Jim Guinee wrote: > And based on Jim Clark's recent comments, one could also suggest space > aliens as a possible cause. > > Now, just how viable is dementia in this case? > > I would argue that it's certainly more possible than space aliens, but > still a weak possibility for a number of reasons.
I don't think it's a "jumps right out at you as the obvious explanation" kind of thing, but certainly now that we've read Flew's own admission of some memory loss and seen (per Stephen Black's post) that the base rate of dementia in persons of this age is fairly high, I think it remains a far stronger candidate than "space aliens", or your "reaction formation" explanation. (I feel a little silly arguing for the dementia explanation as I don't think it's what really happened - I still strongly suspect that there's more to the story than we've read so far, and that the upcoming book will be revealing. Remember that the context of my defense of the dementia explanation is that it was suggested, and your response to the suggestion was that it was desperate and prejudicial. I think that you leapt to that conclusion largely because of some blinders that you have about this topic, the same blinders that led you a few weeks ago to incorrectly suggest that people on this list unfairly pick out religion as the unique target of their skepticism). > What I meant to say is that it's one thing to posit senility, but I would > be more convinced if one could demonstrate that Flew's writing and oral > communication are indicative of the common symptoms one experiences as a > result of dementia. > > In my limited experience with dementia, I have found that religious > discussions are generally interlaced with illogical, bizarre stratements, > even delusions, similar to my experiences working in psychiatric > hospitals. As you must be aware, though, dementia is a progressive condition, beginning with small, intermittent, and barely detectable changes well before progressing to what you're describing here. How much dementia would be required to explain the kind of change that Flew has shown? While on the very surface one might call it a huge change (from atheism to theism), as has been pointed out here repeatedly, it was actually a very small change in belief. Furthermore, it was a small change in a direction that can be characterized as "downhill": intentional explanations of complex phenomena are FAR more intuitive than naturalistic explanations. It takes considerable awareness and understanding to "get" the fact that (for example) climbing vines "find" places to attach themselves through blind processes like phototropism and genetic programs of growth and natural selection of the vines that succeed. I'll bet that if people's religious power depended on children believing that vines are aware and intelligent, Kansas would already be teaching children that it's impossible for vines to attach themselves to walls without having intentions to do so, and there'd be a movement of people who firmly believed in "intelligent growth". Intentional explanations are extremely seductive. That's the great arrogance of humanity - the best sense of the phrase "we create God in our own image". We believe that if something wonderful and complex happens it must be the result of something like ourselves. We're offended by the suggestion that "blind" natural processes could do the kinds of wonderful things that they do, because it threatens our sense of being special. Holding onto a naturalistic explanation is very difficult, and would be so even if we DIDN'T live in a culture that was so deeply opposed to naturalism and biased towards spiritualism. It would only take a fairly small lapse in judgment to fall away from naturalism. Certainly one wouldn't have to be a raving near-psychotic: my own mother, who is quite rational, thank you, is a creationist, I believe largely because she never had quite enough understanding of nature to get over that high hurdle. I certainly don't think that Stephen or anyone else meant to imply that to believe in creationism one has to be seriously demented to the point of the need for constant care: that's obviously not true. But one does have to be a quite solid thinker to maintain naturalism in the face of the barrage of spiritualist arguments, assumptions, and probably in-born tendencies. I can certainly believe that the beginning stages of dementia might be enough loss of cognitive function to cost a person the ability to hold out against the persistent seduction of the creationist arguments. > I participate on several internet forums devoted to religion, and > interestingly the participants who are least theistic are the ones that > most quickly cited Flew's age as a potential variable for his apparent > ideological change. > > We can all posit logical theories, but how quickly do our personal and > professional prejudices cause us to gravitate to the same theories > over and over (regardless of the subject)? Well, yes, but I think you're trying to imply that the important prejudices re. this topic are in the persons holding the naturalistic explanations, and to be blunt, you're wrong. It's the believers, not the naturalists whose prejudices are blinding them to the reality of the situation. There's a huge "mote in my neighbor's eye" effect going on here: we identify small gaps in naturalistic explanations and rush right in with intentional explanations that we haven't critically examined at all, and have no intention of critically examining. There's a big beam in the creationist's eye. How many of the more theistic persons in those internet fora noted that the report of Flew's change of heart cited only invalid arguments? I'm betting that none did, because they were so taken with their personal prejudices in favor of the anti-naturalist conclusion that they failed to notice that they were rejoicing over bad logic. In the context of this discussion, you've repeatedly taken offense at the suggestion that whatever change happened in Flew's thinking was the result of some kind of mental lapse, but it should be clear by now that is at least a reasonable suggestion. At the same time, while you've not been very specific about alternative explanations, it's clear that this is a big story (and one that you're discussing) only because there's a pet theory held by many religious people that claims that non-religious people are foolish and self-deluding, not to mention ammoral. That deep and widely-held prejudice is the center of the problem surrounding the "origins debate". > P.S. I liked your analysis (as always), and admit I don't have much to > summon in response. I would like to point out that Flew's change reminds > me of the defense mechanism "reaction formation." > > Perhaps he has been fighting so hard for so long at something that deep > down he believed but didn't want to. I can't make sense of this either. Are you suggesting that he believed all along in a theistic explanation, didn't want to, and so his naturalism was a reaction to that? It's hard to imagine why a person who believes in a theistic explanation would try to repress it, in light of (again) the overwhelming social pressure towards such explanations. You'd have to postulate another layer of odd motivations (a need to nonconform? a need to be disliked?), and with this explanation, I think you're already doing quite the balancing act. Your argument is stronger without this Freudian addition (or "pop-Freudian addition"? I defer to Allen Esterson <grin>). Paul
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