This I don't believe

[Robin]

This was at the bottom of the Penn article cited elsewhere:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4656595

What this appears to boil down to is that we cannot account for creativity so we must posit an even greater creativity to explain it.

And presumably Buckley can account for the greater creativity where he failed with the lesser.

[Mercutio]

I've always liked the exchange featuring the excited young Darwinian at the end of the 19th century. He said grandly to the elderly scholar, "How is it possible to believe in God?" The imperishable answer was, "I find it easier to believe in God than to believe that Hamlet was deduced from the molecular structure of a mutton chop."And Buckley likes and admires this response?

Oddly enough, I don't think anyone ever claimed that Hamlet was deduced from the molecular structure of a mutton chop. But at least Hamlet, molecules, and mutton chops are definable. I suppose that is why believing in a god is easier. I wonder...would Buckley find the response equally compelling if, instead of "God", the chosen god was "Zeuss"?

This I believe: that it is intellectually easier to credit a divine intelligence than to submit dumbly to felicitous congeries about nature. Got that right. It takes no intellectual effort at all to credit a divine intelligence. So it is easier than even "dumb submission" (surely he does not suggest that scientists do this?), to "felicitous congeries" (I think the common parlance would be "just-so stories", but that's Buckley for you) about nature--that is, believing what the scientists tell you, without understanding (nice strawman, Buckley, what about the option of working to understand it?).

This I believe: that anyone who believes "Goddiddit" is a more compelling answer than the current scientific consensus, understands neither the current scientific consensus nor the real implications of "goddiddit".

[c4ts]

I find it easier to believe a bunch of random stuff I just made up, than a strawman claim which I also made up.

Just because it's easier to believe, doesn't make it true...

[Iacchus]

And Buckley likes and admires this response?Hey, I like it. ;)

Oddly enough, I don't think anyone ever claimed that Hamlet was deduced from the molecular structure of a mutton chop. But at least Hamlet, molecules, and mutton chops are definable. I suppose that is why believing in a god is easier. I wonder...would Buckley find the response equally compelling if, instead of "God", the chosen god was "Zeuss"?Oh, well I believe there are many facets to that which is one and the same. So, how do you think he would respond to that? :D

[Mojo]

Hey, I like it. ;) You do seem to be inordinately fond of strawmen.

[Kopji]

“The skeptics get away with fixing the odds against the believer, mostly by pointing to phenomena which are only explainable... by the belief that there was a cause for them.”

Ah ha! If we only paid more attention to the unexplainable. But ummm, wasn't that how the explainable got that way?

His colorful rhetoric and big words are not powerful enough to disguise the intellectual bankruptcy of his position.

[Mercutio]

Hey, I like it. ;)

Do you understand it?


Bets, anyone?

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

This I believe: that it is intellectually easier to credit a divine intelligence than to submit dumbly to felicitous congeries about nature. As a child, I was struck by the short story. It told of a man at a bar who boasted of his rootlessness, derisively dismissing the jingoistic patrons to his left and to his right. But later in the evening, one man speaks an animadversion on a little principality in the Balkans and is met with the clenched fist of the man without a country, who would not endure this insult to the place where he was born. Hi, I'm William F. Buckley, Jr. I gots a big, fat, honkin' vocabulary.

Did he really want to say "intellectually easier"? That sounds an awful lot like "intellectually lazier." In fact, that's how I read it the first time, so I got confoosed.

~~ Paul

[c4ts]

Do you understand it?


Bets, anyone?

Preferrably bets by those who understand probability, the mathematical concept of infinity, and who can define what it means to bet on a particular side.

Sorry Pascal.

[HeyLeroy]

I probably understand probability and I think about infinity all the time. I bet orange!

[l0rca]

Icchaus, to me, is just a guy with an esoteric sense of humor. It's my kind of humor too. In fact, if he wasn't already doing it, and it was suggested to me, I'd start to argue the kind of points he does.

William F. Buckley, Jr. founded National Review magazine in 1955 and was its editor for many years. As a conservative commentator, he was the host of the long-running public television program Firing Line. Buckley is also the author of the acclaimed series of Blackford Oakes spy novels.

The guy's a prose writer. I'd be dissapointed if he couldn't negotiate his position with enough rhetoric to make it plausable. All his life he deals with words. And it just so happens you don't have to be a lexicographer to write compellingly. Or at least, that's what I believe.

[HeyLeroy]

Stick around long enough...

[c4ts]

I probably understand probability and I think about infinity all the time. I bet orange!

You're lucky this isn't roulette.

[Mojo]

Icchaus, to me, is just a guy with an esoteric sense of humor. If that's the case, it's a bit of a shame he only seems to have one joke.

[Ipecac]

Thanks for posting this thread. I, too, read Buckley's article after Penn's and found it utterly unfathomable and ridiculous. I often wonder how obviously well-educated, erudite "thinkers" really feel about religion. Buckley's essay is an answer of sorts.

[Iacchus]

If that's the case, it's a bit of a shame he only seems to have one joke.What, that the joke is on those who fail to comprehend, and yet insist otherwise? :D

[cyborg]

What, that the joke is on those who fail to comprehend, and yet insist otherwise?

Ah, so you are the joke then.

[Iacchus]

Ah, so you are the joke then.Eh, if you insist. ;)

[Dr Adequate]

Ironic, isn't it, that Iachhus' avatar depicts dolphins leaping carefree from their native element, and his posts resemble a dugong wallowing in treacle?

[PatKelley]

What, that the joke is on those who fail to comprehend, and yet insist otherwise? :D
No, that you appear to be quoting "The Sphinx" most of the time.

"You must master your anger, or ..."
"My anger will be my master? That is what you were going to say, right?"
"Not...necessarily..."

[bruto]

Thanks for posting this thread. I, too, read Buckley's article after Penn's and found it utterly unfathomable and ridiculous. I often wonder how obviously well-educated, erudite "thinkers" really feel about religion. Buckley's essay is an answer of sorts.

Buckley is well schooled, which might or might not mean he is well educated, and he goes out of his way to sound erudite, but I'm not really sure I would call him an erudite thinker, and it isn't all that uncommon for him to sacrifice clarity and coherence to vocabulary exercises. He often doesn't make sense, and I suspect one reason for that is that his ideas often don't make sense. If I were Buckleically inclined, I'd dismiss this latest effort as a pretty typical example of Buckleyan persiflage. Of course I'm not so inclined, so I'll suggest that it's just [insert rule violating crude word here]. The reason his arguments don't make much sense could be because they're post facto rationalizations for faith he already had. Buckley wants to make us believe his reason for faith is intellectual, but it's more likely as simple as that he was brought up Catholic and it's much more comfortable to stick with it than to risk frying in Hell.

[pgwenthold]

And Buckley likes and admires this response?
.

Like Ipecac, I found the piece confusing, for this very reason. Since when is "it is easy" a good reason to anything? I had assumed when he said this that he was going to actually use it as an example of a bad argument, and then show something better. Never materialized...