict each other, “revealed truth” cannot trump the scientific method. You can’t consistently believe both that science is right and that your religion is right.
Finally, which scientific hypothesis states that the universe began in “a hot flash of light”? A Wikipedia search confirms that, per the current model, the universe was opaque to light until several thousand years after the Big Bang.