Boghossian's Definition of Faith: "Without Evidence" or "Beyond the Evidence"?

I just finished listening to the debate between philosophers Tim McGrew and Peter Boghossian A Manual for Creating Atheists - Unbelievable?.

I just have a small observation to add to the debate, which is that in Boghossian's very last comment he seems to revise his definition of faith from "belief without evidence" to "belief beyond the evidence" or "belief that isn't warranted by the evidence."  That seems to me to be a very significant revision.  I believe in an external world based on my sense experiences being systematic and stubborn.  But it could be that I'm just dreaming very systematically and stubbornly.  So I believe in an external world "beyond the evidence."  I believe in other minds largely because they seem to say and do things that I would say and do.  That's some evidence, but certainly not enough evidence to justify my belief that there are all these other minds.   I only have my own mind as one example from which I am generalizing to all other minds.  Hardly a strong inductive argument.  So I believe in other minds "beyond the evidence."

So if Boghossian's definition of faith is "belief beyond the evidence," then I suspect that most of us, atheists, agnostics, or religious people, have faith all the time.  For Boghossian to maintain that faith is a peculiar property of religious people, he needs to maintain that people have religious belief without any evidence whatsoever.  And I think Boghossian would believe this beyond the evidence, or perhaps even without evidence?

HT: Randal Rauser.

If You Watch C-Span, Have You Heard Calls about WTC7?

I don't have cable or dish, so I never get to watch shows like C-Span.  But if any of my readers do watch it, I'm curious if they have heard anyone call in about WTC7.

Why has C-Span been talking about 9/11 and WTC7 so often?

Centuries of Darkness

Centuries of Darkness, written in 1991 by five archaeologists, was received with mixed reviews by fellow archaeologists, some welcoming it as a much needed challenge to the accepted chronology, others condemning it as too radical to be taken seriously.  As they explain in their preface,

When the authors of this book met at the London Institute of Archaeology in 1985, we discovered a mutual scepticism of the claimed accuracy for the timetables of Old World archaeology. Above all, we became increasingly convinced that something was seriously wrong with the conventional picture of a centuries-long Dark Age descending over a vast area at the end of the Late Bronze Age c. 1200 BC. With a background of research in many different but related fields (specifically prehistoric Britain, Minoan Crete, Mycenaean Greece, biblical archaeology and Pharaonic Nubia), we pooled our resources and began an in-depth investigation of the archaeological chronology of the entire ancient Mediterranean and Near East. Everything we found confirmed our suspicion that the original spanner in the works was the Egyptian time-scale, and that the 'centuries of darkness' inserted into the histories of so many areas between 1200 and 700 BC were largely illusory.

I've found their book to be a little too technical to take in all the details, but clearly they've been very thorough, covering the entire ancient Mediterranean and Near East in making their case that the accepted chronology has created myriad problems in dating for every ancient archaeological find in those geographical areas.  Clearly It seems very clear to me that it's time for a major revision of that chronology.  And if the authors' suggested revision takes place, the Biblical narratives of the Exodus, conquest of Canaan, and the United Kingdom of Israel fit in rather well with the archaeological data.

In Case You Live in the City of New York....

...or know someone who does, there's a petition that you might want to sign.

For the Safety of All New Yorkers:

What Happens When You Ask NIST for Answers about WTC7?

Professor Kurtis Hagen asked the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) three questions about the collapse of World Trade Center 7, the third building that fell on 9/11. I agree with his assessment "that NIST is either unwilling or unable to adequately answer questions that really ought to be answered."

9/11 and the Academy

Professor Kurtis Hagen has written an article that was re-published at 911blogger.com, that I thought was worth re-publishing in its entirety here, as well.  The original can be accessed at http://undercurrents.webs.com/ 


 September 11th and the Academy
By Kurtis Hagen                          

According to the website
PatriotsQuestion911.com, hundreds of professors
have publicly questioned the official story
of September 11, 2001. (Disclosure: I’m on that
list.) Also, two thousand architects and engineers
have signed a petition calling for a new investigation
into the destruction of the Twin Towers and
Building 7. Further, David Ray Griffin, a very
accomplished scholar, has written ten books challenging
the official 9/11 account. His books, full
of extensive and rigorous argumentation and clear
presentation of evidence, have been endorsed by
a long list of significant people, including Howard
Zinn. In addition, Peter Dale Scott’s Road to
9/11, published by the University of California
Press, is a meticulously documented analysis of
the “deep state” aspect of 9/11. And, technical
scientific papers challenging key elements of the
official story have appeared in peer-reviewed scientific
journals. (For a list of select academic articles see:
http://911inacademia.com/journal-papers/.)

Nevertheless, on campus, it is as if none of this
has happened. Textbooks that address issues of war,
torture, international relations, or any other subject to
which the events of 9/11 are relevant, treat the official
story as an unquestioned fact. And the great majority
of academics, likewise, simply assume the standard
account is true, and reason on that basis. They make
no effort to deal with critiques of the official story in
any serious way. This is not because they are armed
with robust evidence against such critiques. On the
contrary, they are largely ignorant of the pertinent
details. And they don’t seem at all troubled by that.

It’s strange. After all, academics seem to enjoy
engaging with other subjects, even when they are of
relatively little practical significance. But, when it
comes to the defining event of this century, the justification
for war abroad and the continuing degradation
of rights at home, there is no curiosity.

Perhaps academics think there is no need for them
to discuss 9/11, or to think too hard about it.
Presumably they trust that others have already
objectively and exhaustively considered these issues,
and have judiciously concluded that the evidence
overwhelmingly supports the official story.

Unfortunately, in fact, there has never been a rigorous,
independent academic validation of the official
story. As mentioned above, there have been substantial
academic critiques. But where are the authoritative
academic responses to these critiques? One book that
is often cited is Debunking 9/11 Myths, produced
by Popular Mechanics. But is that it? It hardly even
counts. (See David Ray Griffin’s Debunking 9/11 Debunking
for a rebuttal to Popular Mechanics.)

Perhaps the reason academics shun critical study
of 9/11 is that they fear, no matter how reasonably
they conduct themselves, they will be stigmatized as a
“conspiracy theorist”. If so, that is unfortunate, because
all serious attempts to justify a dismissive attitude toward
conspiracy theories have failed. (See the work of
David Coady, Charles Pigden, and Lance DeHaven-
Smith.)

Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule’s article,
“Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures”, provides a
good example of a failed attempt to justify marginalizing
so-called “conspiracy theorists”. The work was so
shoddy that when Sunstein was asked if he stood by it,
he simply claimed not to remember it very well. (My
review of David Ray Griffin’s book-length refutation
of the article in question can be found at:
http://philosophy.cah.ucf.edu/fpr/files/11_1/hagen.pdf.)

For more on the relevant academic climate, see the
following documentaries: Hypothesis, by Brett Smith,
and 9/11 in the Academic Community, by Adnan Zuberi.
For the best evidence against the official story, see
The Toronto Hearings, available in book form and as a
5-hour set of video presentations (accessible online).

An Hypothesis for Understanding Noam Chomsky: Fear of the Extraordinary?

I was first introduced to Noam Chomsky way back in the early 80s.  I had to write a paper for a philosophy of language class, and I was having a heck of hard time understanding why "Snow is white" and "Schnee ist weiss" (or whatever the correct spelling for "snow is white" in German is supposed to be) is philosophically interesting.  I told my professor I couldn't think of anything to write about.  He recommended reading Noam Chomsky's views on language.  I found a collection of essays on the philosophy of language (edited by John Searle) that included one by Chomsky.  He argued that we had an innate knowledge of grammar that enabled us to learn language.  What an absolutely fascinating idea!   So I took an incomplete and spent the next year reading Chomsky's books on language and also what his critics had to say about them.  I thought Chomsky's arguments were the stronger and wrote up a paper on the topic and passed with a "B."

The one thing that I was curious about was how Chomsky thought we came to have this innate knowledge.  I learned later that he was skeptical that a Darwinian account of our innate language learning ability could be provided.  So did he think this innate "universal grammar" had been purposely designed?  Heavens no!  So what did he think the historical account was?  Apparently he was willing to remain agnostic about it, though I read something recently where he seemed to think that eventually a Darwinian account might be found for it.

Fast forward to the last couple of years, where Chomsky has said some rather interesting things about the 9/11 Truth movement.  Perhaps the most interesting thing he said is that even if it were proven that the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition, then the most likely culprit would still be al Qaeda.

Now there seems to be a similarity of some sort between these two disparate topics.  In the first case, Chomsky discovered something seemingly extraordinary about human beings - an innate universal grammar - but was unwilling to hypothesize an extraordinary explanation for it, such as intelligent design.  In the second case, he has said that even if an extraordinary explanation - controlled demolition - for the collapses of the WTC buildings is discovered, there is no reason to think there was an extraordinary explanation for the controlled demolitions.

It's almost as if Chomsky is willing to draw a line in the sand and say, "This far and no further.  I may have discovered something extraordinary, but that is no reason to think it needs an extraordinary explanation.  There may be something extraordinary about the collapses of the WTC towers, but that is no reason to think there is an extraordinary explanation for that."

I should add that the fact that we have an innate universal grammar fit very well into Chomsky's political philosophy.  To him this proved that we were not just tabula rasa, blank slates, that could be molded however the state wanted to mold us.  We were somehow incorrigibly made in a certain way that guaranteed individual dignity.

However, it is not as clear to me that 9/11 "Truth" would fit as well into Chomsky's views.  But then, I haven't studied his political philosophy.