Eric MacDonald defines and defends free will

July 10, 2011 • 6:55 am

I lied.

I promised not to post about free will for at least a month, but here it is only a few days later and I’m about to take it up again.  So sue me.  My only excuse is that, at his site Choice in Dying, Eric MacDonald has posted his response to my earlier discussion of his views on free will, and, like Maru and his boxes, I cannot help but enter.

Eric’s piece is called “Free Will: A first, very tentative defense”.   I want to respond briefly (although I’m not yet sure how briefly), but it’s not without trepidation that I debate philosophy with someone as learned as Eric.

As I understand it, Eric’s concept of “free will,” which he indeed thinks we have, rests on both our own feeling that we have choice and, more important, on his idea that if we mull things over, we may come to different (and presumably better) “choices.”  Ergo we are making choices.

First, though, Eric’s take on why the problem of free will seems intractable:

The main reason for this intractability lies, it seems to me, in its unverifiability, a problem that Jerry Coyne himself, even with the aid of Ceiling Cat, has failed to shake. You might say that, as a scientist, determinism is a “properly basic” principle (in Alvin Plantinga’s sense), and neither needs defence, nor can find any. This, it seems to me, should worry Jerry a lot more than it apparently does. As an article of scientific faith, you might almost say that Jerry is here fudging off by degrees into the realm of theology — Ceiling Cat help us! – a space normally occupied by religious believers.

I don’t think that the principle of determinism “can find no defense.” Nor is it “an article of scientific faith.”  Its defense is twofold: it works and, except for actions on the quantum scale, we know of nothing that isn’t predictable in principle.  All the progress science has made on the macro scale rests on the idea that given absolutely identical physical conditions acting on an object, its response will always be the same.  If this principle didn’t work, we couldn’t get rockets to the Moon.  I accept the fact that quantum events, like the location and momentum of electrons or the moment when an atom of a radioactive element decays, can be absolutely unpredictable. But I doubt that this unpredictability has observable results on the scale of human behavior.  Physical determinism at the macro level is simply something that works and makes accurate predictions about the universe, and therefore is not an article of faith.  My “faith” in determinism of human behavior rests on the same “faith” I have that the origin of life occurred by naturalistic means and not via God.  (I put “faith” in quotations marks lest creationists think I mean “unsupported beliefs” that are identical in kind to religious beliefs.  I don’t mean that: my “scientific faith” really means “confidence based on experience”.)

Eric uses the examples of me writing my book—and posts on this website—as things that pose severe problems for behavioral determinism:

Indeed, Jerry Coyne cannot himself help thinking that some people make the wrong choices, seriously wrong. That’s why he writes a blog entitled, eponymously, ”Why Evolution is True,” after the book of the same name, written to convince people that they are wrong. And he didn’t make the book into a series of stimulus patterns, but actually included in it sentences with meanings which, he believed, and I think believed rightly, should convince those who read it that the theory of evolution is not just a working hypothesis, but actually reflects the truth about the way that the world of life works.

Yes, that’s true, but this says absolutely nothing about whether, given the same conditions of my life and environment, I would always write the book and think that creationists are wrong.  And yes, I’m a human with a brain that enables me to write sentences that convey my ideas to others, but that says nothing to me about whether or not I had a choice. (This issue of “meaning” always confuses me, because it seems to me simply an epiphenomenon of a sufficiently complex brain operating in a social species.  “Meaning” seems irrelevant to the issue of whether behavior is completely determined by genes, environment, and their interaction.)  And my book can convince (and has convinced, thank Ceiling Cat) some people, for it’s part of the environment that impinges on peoples’ brains.

I believe Eric’s error in his essay comes from a failure to recognize that one person’s thoughts can not only influence her own behaviors, but also the thoughts and behavior of other people. That is not a problem for a deterministic view of human nature, for thoughts are simply the chemical actions of neurons, which can be influenced by the neuronal input to our brains coming from our senses. Books and words are neuronal inputs that affect brain chemistry and hence actions.

Eric draws a distinction between human behavior and the “stimulus-response” pattern of some other animals:

But what happens when animals become, not simple input-response mechanisms like Deep Blue or Ichnumonidae, but intentional systems with a narrative history? Whereas we may quite properly see Ichnumonidae as quite simple input-response systems which are hardwired to lay their eggs, as they do, in the living, paralysed bodies of caterpillars, it is much harder to see human beings in these terms.

Perhaps it is harder for Eric to see that, but it’s not so hard for me—perhaps because I’m a geneticist and an evolutionary biologist.  Our input-response systems are immensely more complicated than those of other animals, a truth that Dennett points out in Freedom Evolves.  And indeed, I think that natural selection has favored this complexity, for we are social beings who evolved in small groups.  For such a species, selection has favored us taking on board a lot of different inputs, and “weighing them” (by this I simply mean that our neurology is wired to give some inputs more influence than others on our subsequent action) before we do anything.  When a gazelle hears a rustle in the bushes, it instantly flees.  When we hear a rustle in the bushes, we have a more sophisticated response, thinking “Could that be my friend Zog, whom I know is nearby?  Or is it the wind? I don’t think it’s a lion because I haven’t seen any lions in a while.”  We “weigh” the possibilities before acting simply because our onboard computer is more complicated, and it’s adaptive for us to take in a lot of inputs before we give an output.  Gazelles don’t have the cerebral equipment to weigh all these factors: if they don’t flee at the slightest noise, they might be dead.

The crux of Eric’s notion of free will seems to reside in this paragraph:

The question of determinism, as I see it, does not have so much to do with contra-causal possibilities, since once something has been done, it scarcely makes a lot of sense to ask whether the agent could have done something quite different. Presumably, all the causes and influences that came to bear on the person at that time are such as to have produced exactly that result and none other. The question is whether the agent might have acted differently had he or she considered more thoroughly the possible alternatives that were open to choice at that time, and all their many ramifications and consequences. Redoing the same situation with the very same parameters, including the person’s limited survey of the alternatives, and inadequate consideration of the consequences of his action, will almost certainly produce the same action, not because that action was determined — though it certainly was determined by the influences then in play upon the person’s decisions — but because that action was only one of a range of possible actions he or she might have done, depending upon the thoroughness with which he or she had considered the alternatives to what he or she in the end decided to do.

I think the mistake here is that he sees the action of “considering something more thoroughly” as a choice—a real contracausal choice. (He seems to realize this issue at one point, but still implies that the degree to which we ponder something is under some kind of dualistic control.  I may be wrong about this, though.)  I would argue that yes, reflection does affect what we do, but how long and how thoroughly we reflect on something are things that are also determined.

Eric goes on to recount the circumstances that led him to create his website (and I’m really glad he did); he seems to see them as a series of “choices” that he made after pondering his alternatives.  In contrast, I would call them “actions Eric took after pondering”.   And I would also claim that Eric never had any contracausal choice about how long he pondered the alternatives.

As for our thoughts affecting our actions, I fully agree, as I think any determinist would.  Humans are animals that have multiple inputs and a complex processing system. Of course thought influences action.  If you get evidence that your son is stealing money from your wallet, you will treat him differently from how you would without that knowledge.  And of course if you reflect about an issue longer, you may change your behavior concerning that issue.  If someone yells at me during a faculty meeting, I might yell back, but if I had time to ponder the situation before responding, I might refrain on the grounds of civility and comity.  But so what? Whether or not I ponder the situation is itself something that depends on my brain, genes, and environment.

But thought itself is action: the actions of polarized neurons and chemicals moving between them.  And that thought-action is influenced by physical conditions.  How deeply we consider a problem before acting is also thought-action, and (with the exception of quantum events, which can’t be considered a component of free will) is also determined.   Ergo,the fact that one’s intensity of rumination affections one’s actions says nothing about whether you’re making a real “choice.”  And are those “choices” really “free” if they’re ultimately determined?  Just because they look like choices doesn’t mean they’re not determined.

At the end, Eric seems to conclude (and I may be mistaken here) that he has made “real” choices in his life simply because he thinks he has.

The truth to me seems to be that, even if it could be explained by taking all the factors into account, including the reasons I just gave, I did choose to do this [create his website] — that is, it was my choice — and that what I did was inexplicable apart from the reasons given, and what it means to give them. And that seems to me a freedom worth having. But, as I say, this is only a very tentative first step.

If you want to call the appearance of choice “free will,” then you are free to do so.  But I don’t think that’s what most people mean when they think they have free will.  And in what sense are those choices really “free” if, given perfect knowledge, you could predict them—or even the amount of thought devoted to them before they’re made?

Sunday backyard biology

July 10, 2011 • 4:57 am

First an update on the squirrels nesting on my office windowsill. They’ve now built two nests on the same ledge, one open to the sun and one shaded by ivy leaves.  They move between them as the sun gets higher, starting out in the sun-exposed spot and then moving beneath the ivy leaves during the hot afternoon. They aren’t around in the morning, but appear to take their naps around midday. And they must surely sleep at night, but I’m not around to check.

As I noted before, I can’t get good pictures of them because of a dirty and un-openable window and an intervening screen.  Nevertheless, here they are:

When there is more than one using the nest, they’re always cuddled up together, which is really cute.

And reader Gary U sends a photograph of his hummingbird feeder, with this note:

This is what happens when the bee guard breaks off of your hummingbird feeder. We watched these guys drain the feeder in just a couple of hours.

Taken with a simple HP PhotoSmart M547 at my parents’ home just outside of Cincinnati, OH.

The scholar warriors

July 9, 2011 • 9:05 am

Last week’s Slate has a lovely obituary by Christopher Hitchens for Patrick Leigh Fermor, author, soldier, and adventurer.  (As I noted in an earlier post, Leigh Fermor, who wrote some world-class travel books, died on June 10.)  Hitchens takes the opportunity to extol other literary types who fought in the Second World War, and ends with this:

Now the bugle has sounded for the last and perhaps the most Byronic of this astonishing generation. When I met him some years ago, Leigh Fermor (a slight and elegant figure who didn’t look as if he could squash a roach; he was perfectly played by Dirk Bogarde in Ill Met by Moonlight, the movie of the Kreipe operation) was still able to drink anybody senseless, still capable of hiking the wildest parts of Greece, and still producing the most limpidly written accounts of his solitary, scholarly expeditions. (He had also just finished, for a bet, translating P.G. Wodehouse’s story The Great Sermon Handicap into classical Greek.) That other great classicist and rebel soldier T.E. Lawrence, pressed into the service of an imperial war, betrayed the Arabs he had been helping and ended his life as a twisted and cynical recluse. In the middle of a war that was total, Patrick Leigh Fermor fought a clean fight and kept faith with those whose cause he had adopted. To his last breath, he remained curious and open-minded to an almost innocent degree and was a conveyor of optimism and humor to his younger admirers. For as long as he is read and remembered, the ideal of the hero will be a real one.

I think that Hitchens’s assessment of Lawrence is uncharitable, for his “betrayal” of Arab independence seems to me by no means deliberate. Lawrence may have been a mixed bag, but he’s still a hero of mine: a scholar and an archaeologist who fought—physically—for what he believed, an adventurer, and a superb writer (I’d recommend Seven Pillars of Wisdom). How many academics wish they could have been Lawrence, charging Aqaba on his camel in Lawrence of Arabia (one of the best movies in my pantheon)?

When I had a week in Dorset a few years ago, I took a trip to Clouds Hill, the small cottage where Lawrence lived out the last years of his life (he was, as many of you know, killed in a motorcycle crash near that cottage in 1935 at the age of 46).  Clouds Hill is a very simple house, lacking a bathroom (everyone just did their business outside) or guest facilities.  Lawrence had two sleeping bags embroidered in Latin “Meum”—”mine” and “Tuum”—”yours”, for the guests.  They’re still there, for the two-story cottage is almost precisely as Lawrence left it.  I wasn’t allowed to photograph the interior, but this site has pictures of how it looked when Lawrence lived there.

The windows are on the other side.

Over the door is this Greek inscription, “ou phrontis,” which I believe means “without care” (or, in Aussiespeak, “no worries, mate”):

I couldn’t resist taking one photo of Lawrence’s own bathtub, complete with his shaving bowl and the board on which he read:

After the visit I wanted to see the site where he had his fatal crash, for it was supposedly on a rise that obscured his view of two bicycles ahead (the crash occurred when he swerved to avoid the bikes).  The rise is no longer there, but after considerable searching I found a marker:

Eerily, only a short time before I found the site, a car had crashed right next to it:

I can haz adventure, too, plz?

Lawrence loved motorcycles and preferred the Brough Superior, one of which he was riding when he died.  Here he is in photos from the Brough Family website.  If you’re a Lawrenceophile, you’ll know that to flee the spotlight, he enlisted in the R.A.F. under the name T. E. Shaw, and he was an enlisted man when he died.

Here’s how most of us know him:


Update:  Reader Graham pointed out to me that Lawrence is also buried nearby, and that his grave has a “sentinel cat.” I found one photo of both grave and cat, but suspect that the “patrolling his grave” part comes from the number of humans who cluster around that particular grave, attracting any cat who craves a good petting:


 

A buttload of “blogs”

July 9, 2011 • 7:54 am

In case you didn’t know, Scientific American has just started a whole herd of “blogs”—39 of them—and you can find the list here.   There are some old favorites, some new ones, and even some group websites.  If you’ve followed these “blogs” in their previous incarnation, feel free to list your favorites below.

I’d like to give a special shout-out to a new website co-hosted by Kalliopi (Kapi) Monoyios, who illustrated WEIT and Neil Shubin’s Your Inner Fish, and Glendon Mellow, whose work I’ve highlighted previously.

The site is called Symbiartic, and the Sci Am description is this:

This is a blog where the two of them act as hosts and curators. They will look around our network and around the WWW as a whole, to find and present work by other artists in a variety of domains of visual art: art, illustration, data visualization, sculpture, architecture, design, cartoons, comic strips, photography, etc. They will conduct interviews with artists and showcase their work, and invite artists to post guest-posts. They will showcase their own work, and also discuss how the widespread electronic communication is changing the notions of copyright in the visual realm. They will write How-To technique posts and then conduct reader critiques and reader contests. They will also help me choose the “image of the week” for the blog network homepage. If your names seem familiar, it is perhaps because you already saw them on our site – Scientific accuracy in art by Glendon, and Art in the service of science: You get what you pay for by Kalliopi.

Both hosts have written previously for Sci Am, and you can find sample posts here and here.

A second case of meat farming

July 9, 2011 • 5:30 am

This observation was apparently presented at the Evolution 2011 meetings in Oklahoma, but I missed it.  Via Alex Wild at Myrmecos comes a report from New Scientist of the discovery of only second species (besides H. sapiens) that raises animals for meat.

It’s an ant!  To be precise, it’s a species (it’s not clear if it’s more than one) in the genus Melissotarsus.  And the work is apparently that of Scott Schneider, a graduate student in biology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. (All quotes below from the New Scientist piece.)

Lots of ants practise a rudimentary form of agriculture. Some are gardeners, gathering leaf fragments on which they cultivate a crop of tasty fungus. Others are dairymaids, “milking” the sweet excretion known as honeydew from aphids, scale insects and other related insects.

But the Melissotarsus ants of continental Africa and Madagascar are special. If biologists’ best guess proves correct, these ants raise their insect herds for meat, not milk – the first example of meat farmers other than humans. And that’s not all. The insects they cultivate may be the best example of true domestication outside of our crop plants.

You have to know what you’re looking for to even see Melissotarsus. The ants – barely 3 millimetres long – live most of their lives within the intricate gallery systems they excavate in and under the bark of trees. They’re such committed burrowers that their second pair of legs points up, not down, so they can get a foothold in the tunnel roof as well as the floor. They share their galleries with several species of armoured scale insects, so-called because most species secrete a tough, waxy scale that covers and protects them.

Note the position of the second pair of legs in this photo from Myrmecos and the following one from the Encyclopedia of Life:

Melissotarsus sp. (photo by antweb.org via Myrmecos)

If you have house plants, you’ve probably been plagued by scale insects (order Hemiptera: true bugs!), which often have a hard shell or cottony outer covering to protect them from predation. Here’s another photo, by the indefatigable Alex Wild, which he captions as “Camponotus rosariensis ant tending scale insects for honeydew. Notice that the younger scale insects have legs. These first instar scale are more mobile than the older instars, which settle down once they find a good spot for feeding.”:

Most ant/scale insect/honeydew systems are evolved mutualisms (or “symbiosis”), in which the ants tend the scale insects, protecting them from predation, while they eat the honeydew (the not-completely-digested sap exuded by the scale insects).  Both species benefit, and some of these associations are at least 15 million years old. It’s clear that the ants have evolved special behaviors to “farm” these insects for the exudate, but I’m not sure whether the scale insects themselves have evolved to make them more attractive to the ants (if both species evolved, it would also be a case of “coevolution,” but I’m not sure about that here).

In the case of the Melissotarsus species, the scale insects “tended” by the ants don’t produce honeydew, nor do they have an edible wax exudate.  The idea is that the ants are raising the scale insects as livestock, completely analogous to the way humans raise cows:

So what do the ants get from all their work housing and protecting the scale insects? Almost the only remaining possibility is that the ants sometimes make a meal of the insects themselves, Schneider reported at a recent meeting of the Society for the Study of Evolution in Norman, Oklahoma. No one has yet caught Melissotarsus in mid-munch, partly because the ants like their privacy and quickly seal off any peepholes into their galleries. Next year, however, Schneider will measure stable isotopes in the ants’ bodies, which will indicate whether their diet is mostly plant or animal in origin.

Now they haven’t yet seen the ants eating the scale insects, nor has this observation yet been published in the scientific literature, so we have to take it as provisional.  (Presentations at meetings don’t count, at least in evolutionary biology, as “publications” because they’re not peer-reviewed). That’s why the “farming idea” is characterized by New Scientist as “biologists’ best guess.”  The authors really do need to observe the scale insects being nommed, which is hard to do because the ants + scales are secretive.

But if the “meat farming” idea is true, you might well ask why haven’t the scale insects, who seem to gain nothing but death from this interaction, evolved defenses against the ants?  I can think of two answers.  First, maybe the scale insects really do benefit from being farmed.  Perhaps, though kin selection, a “herd” of scale insects is actually a related group, with the eaten individuals “sacrificing themselves” for the good of their kin, who are protected from predation by species other than the “farmer” ants. This makes the testable prediction that the “herd” consists of related individuals, and the harder-to-test prediction that the genes of those individuals being “farmed” leave more copies of themselves than the genes of scale insects who aren’t farmed. (It’s not clear if the scale insects occurs in groups that aren’t farmed by ants.)  That would also suggest that the scale insects may have some yet-undescribed adaptations for being farmed.

Alternatively, it may simply not have been possible for the scale insects to evolve defenses.  After all, evolution isn’t perfect: every successful parasite represents a failure of adaptation by its host.  If the genetic variation for protection hasn’t arisen (or can’t arise) through mutation, then there’s no counter-evolution.

h/t: Matthew Cobb

Caturday felid: Gaming kitteh (and bonus)

July 9, 2011 • 4:34 am

This dude is playing the old shell game, and wins two times out of three (much better than the success of humans who are playing it against a shill).

Does this kitteh have special powers?  Calculate the probability that if it guessed randomly, it would be successful at least two out of three times (winner gets a warm congratulations from yours truly).

BONUS:  Sylvester goes for a “walk”

Proof of Ceiling Cat/Arguments not for Ceiling Cat

July 8, 2011 • 12:59 pm

One of the best parts of the LOLcat Bible Project (which I srsly regard as one of the best weapons against religion) is its ancillary page of “Proofs of Ceiling Cat” and “Awgooments not for Ceiling Cat”.  If you crave sophisticatted theology, this is a place to find some hilarious spoofs of traditional pro- and anti-God arguments. I’ll give just two of each, but there are many more:

Arguments for Ceiling Cat:

  • Felinopik Prinsipul.  Teh howse is jus riet for us kittehs. Is not too cowd or too hot. Is jus niec an warm an cuddlee. Teh hoomins gif us fud wen we ask an scrach us wen we mew qyoot. We gets to slepe anywhar an teh hoomins even gif us warm piels of cleen close to lay on. How awesoem!If Ceiling Cat dint ecksist how cud all of dis happun? If teh howse wus too cowd we wud be ded kittehs wif ice! If teh howse wus too hot we wud be ded kittehs wif crispees! If hoomins not der to feed us we wud be reely skinneh and ded kittehs. If Ceiling Cat dint maek hoomins for us sleepin anywhar wud not be fun! An no cleen close to slepe on!Evewythin in howse is riet for kitteh and dat is how we kno Ceiling Cat is reel, srsly.
  • Paffschal’s Wayjjor.  Paffshcal wus clever kitteh hu wus laik: “I am not knoin if teh Ceiling Cat is reel.” Oh noes! But Paffshcal was thinkin an thinkin, an he wus laik “If I is beleefin in teh Ceiling Cat, and he is reel, I will be gettin cheezburger. But if I has no beleefin in teh Ceiling Cat, and he is reel, I will be getting pwned. If there no Ceiling Cat, no matter anywai. I think I is beleefin in teh Ceiling Cat.”

Arguments not for Ceiling Cat

  • Infinit Wegeshun.  Look around an see niec stuff liek kitteh an hooman an cheezburger an iz so niec mus be maded by reeeel smarty catz. But hoo can has maded smarty catz? Mus be reeeeel reeeeeel smarty catz. Srsly. But who can has maded reeeeel reeeeeel smarty catz? Dis jus give smarty catz maded smarty catz for eva an iz, liek, stoopid. Insted, can has evolution. Evolution is, liek, oh hai? u wants cheezburger u wait. Srsly. Iz gotta start simpul an bild an bild an bild til I can has reeel complex stuff. Even cheezburger. Evolution no can has kitteh littrboxz so need moar luck, but anthropic prinshipul say can has stuff even reeel smarty catz not imagin. Srsly. So no need Ceiling Cat. kthxbai
  • Awgooment from No Has Cheezburger. If Ceiling Cat wuz reel, He iz gud kitteh nd haz teh powerz to pwn evrywun. But if Ceiling Cat wuz gud kitteh, then He wants all teh kittehs to haz cheezburger. Nd if Ceiling Cat has powerz to pwn evrywun, He haz powerz tu gives all teh kittehs cheezburger. But sum kittehs no has cheezburger. :'( So Ceiling Cat iz not reel.(Sum n00bs say this iz becoz Ceiling Cat gived us Free Will, and teh reel reason some kittehs no has cheezburger is becoz other kittehs yuze Free Willz tu steel cheezburger and eated it—not Ceiling Cat’s fawlt! But this splaination not plausibling: everycat knowz that cheezburger iz better than Free Will. Sum saiz dat Free Will maeks sum kittehs not wantz Ceiling Cat, an dey livz in teh toylut bowl cuz dey refwse beelevin in Ceiling Cat. Not Ceiling Cat’s fawlt! kthxbye)

More sophisticated theology: what do Christians do with all those troublesome other faiths?

July 8, 2011 • 9:49 am

Here’s an article by John Hick (reference below), a philosopher and theologian, that perfectly epitomizes the problems of theology.  Hicks takes up a very good question: if you’re a Christian, but realize that the vast majority of religious people, including Jews, Hindus, and Muslims, get their faith from their family rather than from free choice among a menu of faiths, then how do you regard those people? After all, they haven’t been “saved” through acceptance of Jesus, and may either go to hell or be denied heaven.  And what about all those people who lived before Christ supposedly came on the scene?  Will the Incas and Aztecs also burn in hell? That doesn’t seem fair.

Should we conclude that we who have been born within the reach of the gospel are God’s chosen people, objects of a greater divine love than the rest of the human race? But then, on the other hand, do we not believe that God loves all God’s creatures with an equal and unlimited love?

His article attempts to answer this question.  He first disposes of the traditional two answers:

  1. Evangelize those other faiths into Christianity.  He notes that missionary efforts in places like India haven’t worked very well, so proselytizing is out.
  2. God knows who the “real” Christians would be.  That is, God knows exactly which Aztecs, Norsemen, Muslims and Jews who don’t or didn’t know about Jesus would nevertheless accept him if they had known about him, and will reward those folks on Judgment Day.  Hick rejects this, properly, as “a horrific suggestion,” for it presumes that God knows what everyone would do in every possible circumstance.  (I should add that that kind of God-knowledge also goes against the Christian notion of free will.)

Hick then discusses three more palatable solutions that others have suggested as forms of “inclusivist” Christian theology.  All of them, of course, presume that Christianity is the “true” faith and all others are faux faiths.

  • There are anonymous Christians—people whom god knows “would respond to the Christian gospel if it were properly presented to them.”  Hick says this comes from Catholicism, and was developed by the Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner (1904-1984).  This answer seems pretty much identical to solution (2) given above, and is a nonstarter.
  • People get the chance to choose Jesus after they die.  Hick explains, “Thus the devout Muslim living, let us say, in Pakistan and insulated from the gospel by a powerful Islamic faith, will encounter Christ after or in the moment of death and will thus have an opportunity to receive salvation.”  Although this seems extraordinarily stupid (people have to choose instantly?), it has been promulgated by several respected theologians, including Catholic J. A. Dinoia and Protestant George Lindbeck, who dignifies the idea with the pretentious title of “eschatologically futuristic perspective.”
  • Christ is actually secretly at work as “the unknown Christ” in other faiths.  That poses a problem, of course, because other faiths antedate Christianity. Hick says this: “Since Hinduism and Buddhism (also Taoism, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism and Jainism) all long predate Christianity, the Christ who has been at work within them from the beginning cannot be the God-man Jesus, but must be the cosmic Christ or eternal Logos who later became incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth.” As Hick notes, this “solution” also fails to consider adherents to nontheisic faiths like Buddhism.

Don’t all these ideas sound silly? Yet they are taken seriously by distinguished theologians!

Hick then offers his solution, “a positive suggestion”.  It is this:  there is a “Real” (his term for the “divine” or the “transcendent”, which can be conceived us as either a celestial being (Allah, Vishnu, God, etc.) or as a “nonpersonal” transcendent thing, such as Brahman or the Tao.  And—the solution—all religions are merely versions of The Real!  So there’s no substantive difference!

“The Real in itself lies beyond the range of our entire network of concepts, other than purely formal ones. We therefore cannot experience it as it is in itself but only as we conceptualize it in our human terms, organizing its impact on us in a particular form of religious experience. The religious traditions thus stand between us and the Real, constituting different “lenses” through which we are aware of it.  As Thomas Aquinas wrote, in a foreshadowing of the Kantian insight, “Things known are in the knower according to the mode of the knower.”  And in relation to the Real or Divine the mode of the knower is differently formed within the different religious traditions.”

Hick goes on to answer various questions raised by this idea, like “well, what do we worship, then?, and “how do we know that God is a true manifestation of The Real?” (Answer: because God promotes the “salvific transformation of human life.”)

Well, I suppose that if you have to come up with a solution that sounds good, and is liberal and inclusive, this is the best one.  But in the end it doesn’t work, either.  Why?  First, by using the loaded term “The Real,” (why didn’t he just call it “The Marshmallow”)  it implies that there really is something Out There that is simply perceived differently by different faiths.  Since that Thing could be impersonal (even The Universe, I suppose) and not necessarily theistic, there can be no evidence for it.  Therefore we needn’t take it seriously.  This is more of a problem with Hick’s solution than with some traditional religions, for at least the latter claim evidence (miracles, etc.), thin and unconvincing as it is.

Second, The Real won’t convince those people who think that “salvation” lies through their particular faith. Will a fundamentalist Baptist, told that Taoism as “salvific” as well, suddenly realize that every faith offers a path to Jesus (or Something)?  I doubt it.  That’s why theology like this remains the purview of the academy alone and doesn’t affect most believers.  Think of how a fundamentalist Muslim, an Orthodox Jew, or a Southern Baptist would regard this solution? It no longer privileges (sorry for the pomo term) their own faith, something that I think is very important to people. If you’ve believed all your life that you have to go to Confession, and eat the cracker, if you want to be saved, it would seem nearly impossible to think that a Buddhist gets the same privileges without having done the work.

As for the fact that different faiths make different and incompatible faith claims, Hick just says that those claims “are claims about different manifestations of the Real to humanity. As such they do not contradict each other.”  Of course they do!  Either Jesus was the son of God, and the way to heaven was only through him, as he claimed, then that is incompatible with the Muslim claim that anyone accepting Jesus as the son of God is a blasphemer and deserves death.  And claims that you’ll live after death and go to either heaven or hell are incompatible with some faiths’ claims that that doesn’t happen.

But the main problem is that we have no evidence that Hick’s solution is better than any other.  It just sounds better to the liberal and inclusivist ear.  Why should we believe in The Real rather than the idea that we’re given five minutes after death to accept Jesus or not?  There is equal evidence for both of these views: none.  Not only will it not work (does Hicks really intend to bring together the world’s faith in comity?), but in it we see the real purview of theology: not to decide whether there is a God, or what he’s like and what he wants, but to cobble together fine-sounding solutions to the many contradictions between faiths and within faiths (i.e., the existence of evil).  Theologians don’t really care if they produce knowledge—they care that they can sweep the difficulties of religion under a rhetorical table.

The one advantage of Hick’s solution is that if every religious person really believed it, it might end a lot of the interfaith animus that besets and harms our world.  But another solution is just to dispense with religion completely.

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Hick, J.  1998.  The theological challenge of religious pluralism. In: Introduction to Christian Theology: Contemporary North American Perspectives. (R. A. Badham, ed.)  Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville,KY