Theological non-cognitivism is the claim that statements like, "God exists," "God is good," and "God loves me," are not only false, but literally meaningless. It amazes me that even a small segment of the atheist population still adopts this view. Although some significant work had been done prior, it was likely Alvin Plantinga's The Nature of Necessity that put the final dagger in theological non-cognitivism, logical positivism, and the verification principle.
I say that theological non-cognitivism (TNC) is the atheist's equivalent to the Christian's Young Earth Creationism (YEC) because there is a trend among both groups to ignore either scientifically or philosophically compelling reasons to reject them. Science clearly shows the universe has existed for roughly 15 billion years.
Moreover, the creation account in Genesis 1 has for centuries, and now millennia, been interpreted figuratively. I won't go into great detail here, but you'll see how Days 1 and 4, 2 and 5, and 3 and 6 each correspond to one another. On Day 1, God created light, whereas on Day 4 God created the sun and the moon. On Day 2, God separated the land from the sea, and on Day 5 God created sea animals and birds. Finally, on Day 3, God created land vegetation, and on Day 6 God created land animals of all sorts, including human beings. In other words, the author of Genesis was simply using a rhetorical device in order to illustrate the hierarchy of creation.
The problems with TNC are many as well. When a theist talks about a Cosmic Designer who transcends the universe, and is therefore timeless, changeless, immaterial, eternal, indestructible, and enormously powerful and intelligent, what's the objection the proponent of TNC has to offer? There can be no immaterial mind, and the very concept of an immaterial mind is incoherent, as I often hear from these TNC proponents? If that's all they have to offer, then they're simply begging the question against theism. On what grounds does the TNC-er make such an unsubstantiated claim?
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Would you peg Nietzsche as a theological non-cognitivist? This is the impression I got from Dallas Willard's gloss in the chapter named something like "Nietzsche vs. Jesus Christ" in A Place for Truth. A contrast to this is Alistair McFadyen's Bound to Sin: Abuse, Holocaust and the Christian Doctrine of Sin, in which this extensive review argues that McFadyen is attempting to see whether theology-speak is irreducible to secular-speak. He also attempts this in The Call to Personhood; I find him compelling so far, but I'm still working through it.
ReplyDeleteLuke, Nietzsche is an interesting figure, and one whom I disagree with about 90% of the time. I'm not sure I would call him a theological non-cognitivist. When he infamously stated, "God is dead," (and even that needs to be taken in a much broader context), what he was saying was that the abandonment of moral objectivity implies that God is no longer needed (at least not in the sense that God is the ground of an objective moral law).
DeleteTNC does not claim that "God exists" is false. What TNC does claim is that there is no way to assess the meaning of the statement "God loves us", One of the reasons for this is that sometimes the very same theist who claims that God loves us, also claims that God's love is not comparable to human love.
ReplyDeleteIt is also false that a TNC proponent would claim that the concept of an immaterial mind is incoherent or that there can be no immaterial minds. Such claims are cognitivist claim, not non-cognitivist ones. A non-coginitivist claim is that we have no idea what an immaterial mind would be because the concept itself is not defined well enough to make any sort of assessment about it.
Your definition of TNC is exactly what I said it was: "theism is not just false, but literally meaningless." Now, many of the TNC proponents claim that the concept of an immaterial mind is incoherent. I wasn't making a universal claim. However, to concede that an immaterial mind has meaning entails that God's immaterial mind is meaningful.
DeleteAs for God's love not being comparable to human love, what's the point you're trying to make? A mother's love is not the same as a wife's love, yet both are meaningful.
My definition of TNC does not include that theism is just false. To say that theism is false is a cognitivist position. A real non-cognitivist would say that it is impossible to tell wether theism is true or false because it is impossobile to attach real meaning to the proposition "God exists". To a TNC proponent, the proposition "God exists" is the same as "hkjllkjl exists". If someone claims that hkjllkjl exists, then the TNC proponent will not say that it is false that hkjllkjl exists, but he will say that the proposition "hkjllkjl exists" has no meaning and can be ignored, at least until some meaning is offered. BTW, that's why TNC proponents are also called "ignostics".
DeleteFor the record, I am not ignostic on most God concepts.
As for God's love not being comparable to human love, what I meant was that for a TNC proponent, God's love would be the same as God's hkjllkjl. He would not claim that it is false that God is love, but that nothing meaningful can be said about it and that every discussion about God's love is pointless.
Again, for the record, I think it is possible to discuss God's love, and I think it is possible to discuss most God concepts (and refute them). But not all of them. Some theists do in fact make meaningless claims.
Okay, I'm getting a clearer idea of where we've miscommunicated, and I'm willing to take the blame or that. When I said that TNC-ers claim that it's not just false, but meaningless to state that God exists, I wasn't implying that TNC-ers also believe that the claim is false. I was saying that TNC-ers don't make the claim that "God exists" is false, but that they go beyond that by saying that it's meaningless.
DeleteSo, I don't our understandings of TNC are much different.
Just curious, but can you tell me which God-concepts you do find meaningful (or just a few of these concepts)?
I don't think saying it's meaningless goes beyond saying it is false. And TNC does not entail that "there can be no immaterial minds" becasue that claim is a cogintivist claim. It would entail, however, that the TNC proponent feels that the proposition "immaterial minds exist" has the same meaning as "ljjkl exists".
DeleteThe God concepts I find meaningful are those that (try to) make clear what God is and not just what God isn't.
Like I said: an atheist's Young Earth Creationism. If you don't understand something, just call it meaningless.
DeleteA claim about what something is not is not really a claim, so there is nothing to understand or discuss in that case. That doesn't mean you are not allowed to believe in such a concept, but it is not a basis for any serious discussion.
DeleteSo I'm allowed to believe in such a concept, but it's not up for "serious discussion"? I'm afraid it's TNC that cannot be taken seriously. I mean, find some contemporary atheistic philosophers who support such an inconsistent view or, better, find some who take TNC seriously. "My eyes are not brown" is a claim about what color my eyes are not, and it is a meaningful claim. Walter, I've respected you for years now, but I think you need to give up this whole defense of TNC. It's just a last resort in order to avoid theistic conclusions.
DeleteWalter,
ReplyDelete> A claim about what something is not is not really a claim
Are you aware of what Karl Popper says along these lines in The Logic of Scientific Discovery? One way he thinks about scientific laws is to talk about what never happens. So it's not so clear to me that the via negativa produces zero cognitive content. Shall I look for some passages in Logic?
That's a good point, Luke, but right now I'm afraid Walter just isn't willing to consider the via negativa or any form of apophatic theology. I consider this nothing but a conversation stopper. If he or any TNC-ist maintains that such a method is literally meaningless, then there can be no debate about the Thomistic arguments. Unfortunately for the TNC-ist, each premise of the Five Ways is correct, and the conclusion entails negative theology, meaning TNC is nothing more than question-begging.
DeleteThe real conversation stopper is the apophatic theology itself. Of course no theology is truly and completely apophatic, just like an eye that isn't brown is still an eye, the so-called apophatic theology does make positive claims and it's those claims that can be discussed.
DeleteSure a via negativa can be useful to reach cognitive content as long as it is clear that what remains is indeed something and not just a hollow concept. It's not that TNC-ists find a method meaningless, it's that they find no meaning in some of the outcomes of the method.
E.g. when a Thomist reaches the conclusion (through apophatic theology or otherwise) that there is such a thing as an unmoved mover then I would not say it's impossible to discuss it. The concept is meaningful enough for me to reject it as contradictory, just as I would reject a square circle.
Then the burden of proof is on you to show that the concept of an Unmoved Mover is like a square-circle, contradictory.
DeleteSure the burden is on me. I am not taking a TNC position on an Unmoved Mover because in that particular case, the concept is defined well enough to assess its possibility.
DeleteThen I commend you for agreeing to that. It's unfortunate that more of your TNC-ists don't see it the same way. They are primarily the people I'm addressing in the OP.
DeleteDoug, my point is that if he refuses the via negativa, he may be rejecting some of the philosophical foundation for science. He is welcome to do this, but I want him to be aware of some of the other things his acid eats away. With the fall of Logical Positivism, Popperian falsification is a tempting refuge; what if he cannot have that refuge?
ReplyDeleteNo, I think you're right, but I'm not sure you'll be able to convince him of that.
DeleteMy experience is that it doesn't matter if individuals aren't convinced; momentum builds up behind such arguments and they become ominous specters which must be dealt with on pain of being seen as a coward.
DeleteThe more I work through theology with atheists online, the more I'm convinced that many are holding contradictory ideas, one pole of which supports the practice of their beloved science while the other pole attacks theology. Francis Schaeffer, despite his pseudo-intellectual flaws, foresaw that certain ideas in modernity and post-modernity would undermine the very practice of science if allowed to completely mature. I think he's right, although I don't [yet?] know enough to predict how this might actually play out. Tracing abstract philosophy to practicality is tricky business!
Luke
DeleteI don't refuse the via negativa as such, so I can have have what you call this 'refuge'.
The via negativa can be a philosophical foundation for science, but science is not defined in a purely negative way. Science is not a belief either, it is, in itself, a way of assessing things and as such it has a positive meaning.
Luke, that's fair enough. If you can stomach the many TNC-ists' claims (Walter, I'm not addressing you in particular), then more power to you. As for me, I take TNC about as seriously as I take YEC, as I already made clear in the OP.
DeleteI've been forced to stomach so much in life that the TNC-ists' claims are peanuts. I'm happy to work within that system and find one of the following to be true:
Delete(0) smallness†
(1) contradiction
(2) unproveable truth
I talk about (1) and (2) over at one of my two blog entries, Intersubjectivity is Key, under I. and II. (respectively).
† If the system isn't "capable of expressing elementary arithmetic", I call it 'small'. Generally, I think smallness is undesirable, although I haven't worked out a systematic explanation of why.