Sleepycatz

Headache

There are days when my mind just can’t keep up with the insipid reasoning of the rightwing. I generally try to avoid engaging the poorly reasoned ramblings of the bloviating pundit class. But just when I thought that I was out they pull me back in.

Over at the conservative site, townhall.com, Dinesh D’Souza announced that he will be debating Christopher Hitchens on the subjects of God and religion. D’Souza has been considered to be one of the ‘great thinkers’ in the modern conservative movement. So how is this intellectual conservative defend Christianity and religion? He invokes laughable a prioric argument of Anselm of Canterbury, also known as the ontological argument for the existence of God.

For those who are unfamiliar with Anslem’s argument — later extended by Descartes — it can be stated simply as: “Humans can conceive of an infinitely perfect being (ie. God); This perfection is greater then any other perfection humans can conceive of; thus, the knowledge of this being must be a prioric, or innately known to be true; therefore this being, God, must exists.”

As any first year philosophy student will point out, Anslem’s argument is easily susceptible to what’s known as the ‘overload objection’. In other words, humans can conceive of any number of fantasitcal creatures which do not exist, pegasus, unicorns, and even invisible pink unicorns. The fact that these creatures can be conceived of but are nonexistent undermines the notion that God exists because we can conceive of God. We are left with the Anslem’s and Descartes notion of the ultimate perfection of God. We can only conceive of a single being of unmediated perfection - that being must be God.

This, however, leads to a different problem for D’Souza and others: that this perfect being is by no logical reasoning Christian. This is essentially the same problem suffered by Pascal’s Wager. We may argue that, perhaps, some God figure exists, but the arguments lead towards no evidence of the nature of that being. Even if we would blindly accept the a priori argument for God’s existence there is nothing in the argument to suggest that Christianity reflects the nature of God. If fact, we can conceive of an ultimately perfect being which is completely ambivalent towards mankind; thus, negating any need for religious devotion.

It is also worth mentioning, at this point, Immanuel Kant’s objection to the a prioric argument. Kant argues that mere existence is not a quality which defines the actual existence of an object. But that actual existence is defined by more specific properties of a thing.

Nonetheless, the silliness of D’Souza is to suggest that he can logically define or prove the existence of God in the first place. There is no rational argument which can prove the existence of God, and most conservative intellectuals have even given up trying. Even Michael Gerson, a conservative Christian and speech writer for George Bush, in a recent screed against atheists didn’t try to prove the existence of God, but instead focused on the necessity to believe in God. Gerson, like many conservatives, argues that man needs God to have moral order in this world and the next. God becomes an authoritarian necessity — an excuse to accept the ‘natural order’ and to defer unpunished injustices to the next world. For many rational conservatives this is the natural argument for the necessity, not the existence, of God.

D’Souza — who was once heralded as the new example of conservative intellectualism — seems to miss the fact that his argument for existence was dismissed over a hundred years ago and is now taught as a logical fallacy in most universities. It’s a fact that most conservatives would find it politically difficult to argue that religion is necessary for social order but has no basis in fact. This the primary reason why conservative theorists don’t engage in arguments about religion. Instead they leave those debates to the true believers. Those who — with no rational arguments — believe in their theology which supports the conservative authoritarian ideology. D’Souza is seemingly trying to bridge this gap between faith and the mind. From his essay it is abundantly clear that he lacks the intellectual ability to even begin such a meditation, let alone participate in any real discussion of the issues.

I want to make it clear that I have no love or admiration for Christopher Hitchens. I find him to be overbearing and much of his arguments flawed. His continued support of the war in Iraq has shown him to have lost any connection to a rational reality. His logic at a recent conference speaks for itself: sickening.

h/t Canadian Cynic

This entry was posted by steve on Saturday, October 20th, 2007 at 2:51 am and is filed under Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.