D'Souza leads into his final argument with a series of smaller points that would be very surprising if we didn't know that he was more interested in motivation than understanding.
The first two points are scientific rhetoric, directed toward our understanding of the question, and are completely sound:
- He says that religion is man made.
- He says that it deals with a sphere of truth that lies beyond human experience—a sphere for which there is no empirical evidence.
Religion—the source of human knowledge about God—is a human invention based on no empirical evidence.
In other words, God is a human invention.
D'Souza has conceded Dennett's position in the debate.
This would be a bizarre development, except for three points:
- D'Souza isn't interested in the stated question of the debate. He's interested only in the underlying question: "Should we believe in God?".
- He's not even interested in that question in any scientific sense—in terms of actual knowledge or understanding—but, rather, in a political sense—he wants to motivate people to join the "God side", that is, to become Christians. (Or to stay Christian, if they already are.) He sees himself as a defender of the home team.
- He has a completely different definition—a political definition—of the word "believe" than Dennett.
For Dennett, who comes to the debate from a scientific perspective, belief is not a choice, but a position based in evidence, when the evidence is not completely clear. If I believe that I no longer have that wrench in my garage, it's because of my understanding of whatever evidence I have available. (I spent all day Saturday looking for it, or I haven't seen it since George borrowed it, and he is notorious for losing tools.)
But D'Souza doesn't use the word in this sense—at least not in the context of God questions. By "belief" he means a commitment, specifically a commitment to Christianity, and preferably Catholicism.
Because of this, he's perfectly willing to concede the formal topic of the debate, though, for reasons of political rhetoric, he's careful to conceal the fact that he's done it.
His third point returns to political rhetoric. He accuses Dennett of hubris, for believing that what we can't see doesn't exist. This does not address the issue at all, but the motivations of the audience:
- It plays to the anti-intellectualism of D'Souza's base. It implies that Dennett is a liberal elitist intellectual whose claims to know more than us regular folks is just arrogance. We should, therefore, reject whatever position he takes.
- It positions D'Souza, by contrast, as the humble one. He doesn't claim to know more than a human can know. He simply believes what he's supposed to believe.
- It offers the listener a choice between opting for Dennett's position, and being an arrogant elitist, or opting for D'Souza's side, and being humble and reasonable.
But, as is D'Souza's habit, the underlying reasoning is flawed. He offers two analogies to reinforce his point. The first is the image of a caveman who believes that nothing exists outside of the two mile radius he is familiar with. Dennett, he says, is like this stupid, ridiculous, cave man.
But the analogy doesn't hold. The real picture, if we give it a moment's thought, is more like this:
Caveman Dennett: "I have no experience of the world outside of my two mile radius, so I'm limited to believing, rather than knowing, what is there. I believe, based on the evidence I have, and subject to correction in the light of new evidence, that beyond my radius things are pretty much the same: trees, rocks, sky, rivers, mountains, etc."
Caveman D'Souza: "I have no experience of the world outside of my two mile radius, so I am free to believe anything I choose. I choose to believe that, three miles out, there lives a giant gnome, who created this three mile area, and who has some very specific requirements for our behavior, which he will punish us for—after death—if we don't follow them."
Caveman Dennett: "I find that unbelievable."
Caveman D'Souza: "That's because you are so arrogant that you think you know it all. I, on the other hand, am humble enough to believe that The Giant Gnome exists."
D'Souza's second analogy is to claim that if Dennett had lived in 1450, he would have denied the existence of planets outside of the solar system. Here again, the comparison is completely false.
Dennett doesn't claim that reality outside our universe is fundamentally different than what we see here—rather, he says that a very specific claim—a claim that's fundamentally unlike anything we have evidence of—is unbelievable, given that it has no supporting evidence (a fact that D'Souza has already conceded). The parallel to 1450, in Dennett's case would be to think there probably were planets outside the solar system.
It's D'Souza who wants people to believe that there is something radically different outside the universe—God. He's the one who would have thought the rest of our universe was different, in 1450, than the part we can see. He wouldn't have argued for planets out there. He would have been arguing for a Giant Gnome, following the tradition of his caveman ancestor, and only moving it further away.
D'Souza's fourth point continues his focus on political rhetoric. He argues that human nature is itself evidence for his point of view. By human nature he means consciousness, free will, and morality.
This is an interesting move, in several ways:
- There's no obvious reason that the existence of any or all of those three traits implies the existence of God, and D'Souza offers none, but that is not his reason for bringing them up. Rather, he's giving his audience further motivations for choosing his side over Dennett's.
- In fact, when it comes to morality, he never really develops the point at all, he merely includes it in his list, leaving the vague impression that anyone siding with Dennett is siding against morality—effective, but unsound, political rhetoric.
- In the case of free will, he makes a kind of bizarre claim that in order to be free we must be free of the functioning of our own brains. There's a lot to criticize about this idea, but that's not the issue here. (I deal with the idea itself in more detail here.)
There's no necessary connection between free will and the existence of God, D'Souza is again addressing the motives of his audience, rather than the question. Without free will, he tells us, there's no point in morality. So, once again, you'd better be on D'Souza's side, or you are standing against morality.
He does have a point in regard to Dennett's stance on consciousness. There are others who disagree with Dennett, both believers and unbelievers (including me), on this subject. But once again, whether Dennett is right or wrong about consciousness is not the point here. D'Souza makes no attempt to make any connection between consciousness and the existence of God.
Rather, he uses the topic merely as an opportunity to play the anti-intellectual card once more. This is, he tells us, "foolishness it takes a non-academic to see". He fails to mention, of course, that there are academics who disagree with Dennett, some of them atheists. Instead he tries to leave the impression that if you aren't on the God team, you are siding with all those elite academics who "deny half our humanity".
Finally, having prepared his audience with a series of motivations to choose his side—but no evidence that his side is correct—he turns to his final, and central, argument.
I'll take a look at that next time.
