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Marvin Olasky offers two cheers for John Calvin on the Reformer's 500th birthday. 
Real men are skeptics
In Touchstone, Edward Tingley makes a bold statement when he suggests that “atheists aren’t the skeptics they think they are.”
Unbelievers think that skepticism is their special virtue, the key virtue believers lack. Bolstered by bestselling authors, they see the skeptical and scientific mind as muscular thinking, which the believer has failed to develop. He could bulk up if he wished to, by thinking like a scientist, and wind up at the “agnosticism” of a Dawkins or the atheism of a Dennett-but that is just what he doesn’t want, so at every threat to his commitments he shuns science.
That story is almost exactly the opposite of the truth.
Tingley goes on to suggest that atheists and agnostics aren’t skeptics at all and simply accept the common belief of their age. “A seeker of truth has to go where the truth can be found, and to go on until it is found, and both the atheist and the agnostic are early quitters.” A real skeptic, says Tingley, is someone like Blaise Pascal.
back to top17 Comments to “Real men are skeptics”
No time to read the whole article just now, but based on the snippet and HSK’s summary, I am guessing I will agree.
The “new atheists” are just as dogmatic about their religious views, and those views are just as fatih-based, as any other fundamentalist.
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SteveG and I agree!!!!
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Mark it on the calendar, StuBob.
And count me in.
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Just what I was saying earlier, Steve, on another thread.
People jump all over Christians because somehow having “faith” must be illogical, but as SteveG says, The “new atheists” are just as dogmatic about their religious views, and those views are just as fatih-based, as any other fundamentalist. .
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I am WAAAAY skeptical about UFOs and miracle drugs and astrology and chiropracty and any number of other wacky ideas, but Christanity just makes so much SENSE that it’s hard for me NOT to believe it. Sure, SOME faith is required, but not nearly as much as some of the X-files type conspiracies people beleive in.
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The article is worth reading twice. Here are some excellent quotes:
A seeker of truth has to go where the truth can be found, and to go on until it is found, and both the atheist and the agnostic are early quitters.
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The modern thinking person who rightly touts the virtues of science – skepticism, logic, commitment to evidence – must possess the lot. But agnostics are not skeptical, half the atheists are not logical, and the rest refuse to go where the evidence is. None measures up in these modern qualities to Pascal.
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“Is there anything more?” is the scientific question, but as Pascal asks it, the “scientists” vanish.
The agnostics ski down the mountain into the woods, searching for hard evidence on the basis of which to decide whether God exists – which is very odd, given that a moment ago they were standing here with us, ready to climb as declared skeptics. Agnostics, plainly, are wafflers in their skepticism: As the team gets going, they U-turn back to the foothills, where every true skeptic says there is nothing to find. They do not care about the truth.
But even more astonishing than that, the atheists have just gone home. They are not down in the valley looking for evidence; they are not looking at all. They have packed in the science without lifting a boot, as if the summit were already taken, the question answered.
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What the scientific skeptic ought to say is this: “Having examined the hard evidence, we declare that route to be exhausted. The only kind of evidence for God’s existence that counts will have to be of some other kind – if there is any other kind.”
That would be reasonable. And it would be a fine thing for a skeptic to doubt that there is any evidence besides the standard, demonstrable kind – and there are skeptics who do so. But all those who, just because they doubt it, run home with the question answered are frauds like their agnostic brethren if they still call themselves scientists.
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When the smart scientist of the seventeenth century was asked, “Is clear water pure?” he did not go with his gut and answer “yes” or “no.” “The naked eye says yes,” he answered, “but is there an instrument better than the naked eye with which to see?” We need to listen to the scientist who claims that there is, and that scientist is Pascal.
That instrument is the heart. “It is the heart which perceives God, and not the reason” (424). “The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know” (423). Pascal’s reasons of the heart are meant to take over from an intellect that operates on hard evidence but has run out of it. “The heart has its order, the mind has its own, which uses principles and demonstrations. The heart has a different one” (298).
We are not talking here about feelings, which love to cheat us. Pascal says that the heart convinces, makes us rightly sure. “Demonstration is not the only instrument for convincing us” (821).
Many of his readers miss this, and so see him as preparing us to leap – but conviction is not a leap. Dawkins takes him to say that when the evidence runs out, you just throw in your lot with belief in God, because that is logically prudent; he credits Pascal with “the ludicrous idea that believing is something you can decide to do.” But the heart, Pascal is saying, is not a springboard to choice; it charts a path to conviction about God. It is not all done for us by logic and by sight. There is still the reasoning of the heart.
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It is possible that God does not move us to him intellectually, either, by the locomotion of evidence, so that merely by opening eyes and possessing minds we wind up acknowledging him. Maybe he grants to our minds the freedom he gives our bodies.
That would explain why he “hides” – and also why “hiding” is not the right word for this. In effect he hides, but “hiding” is trying-not-to-be-found, whereas this is trying-to-be-found-only-by-the-free-man, the man who has muscled up with virtues and risen to the point of readiness for him, genuine readiness to know.
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He likes a world in which he can stop thinking about something when the hard evidence for it gives out: That is a beautifully simple world. “If I had to sum up my own atheism, I would have to say that it amounts to this: I have no interest in the supernatural.” Let’s “simply dismiss the whole issue of whether ‘God’ exists as not worth any discussion.” “It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and naturally hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”
He likes a world in which he can hold at bay the specter of religion (with its insane demands), which he feels bearing down on his life ready to suck out its vitality. Like Van Helsing, he can hold it at bay with ridiculous ease just by crossing two random sticks: the two twigs of his skeptical gambit and his credo about evidence, which he has cobbled into a principle for the purpose of backing religion off. (As is here becoming apparent, it is no credo he lives by.)
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He ceases to care about what is logically possible because he has flatly refused to accept that it is possible. And how has he done this? He has denied it in his heart. He has answered the question of God first—not by recourse to evidence but by consulting his heart, which has turned in on itself, which seeks no God. “He hath said in his heart, I shall not be moved” (Psalm 10). Because he simply “does not buy it,” he will not engage the logic by which it can be bought, and in that disordered posture he cannot unclench his heart and face the disturbing and painful logic that leaves the possibility of God open.
He could do so, though. And looking then into his heart, he might find that he wished to climb with Pascal, out onto the ice, making “every effort to seek [the truth] everywhere” (427), trying everything that all who have found the evidence advise.
He could, but he does not. Instead, he has not a moment to waste on what it might mean to fail to discover a God who might exist, because he doesn’t really care what it would mean, and he doesn’t care because all that he can picture is a world without God. He wholly inhabits question-begging. His logic is sketchy and his logos is lame: His rational power of imagining has atrophied from selective use in the service of his pleasure.
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According to the writings found sewn in Pascal coat after his death, it seems if you seek, you really will find.
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It doesn’t take much thought at all to be skeptical. Just find an idea and scoff at it.
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I’m skeptical of Tingley’s conclusions.
#7 Yes if you seek you will find the truth: Pascal was bipolar.
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So bipolar folks can’t find truth?
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Make it Man,
No, bipolar people find twice as much truth by going two different directions at one time. But their meds take the edge off of their truth finding efforts slowing them down – so it is best that they skip the meds and tell us the truth – twice as fast, twice as often or even twice as strangely.
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The problem with modern atheists has to do more with a lack of wisdom than skepticism. They have confined themselves to a procrustean bed of logical positivism and scientism where truth is limited to some sort of materialism that that can be measured.Wise scientists, including Francis Collins and Charles Townes, are well aware that there is more to heaven and earth than modern science, which of course still allows for its brilliance.
It is true that it takes a certain strength and even courage for religious and broad minded people to counter the illusions and pieties of modern scientific atheists and skeptics, though this was true back in the day that Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle countered the cynics and sophists.
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Take it from Harry: A man’s got to know his limitations. – Harry Callahan, Magnum Force, 1973
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, (Rom 1:22)
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From the article: Evidence is just not available to demonstrate the existence of God, said Pascal, who called himself one of those creatures who lack the humility that makes a natural believer.
Surely a “natural believer” is one who is equally devoid of truth-seeking skepticism. It’s someone who also packs up their bags and goes back to how they want the world to appear when challenged by further investigation.
I know Tingley is saying that many atheists and agnostics are not truly skeptical at all, despite claiming skepticism as their virtue, and that they are simply committed to their position, but the same lack of skepticism is present in the theistic crowd.
It seems that, according to Pascal, if an atheist fails to inquire further, it’s a failure to apply true skepticism. If a theist does it, it’s humility.
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I glance through the article but was skeptical if it was worth my time since the excerpts seem to indicate a lack of respect for the agnostic position. I view the atheists position as similar to the theistic position, they have decided on an answer to a question they asked themselves. However, neither asked themselves if they had asked the right question to start. They can start with why they need to ask questions in the first place.
Agnosticism is the perfect skeptical position. Open to different positions but in the end Hume’s fork is in constant use.
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Actually, hrw, agnosticism is the perfect non-position. It declares that Truth cannot be known and scoffs at those who seek to answer the difficult questions. It’s the perfect position for those who are arrogant, lazy, or both.
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Ockham’s razor — why ask difficult questions when they are not necessary? The simplest statement is usually the correct one.
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