Poor Understanding, Bad Analogy

Joe Hinman has done it again.  Yet another example of his arrogant "We are better than you" attitude appears in his Christian Cadre blog under the title Christianity and falsifiability.  This article, at the outset, seems to promise an explanation of how Christianity is falsifiable, despite the fact that the existence of God may not be.  He says: "But even though God per se can't be falsified does that mean Christianity can't be falsified?"  But the article quickly retreats from that implied promise, abandoning any discussion of falsifiability as a legitimate epistemological tool, or how it can be applied to Christianity.  It focuses instead on phenomenology as justification for belief, and how it is superior to an empirical or scientific-based approach.  (Hint: by Joe's reckoning, if it doesn't give you the answer you want to hear, then it's the wrong approach.)

Right off the bat, Joe reveals an abysmal understanding of the epistemological value of falsifiability as it relates to scientific justification for belief.  He makes the claim "people sometimes begin to think an idea that can't be falsified is not rational".  But that's not true.  What people actually say is that something that can't be falsified is not scientific.  Scientific methodology provides a systematic approach to justifying claims (postulations or hypotheses) through verification.  As a rule, claims cannot be proven absolutely to be true, but they often can be subject to objective analysis and testing that would disprove the claim.  This is known as falsification, and it is the essence of science.  If a claim has been falsified, it loses any warrant for belief.  But if it has been rigorously tested and never falsified, there is real justification to think that it's true.  On the other hand, if a claim can't be tested (it is unfalsifiable), it can't be subjected to the scientific process of verification, and therefore it lacks the same justification for belief that a well-tested claim has.

Joe seems to recognize the problem with scientific verification of religious claims, so rather than questioning those claims, he brushes off the value of the epistemological approach of science:

I think being falsifiable is only important if one is trying to persuade others of the truth content of a proposition. The truth if a religion is a phenomenological apprehension and an existential matter. Thus it transcends the kind of propositional proof one strives for in debate. If one insists that only a proportional form of truth is sound then Christianity is falsifiable on three ways: (1) In terms of God correlates (Schleiermacher's co- determinate) (2) or in terms of certain aspects of belief that serve as propositional tests such as the resurrection the empty tomb. (3) Or in terms of John Hick's eschatological verification (in other words you find out when you die). - Hinman

Eschatological verification is useless to people living in this world, since (on the assumption of Christian metaphysics) you have to be dead to find out the truth.  Claims about the resurrection of Jesus lack sufficient evidence to survive any kind of objective verification process.  And the so-called "co-determinate" relates to peripheral evidence (which he calls the "trace" of God), the direct falsification of which could never, in its own right, change the belief of a Christian who is swayed by the purely subjective "phenomenological apprehension" that he feels. 

Incidentally, Joe straddles the fence on this issue.  He has written a whole book about how science provides "warrant for belief" regarding those phenomenological claims.  Nevertheless, when it comes down to it, he still maintains that his beliefs based on those subjective feelings are not directly subject to scientific examination and verification.  The fact that he claims scientific warrant for belief, while rejecting falsification, just shows that Joe really doesn't understand the issue at hand.

So much for falsification.  Nevertheless, by his own admission, he lacks what happens to be the most powerful epistemological tool available to humankind.  Still, the ardent believer must find some way to convince himself that his beliefs are true.  His phenomenological (or feelings-based) approach to epistemology gives him the answer he wants to hear, but that's really the only reason to take that approach.  It certainly isn't the case that subjective feelings are known to be more reliable than objective empirical data.  Joe has no basis to make a reasonable argument that the attainment of knowledge in any given field is best accomplished by means of subjective feelings.  So what kind of argument can he make?  Instead of making the case for phenomenology, he chooses to make a case against empiricism,  based on his own failure to understand it.

Joe presents an analogy to illustrate what he perceives as the big problem with scientific empiricism.  He describes it this way:

I was planing on using an analogy for my argument about phenomenology. It was the logic of the lamp post. That's the idea that you drop your car keys in the dark, where do you start looking? Under the light. But if you didn't drop them under light, why would you look there? Because that's the only place you could find them. ... So the idea is we prove what we can, we look under the lamp post. The problem is, the lamp post is also what empiricism is doing.   The empiricists,the scientific reductionist, (ie skeptics) are looking at what they can see and nothing more. The conclude on the basis of a limited and narrow range of data that there can't be anything else out there in the dark but that which they see in this [s]mall patch of light. - Hinman

In this analogy, Joe has greatly diminished the power of empiricism as an epistemological tool, as well as the intelligence of any person who would so severely limit his quest for knowledge.  In this view, empiricism produces nothing more than a "small patch of light", while leaving the whole rest of the world unilluminated.  And anyone can see that the empiricist who stubbornly refuses to look outside that little patch of light must not be vary smart.

He has painted a cartoonish caricature of the scientific empiricist as someone who is slavishly devoted to an ideological view that limits his perspective, and who will only accept an answer that fits his pre-conceived notion of the truth:

the empiricist has a pre conceived notion of what the key must look like. You describe it to him, but he has his fixed idea, so even if he sees it he wont pick it up because he's determined it has to fit a certain shape. Moreover, the phenomenologist says "the key could be in the dark, in fact the key probably is in the dark. If nothing else we will just rule out the key being in the light." But the empiricist says "no, our understanding of the lighted areas tells everything we need to know about the dark areas. So if there is no key in the lighted area, there no key in the dark area. - Hinman

But hold on a minute.  Doesn't that sound exactly like religion?  Who has a pre-conceived notion of truth and refuses to examine any evidence that would indicate otherwise?  The religionist.  Who continues to dogmatically insist that God is out there, despite the fact that it can't be seen, no matter where we look and how hard we try to find it?  The religionist.

Perhaps a better analogy would be something like this:  Scientific empiricism isn't a lamp post illuminating one small area.  It is a powerful and useful tool, and it helps to light our view everywhere we go.  It has been enormously successful in helping us to make countless discoveries, both great and small.  It illuminates what were once dark places, making it possible to see the reality.  The religionist hates the light because it shows us the truth, and he doesn't like the reality that we see in the light, precisely because it doesn't fit his pre-conceived notion of what reality must be.  He prefers to grovel about in the dark, insisting that God must be there.  The fact is that we have looked far and wide, and everywhere we look, there is no God lurking about.  There has always been a natural explanation for what we see, and that explanation becomes more apparent under the light of scientific empiricism.  And yes, there is even a natural explanation for the strong religious feelings that people have.

The central theme of this article is that his phenomenological (ie, feeling-based) approach to epistemology is superior to empiricism.  And his argument is basically that empiricism does not lead to the conclusion that God exists, but phenomenology (his gut feeling) tells him otherwise.  That's pretty much it - it's Joe's whole argument in a nutshell.  There's no discussion of what it means for a belief to be justified.  No discussion of how how phenomenology actually provides any kind of justification for what one feels is true.  It's just a gut feeling.  Therefore, it must be true.  Joe never contemplates the question of whether there is any reason to doubt his gut feeling.  Nor would he ever consider doing so.  He is completely hemmed in by his religious beliefs and ideology.  The real difference between religion and science is that in religion (unlike science), the answers are all known a priori, and not subject to objective examination or falsification.  Any attempt to do so will be met with stubborn resistance from the religionist, who knows perfectly well what the outcome would be.

By rejecting a scientific approach to learning the truth, the religionist remains safely ensconced in his fortress of belief.  No objective facts or evidence will ever breach those thick walls.  He is, and will always be, utterly impervious.