Pompous arse-ism

I've learnt from those who are most pompous in our society that the way to disparage something is simply to add "ism" on the end of its name and immediately the reader must recognise that this is a form of extremism that must be avoided and, most definitely, derided. Thus, when people overthrew the privileged class who were milking them of their very lifeblood, this was not a revolution against injustice, but simply "communism".  This single word could then take on a myriad of negative connotations and the work of the reactionaries became so much easier.

Not to be outdone, I am proposing a new movement in intellectual circles called "pompous arseism". Since this is too long, I'll simply abbreviate this to "arseism", since those subscribing to this movement eventually spend copious amounts of time gazing up their own arses.

Arse-ists are generally philosophers, but more often philosophisers, engaging in philosophy not so much to develop a coherent way of thinking about difficult topics, but to simply keep some topics from ever becoming so mundane and pedestrian that the common man might understand.

The Chief Most Holy Bishop of Arse-ism is Alvin Plantinga. Why he isn't more frequently referred to by his proper title is a mystery to me - being a professor of philosophy seems, well, so ordinary. Plantinga, in tones only achievable in a very large cathedral, declares war on Dawkins for daring to mention God in the title of his book without proper authorisation. Dawkins, he helpfully notes, is a biologist and therefore ought to just keep his nose out of philosophising. (http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/04/12/3475939.htm)

Where I might have criticised The God Delusion for its singular lack of evidence that religion really does anything except provide some manner of coherence to social, cultural and psychological behaviours - its a long shot to start counting it as a causal agent in behaviour - Plantinga's blood boils because Dawkins supposedly belongs to the opposition Church of the Great Naturalism. There is no-one quite so pompous as a theist defending his God against the idolater.

Suppose I took our friend the CMHB Plantinga to a seance. As we sit there listening to the silly knocking, I can imagine a kind of smug self-confidence coming over his face. At the end of the seance, he will reflect that the great Harry Houdini long ago debunked this nonsense. His assurance that all those spooky events observed had natural explanations will make you believe, just for a moment, that he has adopted that philosophical posture of believing, first and foremost, that events have natural explanations. It is, after all, a perfectly human posture.

However, later, when we stand at the bedside of his friend who is dying of cancer, he will be tempted to participate in 'praying over' this friend, despite his almost certain knowledge that the natural qualities of the drugs administered by the palliative care staff will do their work and provide real comfort at a very chemical level.

But, despite this heavy subscription to naturalism, the CMHB will later write of the curse of "naturalism" spreading rife throughout the world like a vile plague. All in defense of his stature amongst his sub-cultural religious group. It is a breath-taking kind of translation that he manages, but not uncommon.

Not uncommon also, is the tendency, as one lambasts the 'illogicality' of the opposition, to lapse into pompous arse-ism. Its not really necessary to relate anything back to the real values you live by, only to pontificate about the real meaning of everything. Thence to "The naturalism that Dawkins embraces, furthermore, in addition to its intrinsic unloveliness and its dispiriting conclusions about human beings and their place in the universe, is in deep self-referential trouble. There is no reason to believe it; and there is excellent reason to reject it." First class arse-ism.

Of course, you can only be that pompous if you have already dug yourself a large enough hole in which to fit it. Dawkins is derided for failing first year philosophy. Oh dear. The one sentence version of Plantinga's hole is: "If the brain is evolved, and the brain is what we do our believing with, then, as is observed with those who believe in delusions like God, the brain is capable of delusion, then it certainly is capable of the atheist delusion, which makes it untrustworthy and therefore not a good arbiter of the truth and therefore believing in God or atheism is pretty much roulette and there, I win."

Of course, if you say stupid things fast enough they sound convincing. But, for the statement above to have any kind of sense, you have to suppose, from the outset, that there is a truth that hovers outside human consciousness in the universe somewhere. (So that we can come to the conclusion that the brain is pretty hopeless at getting to that truth) Of course, this is a fine premise, except Plantinga and others want to start making categorical statements about this truth. Apparently, it is inherently natural to believe that this truth is owned, established and revealed by God. Why?

Its the Philosophy 101 conundrum. If a stone didn't make those ripples in the water, what did? Well, just about anything is the answer. In fact, the number of possibilities approaches infinity. Because, in practical terms, we do not have any other mechanism for generating a short-list, we use probability. Probability, not premised in experimental observation, but based on our experience of what is likely. Yes, we employ that unreliable brain to do that clever guesswork. Later, we employ that secure process called science to verify this, but let's not go there.

Now, Dawkins, in a measured British kind of way, is very patient with his short-listing, giving necessary complexity as the grounds for rejecting a supernatural (revealed) explanation for a natural (observed) explanation for complexity, at least in the world of living creatures. Now, regardless of whether that argument can be generalised to the universe (maybe something as simple as my anus created the laws of physics) and setting aside the very real problem that the complexity of God calls for an explanation in itself, we (the unwashed masses) need never allow supernatural explanations to get to the short-list.

In the Dawkins taxonomy, I am a 7 out of 7 atheist. This places me is the extremist category and thus, I am almost certainly about to blow up your house. But stay calm. It is our duty, as humans, to reject spin wherever we find it. It is a political duty, not a scientific one. It is our political duty to stop stupid ideas becoming generally accepted such that our society is in danger.

Consider the idiots who live hippy lives in and around Byron Bay who we stupidly allow the indulgence of not immunising against preventable diseases. In the year where India may finally see the last case of polio, in a dreadful irony, Australia may become the place where it re-emerges. Who knows when some un-immunised hippy may trek around some country in which eradication has not been total and then returns to a clutch of un-immunised hippy friends. No, its not science fiction.

The stupid, dangerous idea that immunisation causes conditions such as autism should have been rejected by those whose duty it is to politically protect our society. In a democracy, that is us. We all have a duty to take stupid ideas and reject them in the short-list. There are a hundred reasons why that duty has not been exercised in relation to theism, most of them to do with the insidious integration of religion into every corner of our society and psyche.

But let us return to the Chief Most Holy Bishop of Arse-ism. What is our duty? We need to look beyond his languid, pleasing voice (he writes so clearly and so well) from the pulpit and start to reject his ideas for good reason - they just don't stack up (the layman's way of saying the probability is so remote as to be considered zero).

The Goldilocks hypothesis is an example of where clear thought can just blitz waffley wankerism. The notion that the fine tuning of the constants in the universe incorporated in the laws of physics are 'just so' and incredulously 'just so', since a tiny variation would arrive at another universe, points to someone tuning the universe, is just plain stupid. I pick up a pack of cards. I deal them one by one. Out comes three Aces in a row. Of course, the standard "these were poorly shuffled" is the 'golden oldie' of excuses for playing badly, but, in reality, most people accept that that's just how the cards fell. No-one snuck in during a break in the dealing and set up the cards. They just fell out that way.

A mathematician will do the maths to give you a sense of the incredible odds against the way that these 52 cards 'fell out'. So infinitesimal is the chance of that order of card emerging that we should find it unbelievable. But we don't. Why? Because we accept a fundamental principle of naturalism that some things just 'fall out that way'. But not in a weird way. We do not often see the 23 of hearts emerge, nor the Ace of Pigs Bottoms. Certain constants are there and they are, well, just there. Yes, you can philosophise all you like about how convenient it is that no Pigs Bottoms and numbers in the 20s emerge out of the pack, but in the end, you are just spouting so much pompous arse-ism.

I feel I must leave you with the master of pompous arse-ism, Conor Cunningham. If you ever really get to the bottom of what this actually means, send me a postcard.

"In other words, persons naturalize nature, which is to say they actualize nature. They reveal nature to itself, doing so in all its forms, colours and structures, for without them all is dark, or at least shadow. Thus they do not flee nature, as do the philosophical naturalists who destroy all that is natural." (http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/05/22/3508607.htm)