Ateisme på barnerommet.

Ja, jeg er stadig i live, og nei, denne bloggen er heller ikke erklært død. Den ligger bare på sotteseng. Jeg innser at det å beklage laber bloggaktivitet er i ferd med å bli en slags vane, skjønt ikke noe jeg gjør særlig hyppig. Siste og eneste post av året kom i mars--og siden juni i fjor har jeg kun produsert fem poster! Jeg har til hensikt å trappe opp, men er redd jeg vil forbli nokså opptatt frem til jul. Kanskje jeg skal gjøre dette til et nyttårsforsett når vi kommer så langt? I påvente av noe bedre, serverer jeg i dag en familiær anekdote.

Min yngste datter er glad i sang. Særlig er hun begeistret for Thorbjørn Egners sanger. Forleden dag gikk hun imidlertid, til min forbauselse, omkring og nynnet på en velkjent kristen barnesang, den om hvem som har skapt alle blomstene, fuglene og stjernene. Hun kan ha lært sangen på barnesang i Longyearbyen kirke, hvor hun hadde et par sporadiske opptredener for omlag et år siden. Men i så fall har hun hukommelse som en elefant. Sannsynligvis har hun hørt den på nytt i det siste, skjønt jeg aner ikke hvor. Uansett: fremføringen var helt etter boken. Hun gikk og sang for seg selv, og visste ikke at foreldrene lyttet. Vår tilstedeværelse ble avslørt først da vi brøt ut i spontan latter over siste vers. For etter de velkjente versene om at Gud i himmelen har skapt blomstene, fuglene, stjernene og deg og meg, kom en egenkomponert (tør jeg si subversiv?) avslutning som ville ha moret selv Richard Dawkins:

Hvem har skapt Gud i himmelen, himmelen, himmelen
Hvem har skapt Gud i himmelen, jo [det er] deg og meg.

No Future?

Though the story is set in the final days before the world ends, Noah opens like a typical post-apocalyptic film. Nature is nothing but pebbles and rocks, and the human race in an equally sorry condition. In their own eyes they still are images of the divine creator; in reality the human interior is more like the spitting image of the foul surroundings. Since the eviction from Paradise, the children of Adam and Eve have turned into savages, killing and looting. Only one tribe has preserved some purity. Noah and his family live alone. Their goodness is expressed by their care for the natural world. Seth, captivated by its beauty, plucks a solitary flower for his father to see; and though he shares his son's wonder, Noah (with a mien we clearly are supposed to interpret as expressing a reverence for God's creation) explains how Seth now has killed the flower. Their alienation from the rest of humanity is also marked by the fact that they do not eat flesh. Noah's sons are stupefied when learning that humans hunt animals for food.

Noah contains long (in my mind too long, and boring) action scenes. The dialogues are strikingly artificial. The acting is often bad. At one level, this is a not very well-made survival movie (as a guide to the biblical story, it is worse still). Nevertheless, I found Noah interesting for its obvious concerns with environmental issues. The barren landscape is more than a mere mirror or a symbol of the moral landscape of the human soul. Nature's deplorable state is due to human folly. Having interpreted the command to "fill the earth and subdue it" as a carte blanche for exploitation (a clear misunderstanding, because God is obviously pissed-off by it), the humans have transformed the once lush Garden of Eden into a desert. When a now extinct animal is hunted and killed, the thematic backdrop of the movie suggests to the viewer that this is when and how this species went extinct.

When Noah starts preparing for the flood to come while being ridiculed by his neighbours, this is certainly true to the biblical story, but it is also an unambiguous statement about similar attempts today to undermine the environmental whistle-blowers. The movie leaves no one in doubt about who's right and who's wrong: all scepticism is literally drowned when the rain starts pouring down.

Other questions raised are left unanswered. Much of the drama revolves around Man's future existence. On this issue, the Bible is quite clear. When God commands Noah to "[bring] out every kind of living creature that is with you--the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground--so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number on it," (Gen 8:17) Noah, reasonably, never suspects that the notion of "living creature" might exclude human beings. In the biblical story, humanity too is due for a fresh start. But in the movie God doesn't speak so articulate. In fact, apart from a few miraculous incidents, there are no hints of His presence at all. The messages Noah receives all have the form of visions, and to Noah these visions suggest that human beings have no place in God's future plans. Hence, Noah takes care to collect two of every animal, but strictly forbids his own sons to procreate. (Put in the words of some extreme environmentalists, he is convinced that humanity is a cancer that must be cut out for nature to survive.) This alienates him from his family. The ensuing conflict reaches its climax when Seth's wife does become pregnant. Like a crazed Abraham with the knife, Noah threatens to sacrifice his two granddaughters on Nature's altar.

He doesn't of course (after all, there are still humans around), because in the end his fanaticism is softened by his love of children. It is natural to view this as a case of good sense prevailing over madness. But in the movie this is not necessarily so. When Noah, employing God of the Bible's words: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth," finally gives his blessings to the small family, this might indeed be interpreted as a hopeful conclusion. Humanity cannot continue exploiting Nature as before (a condition emphasised by Noah not repeating the whole Bible passage, which continues "subdue [the earth]; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth"), but on the condition that Seth, his wife and their children learn to change their ways, perhaps there is reason for optimism? But the movie leaves room for an alternative (and equally plausible) interpretation of this final scene. Everyone knows what did in fact happen next. Not much did change, at least not for the better. Hence, the environmental challenges facing us today. In this light, Noah's conditional, but still fundamentally optimistic blessing of mankind might strike one as comical -- if "comical" is not too light-hearted a word to capture one’s reaction (some might, after all, think history proves Noah made the wrong decision). This reading of the final scene is supported by the fact that the rainbow (the token of God's promise never to flood the earth again) is conspicuously missing.

Goldielocks Universe.

Before the Big Bang no-one would have guessed that life would ever evolve. For life to evolve innumerable things had to turn out exactly as they did. According to science, the tiniest alteration of just one of many crucial parameters, and life as we know it would never have existed. Some calculations indicate that the force of gravity must be accurate to one part in 10⁴⁰ in order for this to happen. "It's as if there are a large number of dials that have to be tuned to within extremely narrow limits for life to be possible in our universe. It is extremely unlikely that this should happen by chance," according to Alvin Plantinga, "but much more likely that this should happen if there is such a person as God."

This is sometimes known as the design explanation for the fine-tuned universe. A life supporting universe is intrinsically unlikely, or so it is argued. But if there is an intelligent Creator, then that would explain everything. Random chance would only raise the question as to why this universe could be so "lucky" as to have precise conditions that support life (at least here and for the time being). But if everything were designed according to some intelligent plan, then this mind boggling precision would be exactly what to expect.

A rival explanation is the Multiverse-hypothesis, according to which there is a whole bunch of universes -- not just galaxies within our own universe, but complete universes. Given a string of universes, one would expect the various combinations of parameters for basic physical factors to show up in endless combinations. That one combination is suitable for life should not surprise anyone."If there is a large stock of clothing, you're not surprised to find a suit that fits," in the words of Martin Rees. "If there are many universes, each governed by a differing set of numbers, there will be one where there is a particular set of numbers suitable to life. We are in that one."

Replies Plantinga:

Well, of course our universe would have to be fine-tuned, given that we live in it. But how does that so much as begin to explain why it is that [our universe] is fine-tuned? One can't explain this by pointing out that we are indeed here—anymore than I can "explain" the fact that God decided to create me (instead of passing me over in favor of someone else) by pointing out that if God had not thus decided, I wouldn't be here to raise that question. It still seems striking that these constants should have just the values they do have; it is still monumentally improbable, given chance, that they should have just those values; and it is still much less improbable that they should have those values, if there is a God who wanted a life-friendly universe.

There are difficulties here. Whether or not this God-hypothesis is more probable than other explanations depends, as John Perry argued in a teaser for a recent Philosophy Talk, on what is required for the existence of such a God. "Wouldn’t that in turn require the existence of a Creator-friendly universe, or proto-universe, with parameters set to allow for the development of such a powerful and wonderful Being, capable of setting the parameters for our universe?" A clever question, no doubt; but I am sure Plantinga would have an answer ready and argue that intelligent design nevertheless is the more plausible hypothesis. I am not writing this to take sides. In fact, I am not sure what the discussion is all about. Arguing over which explanation (for why the universe is suitable for life) is more probable, looks like an argument where language has gone on holiday. Probability is something we normally talk about within the universe -- when unlikely things happen, we ask for explanations -- but here the question is how probable the universe itself is? How unlikely is a life-supporting universe? And how unlikely is that to develop by sheer coincidence? Unlikely, compared to what?

I am not sure I see why there is something here to explain either. Consider the following quote from Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything:

To be here now, alive in the twenty-first century and smart enough to know it, you also had to be the beneficiary of an extraordinary string of biological good fortune. Survival on Earth is a surprisingly tricky business [...] Not only have you been lucky enough to be attached since time immemorial to a favoured evolutionary line, but you have also been extremely -- make that miraculously -- fortunate in your personal ancestry. Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stuck fast, untimely wounded or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result -- eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly -- in you.

Of this, I am tempted to say, if things had gone differently, I simply wouldn't have been here to raise the question at all. I fully agree that that doesn't explain anything, but I do not share Plantinga's (and other's) need for an explanation. Reading Bryson's tale fills me with amazement too, momentarily at least. Of all the things that could have gone wrong, none did! It is incredible that I got here at all, yet here I am! But there seems to be a certain (mischievous?) picture here -- of a tiny charge of genetic material that has made it safely through 3.8 billion years of continuous narrow escapes in order to make me. This looks like quite an accomplishment. When a package reaches its final destination unscathed, despite having faced earthquakes, avalanches, blizzards, mine-fields and so on, then that might make us look for an explanation. Calling it chance will hardly satisfy our need. (That's because chance isn't really an explanation at all, but rather something we appeal to when there are none.) Intelligent design (or Providence or Destiny) might look like much better options.

However, I cannot settle with this picture, mainly, I guess, because I cannot see any sense in saying that if things had been a little different and my parents hadn't met, then I would have been a package forever lost in the mail, as it were. One can say (and some do), how amazing it is that my mother, of all the men in the world, happened to meet my father. What were the chances!? But to me this sounds confused. It does make some sense to praise yourself lucky that your parents met and fell in love. But the sense is not that it would have been very unfortunate if they hadn't met, because then you would never have been born. One cannot say, bad luck for all those whose parents never meet.(Though that seems to be exactly what Plantinga is saying, when claiming that God, in creating me, somehow decided not to pass me over in favour of someone else.) When one say, how very lucky I am to be alive, this is normally a way of expressing one's gratitude, not a probabilistic judgement.

Your parents did meet, of course. Good for you, but is it more than that? Is it amazing? Today your father, of all the people in the world, sat next to this particular odd person on the bus. Why should the first be more in need of an explanation than the second? The first strikes you as wondrous because it was crucial for your existence. But if your father hadn't met your mother on that day, say, if he had gone to the movies instead of the beach, possibly to fall in love with someone else, and father, not you (you simply wouldn't exist) but someone else. Would that have been amazing too?

Utrivelig nabolag.

Det er sjelden jeg er enig med Vebjørn Selbekk, redaktør av avisen Dagen, tidligere redaktør av Magazinet (kjent for å ha publisert Muhammed-karikaturene på norsk), men fenomenet begravelsesdemonstrasjon var meg ukjent før jeg leste dette. Sammenligningen gir (i alle fall meg) et slags idemessig nabolag å plassere Haakonsens dypt ubehagelige tanker i.

Den såkalte skandaletalen ligger i fulltekst her. OVERHODET IKKE VERDT EN TITT! (Mannen som besvarer det fortvilte klageropet om hvor Gud var den 22. juli, med at Gud trolig var tilstede på Utøya og applauderte alt sammen, har fått mer enn den oppmerksomheten han fortjener.)

Respektløst vrøvl.

Jeg tror ikke dette er en spøk, for hvem i Herrens navn spøker med slikt!?

At Gud skulle stå bak 22. juli-massakrene må da være norgeshistoriens mest groteske konspirasjonsteori! Likevel mener ledelsen i Sarpsborg KrF at tankene må tas på alvor: "Haakonsen er en mann med mye utdannelse og kunnskap, som har studert dette," forklarer Inger Marit Sverresen, leder for lokallaget. (Studert hva? Guds rolle i terroren!?) Når en slik autoritet snakker, fortsetter Sverresen, bør man ikke reagere med avsky, men "heller tenke etter og forske litt på om han kanskje har rett."

At massemyrderiene 22. juli ikke bare var en liten fanatikers forkvaklede forsøk på å si noe, men skulle være en guddommelig advarsel til landets myndigheter og alle "andre som tar avstand fra Gud om at noe enda verre kan komme," og at Gud særlig reagerer på "det stadig mer betente forhold mellom Israel og Norge og de diplomatiske kontroverser som har vært den siste tid," er naturligvis vrøvl fra ende til annen. Hvordan slike "hypoteser" kunne utgjøre grunnlaget for et forskningsprogram er, med respekt å melde, hinsides enhver begripelse. Men at uttalelsene vekker så sterke reaksjoner skyldes nok primært, som Eskil Pedersen sier, at uttalelsene er så ufattelig respektløse. Haakonsen forsøker å plassere hendelsene 22. juli i en kontekst der drapene mister mye av sitt alvor. Respektløsheten viser seg også i alle de vemmelige spørsmålene dette forsøket virvler opp.

Hvilken rolle tildeles gjerningsmannen i Haakonsens scenario? Skal ABB nå forstås som en slags Guds engel (av gresk angelos, ἄγγελος, "sendebud")? Hvordan bør vi da forholde oss til ham? "Skyt ikke budbringeren" heter det. Er det altså Vårherre vi skal rette vreden mot? Eller kanskje Haakonsen mener at vi -- både overlevende, pårørende og resten av Norge -- tvert imot burde takke ABB som advarte oss i tide? (Men i tide til hva? Og mot hva? Og hadde ikke en steintavle vært nok?) Eller skal vi kanskje se på ABB som en ørliten men absolutt nødvendig brikke i Guds plan? At galskapen 22. juli av en eller annen grunn måtte finne sted, og at ABB, i likhet med Judas Iskariot, måtte forråde verden for at Guds store kabal skulle gå opp? "It was a dirty job, but someone had to do it," altså -- eller med morderens egne ord: grusomt, men nødvendig?

Nøyaktig hvilket budskap Inger Marit Sverresen ikke vil ta avstand fra, skulle jeg like å vite.

Rimeliggjøring av Guds eksistens.

Den seneste uken har jeg hatt en filosofisk meningsutveksling med professor Jean Kazez på hennes blogg In Living Color. Spørsmålet er om det kan finnes tenkelige empiriske hendelser som bør få alle rimelige mennesker (reasonable men) til å tenke at det må finnes en ånd med i det minste noen av Guds egenskaper.

Suppose this morning you found out that every token of "Woody Allen" in every book and magazine, worldwide, had turned green. This pattern of events is physically inexplicable (too spread out, too fast, to be physically explained), but coherent, meaning-wise. In other words, it's the sort of thing a Someone might wish for (if they happened to have a thing about Woody Allen).

If that actually happened, it would be reasonable to think a Mind must have willed it, thereby making it so. An immaterial mind that makes things happen through sheer willing is...maybe God.

Dette er tankeeksperimentet. Og konklusjonen kan virke selvfølgelig. Å komme opp med alternative forklaringer er slett ikke enkelt. Men jeg stilte Kazez et par spørsmål. For det første: vi er tilbøyelige til å lese rapportene som en hendelse; men er det opplagt? Kanskje det dreier seg om en rekke urelaterte hendelser. Kanskje har vi ikke behov for én, men for mange forklaringer. At så mange usannsynlige hendelser falt samme natt var kanskje bare en gigantisk tilfeldighet. Dette svekker muligens vår første innskytelse...

Men sett at det ble fastslått (hvordan aner jeg ikke) at hendelsene var relaterte, slik Kazez' hensikt syntes å være, hva da? Bør konklusjonen da være at en ånd sto bak? Det var det vår meningsutveksling dreide seg om. (Diskusjonen for øvrig konsentrerte seg om andre spørsmål.) Jeg stilte Kazez, noe jeg oppfatter som et viktig spørsmål -- hvordan fortsetter historien hennes?

Jeg benekter ikke at ånder (kan) finnes; ikke engang at det skulle være forklaringen i dette tilfellet. Men spørsmålet er om slike rapporter rimeliggjør en slik konklusjon. Om én, riktignok en fantastisk omfattende og finurlig, empirisk hendelse kan rimeliggjøre påstanden at "a Mind must have willed it, thereby making it so." Vår trang til å si noe sånt kan være sterk -- kanskje ville også jeg føle det slik -- men spørsmålet er om det ville være rimelig å gi etter for trangen. Jeg er tviler. Jeg er tviler på om skillet mellom rimelig og urimelig kan avgjøres basert på den historien Kazez forteller. Det avhenger av hvordan historien fortsetter.

Hvis mystiske hendelser fortsatte, ville det kanskje rimeliggjøre konklusjonen. Kanskje ville vi på et tidspunkt finne det urimelig å lete etter andre forklaringer. Kazez så poenget om at den ene hendelsen ikke var stort å basere seg på, men mente likevel at hendelsene i seg var så ekstraordinære at det rimeliggjorde konklusjonen. Men hva om det ble med denne ene mystiske episoden? Etter disse grønne Woody Allen'ene skjer ingenting. Virker konklusjonen da like sterk?

Her kan det være tjenlig å få hendelsene litt på avstand. I det opprinnelige tankeeksperimentet blir vi bedt om å forestille oss at vi hører at noe fantastisk har skjedd i løpet av natten. Men hva ville folk tenke om hundre eller to hundre år om disse grønne Woody Allen'ene dersom ingenting som dette noensinne skjedde igjen? De ville neppe ha vår steke trang til å si at en ånd måtte ha stått bak. Ville de uansett ha en rimelig grunn til å tro at en slik ånd eksisterer? Eller i det minste må ha eksistert den ene gangen for alle de årene siden? Ville de oppfatte rapportene som bevis eller kun som anekdoter -- omtrent slik vi betrakter middelalderens rapporterte mirakler?

Vi kan selvsagt ikke vite svaret. Men disse ulike narrativene synes å kunne avsvekke ønsket om å trekke Kazez' konklusjon i dette tilfellet, og mer generelt ønsket om å trekke metafysisk-teologiske konklusjoner på empiriske, for ikke å snakke om én empirisk hendelse.