I have no special love of astrology and much that is written in this area bores me to tears. But astrology is an excellent example of the way scientists deal with phenomena outside of their area of competence. They don't study them, they simply curse them, insinuating that their curses are based on strong and straightforward arguments.
Paul Feyerabend
The posts I've done in which the eminent Swiss theologian, Hans Kung answers four of the most commonly made arguments against the reality of the Resurrection of Jesus shows, among other things, that Kung didn't go for the low hanging fruit, he went to the top level of anti-Christian discourse and that was just a very, very short passage of what he has done throughout his enormous body of writings in theology and other topics. The three books often considered something of a trilogy, Does God Exist?, On Being a Christian and Eternal Life? are a very deep engagement, not with the popular level of atheist and anti-Christian invective but with the very best they can put up against religion. I think any fair person who reads them, really reading them in an engaged manner, looking up relevant citations, would find them to be excellent.* I think his fellow theologian, Elizabeth A. Johnson was correct, that Does God Exist? is if not the best one of the best responses to atheism in the literature.
I referenced Paul Feyerabend who in that quote was answering critics of a paper he wrote twelve years earlier, The Strange Case of Astrology, in which he compared the famous, or rather deservedly infamous petition against astrology signed by almost two-hundred eminent scientists and other figures of would-be intellectual life, comparing their approach with the deservedly infamous 15th century book about supposed witchcraft, the Malleus Maleficarum. Most interesting to me were the criticisms Feyerabend was making even as CSICOP was forming and the sTARBABY scandal incubating among its scientists and matematicians and philosophers. Feyerabend saw the potential for something like that to happen in the scientists' slip-shod, sloppy, uninformed declarations which were to be sold on the power of their authority and fame, alone. I think it's extremely impressive that he was able to see that even before he could have heard about the sTARBABY scandal which was the one and only "scientific" investigation and totally botched and covered up by Paul Kurtz and his fellow ideological atheists.
And the same can be said about the general approach of, certainly popular level atheism, the kind that is written by Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins, Dennet, Krauss, Coyne, and their like online but also in almost all of the higher levels of atheist polemics and propaganda. Bertrand Russell certainly could have done it on a higher level than he did but he didn't, his attacks on religion are kiddie stuff compared to what Kung addresses. I think some of the same habits of intellectual engagement in that debate, on the two sides, were the ones that Paul Feyerabend exposed about half a century ago.
Now what surprises the reader [of the Humanist anti-astrology statement] whose image of science has been formed by the customary eulogies which emphasize rationality, objectivity, impartiality and so on is the religious tone of the document, the illiteracy of the "arguments" and the authoritarian manner in which the arguments are being presented. The learned gentlemen have strong convictions, they use their authority to spread these convictions (why 186 signatures if one has arguments?), they know a few phrases which sound like arguments, but they certainly do not know what they are talking about.
Take the first sentence of the "Statement." It reads: "Scientists in a variety of fields have become concerned with the increased acceptance of astrology in many parts of the world."
In 1484 the Roman Catholic Church published the Malleus Maleficarum, the outstanding textbook on witchcraft. The Malleus is a very interesting book. It has four parts: phenomena, aetiology, legal aspects, theological aspects of witchcraft. The description of phenomena is sufficiently detailed to enable us to identify the mental disturbances that accompanied some cases. The aetiology is pluralistic, there is not just the official explanation, there are other explanations as well, purely materialistic explanations included. Of course, in the end only one of the offered explanations is accepted, but the alternatives are discussed and so one can judge the arguments that lead to their elimination. This feature makes the Malleus superior to almost every physics, biology, chemistry textbook of today. Even the theology is pluralistic, heretical views are not passed over in silence, nor are they ridiculed; they are described, examined, and removed by argument. The authors know the subject, they know their opponents, they give a correct account of the positions of their opponents, they argue against these positions and they use the best knowledge available at the time of their arguments.
The book has an introduction, a bull by Pope Innocent VIII, issued in 1484. The bull reads: "It has indeed come to our ears, not without afflicting us with bitter sorrow, that in ...." - and now comes a long list of countries and counties - "many persons of both sexes unmindful of their own salvation have strayed from the Catholic Faith and have abandoned themselves to devils ..." and so on. The words are almost the same as the words in the beginning of the "Statement," and so are the sentiments expressed. Both the Pope and the "186 leading scientists" deplore the increasing popularity of what they think are disreputable views. But what a difference in literacy and scholarship!
Comparing the Malleus with accounts of contemporary knowledge the reader can easily verify that the Pope and his learned authors knew what they were talking about. This cannot be said of our scientists. they neither know the subject they attack, astrology, nor those parts of their own science that undermine the attack.
The accusation that Hans Kung set things up or otherwise rigged the evidence or "cherry picked" what he addressed is a blatant lie that anyone who bothered to read his books that I can only excerpt would see, immediately. He has both read and studied and understood and SYMPATHETICALLY presents the arguments he addresses and refutes. He is fair and respectful of the atheists' and anti-Christain arguments, I think in no small part because he wants to do what most atheists and just about all materialists and the rather low priesthood of scientism have no real interest in, finding the truth.
His life-long habit of doing that hasn't been aimed at only atheism or anti-Christian literature, he has been one of the most exigent critics of the very Catholic church and tradition that he is a member of, indeed, under the JPII and Benedict XVI regimes, he had his credentials as a Catholic theologian removed in what was a blatant attempt to get him fired from his university teaching position. He has remained one one of the most informed, essential and insightful critics of the Catholic church even as he remains a Catholic priest. I have every confidence that if Hans Kung had had, on the basis of where the evidence led him, no honest choice but to adopt atheism he would have done so and, with his life-long engagement with the topics at the level he has engaged them, I am impressed that he has, so far as I know, never found he had to.
* I doubt anyone could possibly look up all of the citations he gives in just the first book, alone in less than a decade of heavy reading, those I've looked at are accurately represented by Kung.
This is an interesting article about Paul Feyerabend and the accusation that he was an enemy of science when what he was was the kind of critic that scientists not only are not used to facing, they are outraged that anyone would hold them up to criticism, especially those outside the fraternity. That is a habit of entitlement that I doubt theologians ever much develop since if there's an easy target in modern society, it's religion. Maybe I'll address some of what it says later.
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